Thank you for reading,
Norm Jacknis
Director/IBSG Public Sector
February 11, 2009

In 2006, the CIA and fifteen other agencies in the intelligence and security community launched Intellipedia, an internal wiki to share information.  Similarly, the State Department, as part of its public diplomacy efforts, created Diplopedia.  

There are lots of uses of wikis in government, which I’ll explore another time.  But I want to focus on an unusual use – marketing.

While we don’t often admit it, many governments engage in what looks like marketing efforts.  Tourism promotion bureaus and, more generally, economic development offices do a lot of marketing to encourage people to come to their location.  Health departments engage in a form of marketing when they encourage residents to exercise and follow other patterns for good health.  Parks departments try to encourage the public to take advantage of the public recreational opportunities they provide, which also looks like marketing.

What all these efforts usually have in common is that they approach the development of their marketing messages in a traditional way.  They sit down together, come up with what they think is the best message and then blast that message out in a variety of ways, hoping for the best.

They may conduct a survey to find out what people want to hear, but usually they can’t afford to do so.  Surveys, though, too start out with the view of the people who design them – much like the way the marketing materials are started.  It’s very much an internal effort.

There have been a small number of attempts to do things differently.  For example, the major developer of Steamboat Springs, Colorado, encourages people to tell them why they love the place.  See http://www.welovesteamboat.com/.  You can send videos, pictures and stories for a chance to win up to $10,000.   This helps the developer to identify the right message.

The theory behind this approach is that your residents, your customers – anyone whom you are aiming your marketing message at – are the people who can best tell you what makes a difference to themselves.  And this is where wikis come into the picture.

Instead of just going from the marketing message straight to its delivery on a large scale, why not try to use a public wiki to refine and modify that message so it says what they want to hear.  This is as simple as posting the marketing materials you’ve developed and letting the public change them.

If opening a wiki to anyone seems too adventurous, then maybe send invitations to a particular part of the public.  For example, in economic development, ask the businesses that came to your area to go to the wiki.  Ask people who actually came to your area as tourists to write what they would tell others to encourage them to come.  Get people who have gone hiking on your trails to add to the description of how wonderful your parks are. 

In case you’re worried that a public wiki could be defaced, it’s worth noting that most wiki software provides for various controls.  Even Wikipedia has its editors and controls to prevent things from getting out of hand.  But they seldom do.  Most people are pretty responsible and other users will help police the website.

And the cost of doing this?  Very little.  There are several good wiki software packages available on the Internet that are free, including the one that Wikipedia uses.  Give it a try – you may be both surprised and pleased by what people tell you are the reasons they use your public services.

Norm Jacknis njacknis@cisco.com November 16, 2009

Sure, the obvious public services – for example, public safety and education – are known.  But the full extent of government services is unknown to great numbers of those who benefit from those services.

What can be done about this?  Some governments have taken ideas from non-fiction cable television channels, including two mainstays of the Discovery Channel – Dirty Jobs and Mythbusters.

With the low cost of video equipment, this is easy to do.  There are even products now, like the Flip HD video cameras that are smaller than a cell phone, easy to use and quick to upload to the web.

Miami-Dade County has created a series of videos that show some of the “dirty jobs” that County workers do for the public on its “Inside County Jobs” television show.  This started as one-minute video about training of firefighters and led to the realization that Miami-Dade could do more.  See the first installment at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7aivNoPsxg

So, following the model of Discovery’s “Dirty Jobs”, with its own host/participant, there is compelling footage of filling potholes, unplugging storm drains, fixing stop signs, lab testing, trash recycling and the other activities seen and unseen that residents often take for granted.  Here’s another example—http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aj7U1A_pq2s

The video is available both on the County website and on YouTube.  In addition to its success with the public, the videos have had a positive effect on employees, who now take to their jobs with a greater sense of purpose and pride.

Westchester County, for example, had a volunteer team put together a movie in the style of a 1930s film noir detective story.  During the course of his investigation, the “detective” interacted with all kinds of county workers.  The County Executive played an abridged version of the movie in one of his “State of the County” speeches in an effort to educate the public about the variety of activities of county government.

Video isn’t the only tool.  The leaders of Oakland County, Michigan, responded to the gaps in public knowledge by taking the “Mythbusters” title to attract attention, but presenting their material on the web.  They tackled some of the toughest issues posing a question in True/False form and then busting the myth for the wrong answer.  Here’s one example concerning regional efforts—http://www.oakgov.com/exec/insight/myth_regionalism.html

So there is hope to engage a distracted public and upgrade their knowledge of what your government does, by using some of the inexpensive tools now available.  Your creativity is the only limit. 

Norm Jacknis njacknis@cisco.com November 2, 2009

I thought about some historical precedents for major local infrastructure projects.  While the US Interstate Highway system is often cited as such a precedent, it falls short of representing the current debate because no one proposed in the 1950s that we should “let the private sector do it.”

But the huge New York City rail transit system is perhaps a better historical analogy.  It is important to note that the way the current system operates – as a single government owned and operated system – is not how it started or operated for many of its early years.

It seems that New York City government used every possible method including:

• Let private companies own, build and run mass transit lines.  (Then take them over when they fail – due to underlying economic properties of such infrastructure which makes them more like public goods than private goods that can sustain a profit.)
• Own the rights to the transit line yourself, but let a private company build and operate it.
• Build the transit line yourself, but let a private company operate it.
• Build the transit line and also run it.
• Fake it – act as if a new transit line is going to be run and built by a private company, but do it yourself when no private company does so.

One other aspect of this history is of interest, which is the use of the “dual contracts.”  Those allowed more than one rail operator to use the same tracks and is analogous to the open network approach in today’s broadband world – whether the fiber backbone of broadband networks should be open to all users.

This opportunistic strategy perhaps made it easier and quicker for New York City to bring its great transit system to life.  Of course, eventually, this same lack of coherence created future problems and inefficiencies.  And by the time the great expansion of transit lines was finished, the government ended up owning and operating the whole system and sporadically filling some of the remaining unserved areas. 

Was the trade-off of a fast growth opportunistic strategy against longer term problems worth it?  Given the success and the role that the subways have played in New York City’s development, the answer is likely yes.

I’ve combined excerpts from a couple different sources (especially the now ubiquitous Wikipedia) to highlight some aspects of that system’s history, which you can read by clicking “Read More”.

Norm Jacknis njacknis@cisco.com October 12, 2009

What can you do about that?  Maybe there’s an answer in a story about real gold mining from the authors of the book “Wikinomics”[1]:

A few years back, Toronto-based gold mining company Goldcorp was in trouble. Besieged by strikes, lingering debts, and an exceedingly high cost of production, the company had terminated mining operations…. [M]ost analysts assumed that the company’s fifty-year old mine in Red Lake, Ontario, was dying. Without evidence of substantial new gold deposits, Goldcorp was likely to fold.

Within weeks, submissions from around the world were flooding into Goldcorp headquarters. There were entries from graduate students, management consultants, mathematicians, military officers, and a virtual army of geologists. “We had applied math, advanced physics, intelligent systems, computer graphics, and organic solutions to inorganic problems. There were capabilities I had never seen before in the industry,” says McEwen. “When I saw the computer graphics, I almost fell out of my chair.”
The contestants identified 110 targets on the Red Lake property, more than 80% of which yielded substantial quantities of gold. In fact, since the challenge was initiated, an astounding 8 million ounces of gold have been found – worth well over $3 billion. Not a bad return on a half million dollar investment.

You probably won’t be able to offer a prize to analysts, although you might offer to share some of the savings that result from doing things better.  But, since the public has an interest in seeing its government work better, unlike a private corporation, maybe you don’t have to offer a prize.

And there are many examples on the Internet where people are willing to help out without any obvious monetary reward.  Certainly not everyone, but enough people might be interested in the data to take a shot of making sense of it – students or even college professors looking for research projects, retired statisticians, the kinds of folks who live to analyze baseball statistics, and anyone who might find this a challenge.

The Obama administration and its new IT leaders have made a big deal about putting its data on the Web.  There are dozens of data sets on the Federal site data.gov[2], obviously taking care to deal with issues of individual privacy and national security.  Although their primary interest is in transparency of government, now that the data is there, we’ll start to see what people out there learn from all that information.

Alabama[3] and the District of Columbia, among others, have started to do the same thing.

You can benefit a lot more, if you too make your government’s data available on the web for analysis.  Then your data, perhaps combined with the Federal data and other sources on the web, can provide you with an even better picture of how to improve your government – better than just using your own data alone. 

Links:
1. “Innovation in the Age of Mass Collaboration”, Business Week, Feb. 1, 2007 http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/feb2007/id20070201_774736.htm
2. “Data.gov open for business”, Government Computer News, May 21, 2009, http://gcn.com/articles/2009/05/21/federal-data-website-goes-live.aspx
3. “Alabama at your fingertips”, Government Computer News, April 20, 2009, http://gcn.com/articles/2009/04/20/arms-provides-data-maps-to-agencies.aspx

Norm Jacknis July 6, 2009

They have a stack of problems, applications, forms and the like in their inbox.  It may be a real, old-fashioned inbox with lots of paper or the computer-based equivalent.  Doing the best they can, they then work through the pile and, we hope, with wisdom and efficiency, they process the incoming tasks and then move them to the outbox.  As far as many employees are concerned, their work is done when the thing is put in the outbox.

However, for the people who run the government, this represents more than a ledger of what came in and what went out.  It is a gold mine of information.  Especially because of all the automation that has been put in place in government agencies, it is also an easily accessible gold mine.

Unfortunately, this gold mine is often ignored.  But if that data is analyzed, you will discover the patterns that can help you improve government programs and policies.  Consider two examples, from very different areas, of what statistical analysis of that data can tell you:

• What kinds of programs have worked best for which kinds of prisoners?  (This knowledge can be used to come up with better treatment and assignment of prisoners at intake.)
• Who has used the public golf courses at what times of the week and day?  (This can identify where you might want to offer new programs targeted at particular groups of residents to even out usage during the day and get more golf fees.)
 
In 2007, Professor Ian Ayres wrote a book, “SuperCrunchers: Why Thinking-By-Numbers Is The New Way To Be Smart”, in which he described how various organizations are using statistical analysis to dramatically improve their performance.  One of its chapters, “Government By Chance”, provides public sector examples and offers an interesting idea. 

Imagine a world where people looked to the IRS as a source for useful information. The IRS could tell a small business that it might be spending too much on advertising or tell an individual that the aver¬age taxpayer in her income bracket gave mote to charity or made a larger IRA contribution. Heck, the IRS could probably produce fairly accurate estimates about the probability that small businesses (or even marriages) would fail. In fact, I’m told that Visa already does predict the probability of divorce based on credit card purchases (so that it can make better predictions of default risk). Of course, this is all a bit Orwellian. I might not particularly want to get a note from the IRS saying my marriage is at risk. But I might at least want the option of having the government make predictions about various aspects of my life. Instead of thinking of the IRS as solely a taker, we might also think of it as an information provider. We could even change its name to the “Information & Revenue Service.”
This is yet another example, though, of moving the public sector from a transactional view of citizens to something more helpful.  While even the author admits the IRS example is a scary, there are other possibilities that are not scary and that your residents would like. 

The use of the data the government collects for better policy and better service to citizens is what I call “learning how to drive the government” because it is different from the usual fad and fashion approach to policy.  Too often policy debates are like a driver in a car who cannot see outside the windows.  So the driver keeps going until the car hits a wall, at which point the usual reaction is to go in the opposite direction until the same thing happens again.  This accounts for the feeling the pendulum swinging in public policy debates, rather than real learning occurring.  When everyday data is analyzed, it is like being able to look out the windows and figure out what direction to drive.

Norm Jacknis June 15, 2009

Today’s television pundits often forget that Keynes added that “It is not reasonable, however, that a sensible community should be content to remain dependent on such fortuitous and often wasteful mitigations when once we understand the influences upon which effective demand depends.”

Whether or not you agree with the Keynes approach to fighting the current recession, it would seem that, other things being equal, it is better to spend the money in ways that build a foundation for future economic growth than to merely jack up consumer demand.

That is perhaps why President Obama calls his program the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. 

So, as the stimulus funds start flowing to local and state governments around the country, the leaders of those governments should ensure that the money is treated as an investment for the future.  If, for example, all we do is re-pave the highways of the 1950s, we will have wasted a tremendous opportunity.

Earlier this year, a paper prepared for the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors – the people in local governments who deal with these issues – recommended a program that would make room for the future.  They called it JULIET, for Joint Underground Location of Infrastructure for Electric and Telecommunications.  The program suggests that local governments, thinking about the future, insist that conduit for these basic utilities be built into any highway/road construction. 

The report notes that this might add about $10-30,000 per mile in construction costs – a fairly small percentage of typical highway mileage costs.  But it would save about 70% of the costs of deploying fiber networks in a community because the largest cost in such projects is not the technology, but opening up the roads and laying down the conduit.  With the stimulus construction money, the roads will already be opened up.

The deployment of fiber networks doesn’t just provide high speed Internet services, but also offers an opportunity to build in smart management of infrastructure.  That same conduit, which can be used to reduce the cost of getting a high speed fiber network into your community, can also be the backbone for a network of sensors that monitor traffic on the highway and even the condition of the highways and bridges – so your public works personnel will be notified when damage is still minor and less expensive than the big emergency projects that take you and your budget by surprise.  That same conduit can also be the backbone for smart energy management and smart grids, which can enable the government and its residents to reduce their energy costs and greenhouse gases.

Around the world, local government leaders have recognized that the future will involve broadband and the smart management of the public infrastructure.  Both of these should be incorporated in the plans for any stimulus spending.

Sooner or later, the recession will be over.  Then will come the reviews of each government’s performance.  Will you want it said that your government spent the stimulus money just to revive the consumer sector of the economy or that you also took advantage of the opportunity to gain the additional benefit of laying the foundation for the future viability of your community?

Norm Jacknis June 1, 2009

The theme is how the governments of smart communities can respond to a deep recession.  I’ve been asked to give the keynote speech and so I thought I should devote this post to some of the ideas I’ll be presenting.

The overriding message is quite simple: take advantage of the network that exists in your community.  Using that network wisely can save money in the government, help your residents reduce their costs and even create more wealth in your community – which, of course, is the best way to get out of a recession.

Your government can save money in several ways.  First, those organizations that have integrated the controls of their buildings and other physical facilities into their data networks have been able to achieve substantial savings.  The State of Missouri, with a thousand buildings, has been able to reduce its energy costs alone by $20 million a year (about a $1 per square foot). 

You can get greater employee productivity by getting public employees out of the office so they can do their work, which is often in the field.  The network lets them work where their tasks takes them – while managers can still observe and even participate in that work when necessary.  While telecommuting has been a long standing program of many governments, it is time to think of mobile telecommuting instead.

The Internet and network connectivity you have also makes it possible to provide and to use the best, most cost effective software and services.  If your government has strong IT capabilities, then offer these services to others so you can spread your IT costs over a larger base.  If your government isn’t strong in IT, then use these services since they may be cheaper than trying to do it yourself.

Of course, readers of this blog will not be surprised that I also think that some paid-for government services can instead be provided for free by letting your residents use the Internet to help each other.

You can help your residents reduce their own costs, especially the time and money they spend in traffic and the money they spend on energy use.  There are good examples of local governments offering all sorts of network-based services that reduce the time people spend in traffic.  Some have even set up smart work centers, which eliminate the need for people to travel all the way downtown, but enable them to virtually participate in the workplace of their employers.
You can also eliminate travel for your residents if government services are available over the Internet and on smart phones, instead of just in government offices.  These services can now include videoconference meetings over the Internet and real collaborative interaction between public employees and residents.

Through the use of smart home energy controllers (and, beyond that, smart grids) your residents can save money on their energy use.  In the Pacific Northwest, one recent trial found that just letting people use the Internet to know about their energy usage and to do something about that no matter where they were resulted in an average energy cost reduction of 10%.

In various ways, the investments that have been made in broadband have direct economic benefits.  For example, one study found that every dollar in broadband investments yielded ten in economic growth.  And broadband has direct impact on the growth and profitability of businesses.  But you can help those businesses learn how to use the Internet better, even offering assistance with Virtual Trade Missions and videoconferencing. 

For many of you, the broadband network investment has been made.  Now is the time to use to respond in recessionary times by reducing your government costs, your citizens’ cost of living and by ramping up economic growth.

To see more details on this, take a look at the complete presentation at http://blogs.cisco.com/images/uploads/ciscotalk/Intelligent_Communities_In_A_Recessionx.pdf

Norm Jacknis May 11, 2009

The reason for this posting is an article in today’s New York Times Business Section,
titled “Customer Service? Ask a Volunteer.”  It describes the way that Verizon uses unpaid volunteers to supply customer service—http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/business/26unbox.html.  If you remember the last post, this isn’t new.  Among other companies, ATT has done the same thing for awhile at http://forums.wireless.att.com/cng/. 
But the article describes in some detail how Verizon runs this service and what motivates the minority of volunteers who are willing stand up and become leaders of the volunteer community.  In government, we would call these people auxiliary deputies in a police force or doyennes in a special park.

As I noted before, what these private companies have learned is that people who do not work for the company are often more credible with other customers than employees.  When these companies use these public forums, of course, they need to have a certain tolerance for criticism.  Looked at the right way, though, this criticism is a form of free market research and can alert a company early to a brewing problem before that problem gets completely out of hand.
That same logic applies to government.  Given the declining fiscal outlook for the next few years, citizen collaboration may be the only way that some public services can be adequately sustained in the future.
I suppose that Verizon, which arguably does not have the greatest reputation for customer service, feels that it cannot do any worse with volunteers.  That Verizon can get people to do this is a marvel to me.  It should be much easier in the public sector, since people have a direct interest in the success of their community and government.

And government can start with some basic services where the only necessary expertise is having gone through the process before.  So, a senior who has gone through the process of applying for “meals on wheels” or para-transit can help a senior who hasn’t done so yet.  Similarly, a parent with older kids can be the one who can explain how to another parent with younger kids how to enroll for Parks Department programs.  What examples can you add to this list?
Please write to me at

Norm Jacknis April 27, 2009

The same thing was true in medical care, another service area of great personal importance to people.  Then the Zagat folks entered the picture.  Much like their website for reviews of restaurants and the like, in conjunction with the WellPoint health insurance company, they started a website where patients can rate their physicians.

Of course, Zagat isn’t the only such service.  Amazon.com has been known for, among other things, reader reviews of books.

None of these Internet-based rating services – and there are many – is without criticism.  The worry in the Amazon reviews is that they can be gamed for commercial purposes.  With Zagat’s application of their review process to physicians, there have been criticisms about the lack of expertise of the reviewers.  But both of these services can provide a perspective that the physicians or restaurants or authors or any other service provider couldn’t get in any other way.

Similarly, if the public gets a chance to rate public services, you will be able to learn things about those services that none of the internally generated performance measurement systems alone will give you. 

Where could you use this in government?  Well, think about the services you offer, particular those that are used by enough people that ratings might mean something.

How about ratings of:
• each of your parks
• each of the major roads in your area
• each bus route or other transit service
• each health clinic
• each school
• each library or library branch
• special events that you run, whether holiday events or educational events

Just like restaurant reviews, which have many dimensions – quality of food, ambience, service, etc. – so too you could have many dimensions in any reviews of public services.  Roads, for example, can be measured by the smoothness of the surface (the opposite of potholes), congestion, perceived safety, and clarity of signs.

You don’t even need to think all that hard about these dimensions because you can also let the public suggest the dimensions they want to rate services on.

And, based on the experience of the other reviewing services, there shouldn’t be too much concern about criticism boiling over.  While there are the bad, sometimes really awful, reviews, in most cases people have good things to say.  And their suggestions for improvements are well meaning.  Of course, if there is some public service that you offer which garners extremely negative responses from a majority of reviewers, then you probably have a real problem – and it’s better to know about it early, before it becomes an election year issue.

Bottom line: unlike elaborate performance measurement systems, this is just a fairly simple website that can engage your residents and provide you with valuable information, inexpensively.

Norm Jacknis March 30, 2009