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China is more Gov 2.0 than we are?

Astute readers may notice that the above Google Maps image is not actually Washington, D.C. but instead is Metro Shanghai in China.   To me, it’s an ideal picture of the irony that surrounds the fact that the Chinese government has a reputation for being one of the most data-opaque in history, with mystery shrouding its every move, and the world’s most massive Internet filters placed at its every data egress point.  However, in bizarre form, Shanghai’s new and state-of-the-art metro transit system (including an amazing 270mph mag-lev train to the airport) has been exposed in full to Google Transit, allowing anyone with an iPhone to easily navigate their way around the city. 

In stark contrast, Washington D.C., supposedly the very beacon of data transparency and the source of the Gov 2.0 movement, is really resembling another sort of “movement” altogether with respect to Metro system data transparency.   I first noted this a few months back in another blog post, when I tried to use my iPhone to show me how to get downtown from my new house.   Though I’m right down the street from a DC Metro station, the lack of data exposed to Google Transit made Google Maps send me nearly halfway across the state, so as to use a small commuter transit system that was exposed. 

I originally thought this was Google’s fault, claiming they had Google Transit in DC when in fact they didn’t.  However, this turned out to be the result of a disagreement WMATA had with releasing their transit information to Google.  Did they fear some sort of security concern?  Actually, no.  The problem was that they had just invested a bunch of money in their own wmata.com website, and didn’t want Google transit to draw attention away from their big investment.   The alleged quote is,

“…forming a partnership with Google was not in our best interest from a business perspective.” (ref)

Apparently DC isn’t alone in this bizarre blindness to Gov 2.0 principles, as Los Angeles’ Metro system is likewise not on Google Transit for the same reason.  And unfortunately, L.A. is a much more difficult city to get around than DC, if you don’t have a car – a place where an iPhone-friendly platform for public transit system navigation would be even more useful.

[also note that DC and LA are the two cities that constantly vie for the worst automobile traffic in North America.]

 

Gov 2.0 – How to Do it Right

IMG_0518Now, I recently had the privilege of attending the Gov 2.0 Expo in Washington, D.C. as a representative of Webworld Technologies.  This Expo was a fascinating showcase of applications from all different angles of Government/Citizen participation – from Open311 services that basically act as a “BugZilla” for potholes, to services that allow you to use your iPhone as a crime-reporting device, or the promise of augmented reality (AR) for tourism. 

But pertinent to this discussion was the “Government as a Partner” section of the conference, where the architect of the bart.gov site in San Francisco showed how true data transparency and Gov 2.0 principles can be used to foster an immense amount of creativity and problem-solving that benefits both the people and the organization at large.

See, instead of pursuing a strategy like DC or LA, where you close up the data and keep it for yourself, and hope that everyone will love your website, they instead focused on making their data broadly available, and fostered a community where people could make their own applications that then use this data.

Coming out from this was a community-created BART iPhone app, which took no internal development time or public moneys, and which BART then promoted for others to use.  Just look at the heading of that bart.gov page:  “See what others are creating with BART’s public data”.  That says it all, really.

One could argue that SF is the home of Silicon Valley, and that they are uniquely poised to take advantage of such transparent data.  However, that gets shot down pretty fast when you look at the fact that DC Metro is the biggest center for IT employment in the world, and is second only to silicon valley in terms of concentration of programmers. 

So, there’s no excuse!