Category: GIS

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Findings Report: Web Map Resources

The following is a Findings Report on web map resources that I completed as part of a study of NYC Community Gardens for Pratt’s Map Institute at the New York Public Library Map Division taught by Matt Knutzen. I reviewed the Library of Congress Geography and Map Reading Room website, GeoCommons and OASISNYC as potential resources for completing this project.

Library of Congress Geography and Map Reading Room
http://www.loc.gov/rr/geogmap/

The Library of Congress Geography and Map Reading Room website contains information about visiting and using the institution’s physical and digital library resources. Major sections of the website include information about the history and background of the Map Division, reference services, digital collections, acquisitions and the Philip Lee Phillips Society friends of the library group.

The center of the page offers links to a featured Map of the Peninsula of Florida by Joan Vinkeboons labeled with the date [1639?]. Clicking the map opens it in the Division’s map viewer. There are two additional links that open the “new map interface” and an older “American Memory format” which appears to be from a 1999 project. The information in the right column contains library hours, Ask a Librarian online request form and a current, featured map project, “Places in History: 150th Anniversary of the U.S. Civil War (2011-2115).” ([sic] 2115 appears to be a typo).

The links were a bit confusing at first since I had expected the label “Geography & Map Division Map Collections using a new interface” would lead to a press release or a guide to the new interface. Instead it leads directly to the main page of a catalog tool for digital holdings. The American Memory format link leads to the American Memory project which appears to have been created in 1999. The interface retains the look and feel of that era of web development, and contains a useful, browsable subject and title index as well as search. The Places in History links also link to the older American Memory interface if you click the map itself. If you click the “more” pr “learn more” links you can retrieve more detailed information in a modern interface, including links to the catalog records for cited maps, the KML file in some cases, and a link for ordering reproductions.

The American Memory interface allows you to zoom into smaller portions of a map via JPEG2000 images at various resolutions and zoom levels. The modern interface is the Library of Congress’ general catalog search filtered to the map collection. This includes a search bar with Maps selected and search results showing a summary of listings, including catalog information. Facets allow you to filter by original format, online format, date, collection, contributor, subject, location and language. This integrates the Map collection with the larger LOC catalog, providing access and discovery. An addition to this search page that is unique to the Map Division is tabs labeled “Search Maps” and “Map Collection” which offer the ability to search or browse the collection. Detailed information about the Map Viewers is another useful page included in the Digital Collections section.

From the standpoint of a researcher seeking to utilize the collection, the links on the left column of the home page describing reference policies, guides to the collection, finding aids and a link to the Online Map Collection are most useful. Reference policies describe how one can gain access to the collection and services available including how to obtain a Reader Identification Card, how to make inquiries from a distance and the kinds of copying services available, including reminders about appropriate citation and copyright permissions.

Finding aids and collection guides appear to be similar concepts, though the finding aids, of which there are only three, are EAD encoded resources while the collection guides are web pages with brief descriptions and essays. A few, such as the American Women project, are multipage, curated websites. The collection guides are not uniform in layout. Some point to materials in the old American Memory format, while others are displayed in the new format that is browsable by Title, Subject, Audio, Photograph, Drawing, Video, and Written Narrative.

While I expected the NYPL will have more materials that are relevant to my research in community gardens, I wanted to look at the Library of Congress site particularly as a complement to the NYPL resources. I did find an interesting aerial mosaic of the neighborhood where my garden is located from 1929, showing some buildings that are still there and others that have since been demolished or replaced. It is interesting to see that certain surrounding features in nearby Central Park and the relative widths of major versus minor streets are still the same today as they were at the time the photographs were taken. Unfortunately, some of the detail is difficult to discern.

GeoCommons
http://geocommons.com

GeoCommons is a public community website of ESRI GeoIQ users, who according to the website, “are building an open repository of data and maps for the world.” The GeoIQ platform includes a features for uploading, accessing, visualizing and analyzing data. Some of these features include the ability to create and share custom maps with layered data and animations through time and space. The platform allows you to upload your own data, and it will create statistics that you can analyze and download in many formats, including CSV, KML, ESRI Shapefile, JSON and Atom. Additionally, site viewers can search for and access your map, filter the data, copy it to their own accounts so they can add or modify the data and share the results.

GeoCommons serves as an introduction to ESRI’s GeoIQ enterprise edition which contains more powerful predictive analytics tools, integration with social media and the ability to keep data private and to manage access and workflow. Data can be stored in the cloud or hosted on a virtual machine. GeoIQ Connect can integrate with Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL, ESRI, MongoDB, and other datastores and APIs. Also, a free developers kit allows you to create custom applications that integrate with GeoIQ.

Reviewing GeoCommons from the perspective of a community garden organizer, it seems that the free version would be sufficient for most uses. Gardens could be plotted on a map and compared to surrounding land uses and current and proposed planning and construction projects. Individual gardens might like to use GeoCommons to create plot maps of members beds. My local community garden recently installed a beehive, so it would be an interesting project to plot areas where bees are found in the garden.

Most community gardens are not large enough or rich enough to purchase an enterprise edition; however, if it were purchased by the City Parks Department, it could conceivably be used to host and manage users who are affiliated with the department’s Operation Green Thumb gardening program. Advocacy groups might like to use it to promote development of gardens in areas of greatest need. For example, the NYC Parks Department website indicates that many community gardens have historically been created in areas where access to open public spaces is limited. An existing NYC community garden map on the GeoCommons site shows a concentration of gardens in the Lower East Side and East Harlem in Manhattan and Bedford-Stuyvesant and East New York in Brooklyn.

As a research and reference tool GeoCommons is limited to the datasets that have been uploaded by site users. ESRI offers a search tool for discovery and showcases featured maps, but there is no formal index and the community of maps run the gamut from formal studies to test runs, such as the one I created to play with a community garden map that I found. As a tool for teaching basic GIS skills, the site is quite useful. It is very easy to upload data and play with the basemap and icons, and the download formats offer a way to work easily with spreadsheet views or Google Earth.

OASIS
http://www.oasisnyc.net/map.aspx

OASIS map focuses in open space in New York City. It is maintained by the Center for Urban Research at CUNY Graduate Center. It was one of the first maps created specifically to address the low ratio of open space per citizen. It is an excellent research tool for highlighting open space and comparing to surrounding land uses.

OASIS is a collaborative project between CUNY and a number of data providers including the US. Army Corps of Engineers, the Wildlife Conservation Foundation, the Stewardship Mapping Project, the USDA Forest Service, the Manahatta Project and the Council on the Environment of NYC’s community gardens program. The diversity of partners, most of whom contributed data to analyze specific problems, is a testament to the various use cases and array of visualizations possible with this tool. The platform that OASIS runs on is ESRI ArcGIS Server with OpenLayers open source map viewing library and Javascript web framework, JS Ext.

In addition to open space and land use data, OASIS includes data layers showing transit lines, such as roads, subways, bus lines and bike routes; environmental data such as coastal storm impact zones, Forever Wild sites, and public access waterfronts; environmental impact zones, such as brownfields, hazardous waste treatment centers and volunteer cleanup sites; social services such as schools, libraries, and NYCHA and subsidized housing properties; as well as zoning, population characteristics, water and wetland areas, political boundaries and historical datasets.

It is possible to overlay data onto historical aerial photography from 1996 to 2008 via a slider interface. Also, because the map is linked to the Manhatta project, you can display recreated aerial landscapes from 1609 and overlay it with data from that period, including wildlife habitats, Lenape Indian trails, eco-community data and shorelines. Additional historic overlays include Montresor map from 1775, the Poppleton map from 1817, the Viele map from 1874, and the Bromley Atlas from 1911 (all maps from New York Public Library).

It is a powerful discovery tool. If you select a property on the map, the Location Report tab offers detailed information about the property, including tax block and lot information, owner, property dimensions, like building area, number of units and whether commercial space is included, political and community district information and other relevant information. It also has direct links to the property’s Zoning Map, NYC Dept. of Buildings and transaction records, tax assessment the Digital Tax Map, NYC zoning guide and NYC Watershed Resources.

OASIS is a good website for garden organizers. In fact, community gardens was one of the earliest projects that ran on OASIS. It lists community garden search as one of the main features on the homepage, along with special searches for stewardship organizations, such as block associations and historical societies. It functions well as a directory for these kinds of community organizations since the metadata may include contact information, website address, hours, membership and other pertinent information about the entity in addition to property information such as ownership, block and lot number and political jurisdiction.

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Archiving Digital Maps

An excerpt and presentation from an academic paper on archiving digital maps:

My research examines the historical challenges faced by a local GIS community and its advocacy for improved access and availability of geographic data on local and national levels. I was primarily interested in the data access issues that led a group of geographers in New York City to develop a centralized data repository and basemap, and examined concurrent practices at the national level. I intend to use the results of this research to inform the development of a born-digital archive of 9/11 artifacts in cooperation with members of GISMO, a New York City based GIS advocacy group.
Methods: I used qualitative research methods to evaluate the current landscape of archival practices for digital, geospatial content. I examined monographs, scholarly journal articles, conference proceedings, news articles, and website materials.
This project presents a thorough evaluation of archival practices and challenges for digital, geospatial material. My research includes a definition of geographic data, an overview of geographic data classification, geolibraries and geospatial preservation models, and challenges for the management, sharing and maintenance of geospatial collections. I concluded with actionable ideas for librarians who are developing a geographic collection.
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GeoSprocket Live Survey on GIS Tools

The first round of results of a recent GIS user poll from GeoSprocket, asking about GIS tool used and frequency of use, are available:

Bill Morris surveyed GIS users via several feeds including a Vermont GIS listserv, ESRI and O’Reilly conference hashtags and the author’s social media accounts. An interesting survey, but difficult to get a good read on who the sample represents. Not knowing how many people follow a specific Twitter hashtag, it is difficult to measure how many of the respondents might have found the survey via the ESRI versus the O’Reilly hashtag.

With those caveats, let’s look at the numbers.

In the first release, 55% of the respondents are primary ESRI users, 24% use open source GIS tools, 16% are Google Map users and 8% use some other tool, including FME, MicroStation, ENVI/IDL, GIS Cloud, AutoDesk, Maptitude, Idrisi, Mapserver, Geocortex and others. Bill noted surprise at how many Google users there are. Frankly, I would have thought there would be more, but perhaps Bill’s social network skews toward ESRI or that more people follow the ESRI hashtag than the O’Reilly one.

Overlap in product use is what I find most interesting about this survey.  It seems a larger proportion of people who use non-ESRI tools like Google Maps or open source products also use ESRI tools (80% versus 40%). However, 75% of ESRI users also use Google Maps. This  indicates that there is value for a lot of people in using a mixed approach.

The second round of Bill’s survey remains open and live results indicate that there are indeed more Google users than the first round suggested. As of today, ESRI users remain the majority with 48% of users versus 30% Google Maps. The other categories are relatively the same.

It will be interesting to see how these numbers change as more people enter the survey.

It would also be more interesting and indeed useful to see why certain tools are used over others as opposed to simply which tools were used. Clearly with up to 80% overlap of use there must be reasons why certain tools are chosen for certain tasks. Hopefully, Bill will add that question in a subsequent survey.

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The Information Architecture of Emergency Response

Now that I have been accepted into the Pratt Institute Masters of Library and Information Science program, I have started a journey to document the convergence between two of my favorite disciplines, Geographic Information Systems and Information Architecture. In the past few months, I’ve noticed an explosion of conferences and meetups addressing the geolocational aspects of digital applications for the web and especially mobile. I am a member of 16 different Meetup groups, eight of which address some aspect of the User Experience umbrella, four of which specialize in mapping and/or GIS, two somewhat general technology groups and two more that approach these disciplines from the fascinating perspectives of digital semiotics and data visualization and infographics. Each have hosted topics on user experience and location based design at some point. Many maddeningly scheduled for the same evening.

Commiserating with some of my colleagues with whom I helped create the NYC GeoSymposium 2001-2011-2021 back in November, we have found that in each of our practices, cartographers, GIS specialists and those working with visualizing location based information are finding a great need for design assistance. This seems natural, if somewhat belated and perhaps even surprising. Think of some of the most beautifully designed images and one must of course reflect on the maps of National Geographic magazine, those gorgeous squares of folded paper that come in every issue. Certainly, there is a longstanding sensibility around the design of useful and pleasing maps. Increasingly, these maps are in our hands on tablets and smart phones, so optimizing the display of information that used to be represented in enormous, rolled or folded pieces of paper is a challenge for our community.

Let’s Talk About Maps

So I am doing my part in continuing this discussion of the place for design in online mapping. In March, I presented a talk in New Orleans at the 2012 IA Summit on The Information Architecture of Emergency Response. The presentation explored the evolution of technology in emergency response, with a special focus on advances in geographic systems, incident management, social media and policy in New York City since September 11, 2001. In it, I cover questions like:

  • What technologies do emergency responders in NYC use?
  • How have events like 9/11 and other incidents influenced technology advances?
  • What effect, if any, has the change from a Law Enforcement Mayor to a Media Mayor had on data policy?
  • What are the challenges and opportunities of open government data?
  • How is social media being used in NYC and elsewhere to engage the public in emergency preparedness and response?
  • And, finally, are app contests and hackathons an effective way to improve public services in difficult economic times?

I reprised the presentation, modified somewhat for an emergency responder audience for the Office of Emergency Management’s annual Women’s History Month Breakfast, where I had the pleasure of sharing the stage with Dr. Irene Osborne of Mount Sinai Hospital, who treated patients’ internal injuries during the Haiti earthquake, and IA Institute founder and Development Manager, Bev Corwin, who presented on language translation in crisis situations, in particular a handheld Creole language translation device that she developed with colleagues at Carnegie Mellon University.

Continuing the Discussion

I have been asked to present another redux of Information Architecture of Emergency Response at the IxDA NYC’s July meetup. I hope to conclude the IxDA with a Town Hall discussion of how the IA community can support emergency response efforts throughout each of our own neighborhoods. I ran out of time in New Orleans and would like to get a good conversation going with the UX community on issues and ideas for further exploration. My daughter’s 6th grade graduation is June 7, so I will be missing the IxDA meeting that focuses on the Social Lives of Maps, with UX designer Ray Cha and Green Map’s Thomas Turnbull. But I understand the GIS community will have someone there. If you attend, please introduce yourself to Jack Eichenbaum, who founded GISMO, a 20+ year old, NYC-based GIS user group. In the meantime, stay tuned for RSVP information for the July event.

It may also be interesting for my UX friends to hear (as I’ve heard through the grapevine) that ESRI, leader in GIS software, is developing an internal UX practice and should be hiring soon.

Slide decks of my IA of Emergency Response talks are now available at Slideshare:

March 23:

March 28:

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Towards a 9/11 GeoArchive

Imagine if the most graphic and expressive artifacts from one of the most historic events in New York City lay rolled in tubes in a dusty corner. What if millions of bytes of geographic data, produced through an unprecedented, community collaboration, were dispersed, disconnected and hidden from public view? If you had the opportunity to preserve them, how would you do it?

During the September 11, 2001 rescue and recovery operations, I volunteered to help recruit geographers through a NYC-based GIS user group, called GISMO. The need was critical and overwhelming. The Mayor’s Office of Emergency Management had been evacuated and no longer had access to maps and data necessary for the rescue effort, and if that wasn’t bad enough, they lacked the number of skilled hands to produce the hundreds of maps per day required by the unprecedented event. At this point, GISMO had been working for years to advocate for data sharing and cooperation among city, state, non-profit and private entities, and developed into a 400 strong social network. Hundreds of volunteers, many from GISMO, stepped forward. This effort served as a highly regarded, if anomalous, model for unified response in years to come. But the artifacts from this effort have not been preserved in any curatorial sense. I’d like to change that.

I recently participated in the NYC GeoSymposium 2001-2011-2021, which took a look at the advances and challenges of Geographic Information Systems in emergency response since 2001. Around this time I had been thinking very hard about my career goals and ways to combine my past experience in research and design with the grassroots efforts of the geographic community. I had been working with colleagues at GISMO for many years to draw attention to the important role geographers played in the 9/11 rescue and recovery. The GeoSymposium was a great experience, because it intended not just to honor those who participated in these efforts, but also to highlight the need to preserve the thousands of maps that tell the story.

My own contribution to the GeoSymposium was to explore the legacy of these efforts by examining the technological improvements at the Office of Emergency Management in the context of emergency events that had occurred since 2001. I was looking for a way to present time-based information in a map format and also to start a conversation with attendees about the history of emergency response technology and the importance of the preservation of geographic artifacts. My project contained a map of New York City with events plotted and color-coded by discrete periods, characterized by a common group of new technologies. An online version of the map is available at ArgGIS Explorer Online.

OEM-Incidents-interactive-map

View Interactive Map

OEM Incident Map – Poster

OEM-Incidents-screenshotView Detail Slides (Requires Microsoft Silverlight)

The map highlights how the events surrounding 9/11 prompted improvements in incident management technology. Attendees, including the keynote presenter and eminent information designer, Edward Tufte, gathered around to discuss their experience with the events I had mapped and to offer advice on ways to enrich its design. (Some of Mr. Tufte’s comments led to further improvements which you can see via the links above.)

Simply talking about how to improve the map was an exercise in exploring history and memory: how people understand what happened, how events are related to one another, how what you choose to include and what not to include can influence a person’s understanding of the events, how the description of one event can bring to mind another similar one, etc. It was thrilling to observe the spontaneous conversation that started all because of a three by four foot piece of foamboard.

And that’s just one artifact. In the aftermath of 9/11, hundreds of maps were produced – Every Day – for months. The 9/11 geographic effort represented a level of cooperation not seen before or since, but whose legacy, coupled with improvements in technology platforms themselves, informs the open data initiatives we are now seeing throughout the U.S.

Of course, the artifacts of the 9/11 response have historical value by themselves. And that is where the images of dusty, neglected rolls of paper come in (even though most of the maps are on disks and hard drives). Several of my GISMO colleagues and I are exploring a plan to create a 9/11 Geographic Archive, featuring the maps that were produced during the rescue and recovery effort. I plan to present an outline of the 9/11 Geographic Archive and my map of emergency response technologies at the ASIS&T Information Architecture Summit in March 2012. Such an archive would be an important contribution to the history of emergency response in this country.

I have always loved presenting information in meaningful and digestible ways, whether through maps, market research reports, drawings, websites or online resource libraries and intranets. From very early in my career, I have been driven to present information in a coherent way and to seek out tools and processes that make coming to understanding easier. I am thrilled by the convergence that today’s state of technology allows between geographic tools and the digital storytelling of the user experience discipline. What is really great about this project is that I will be able to combine aspects of two fields that I love into an end product that would have meaning for many now and in years to come.

So, if you had the opportunity to preserve artifacts from an important event in New York City history, how would you do it? Some of the groundwork has already begun. I have been working with a mentor to explore relationships with organizations that support technology projects in the digital humanities, and with museums and libraries that share an interest in geographic artifacts and 9/11. I am building on my relationships with the City’s amazing geographic community through GISMO, the thirty Geosymposium presenters who told the 9/11 story and senior staff at the Office of Emergency Management and other consultants who have expressed interest in an archive. (I have even applied to an information science program where I hope to explore this project further). Finally and perhaps most importantly, I have the support of members of the GISMO Steering Committee to pursue further resources and trainings to develop the framework for an archive entity. With that grounding, I can turn the question “How would you do it?” into “When can I start?”

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9/11 Geosymposium at Technology in Government 2011, New York

The NYC GeoSymposium: 2001-2011-2021 held on November 16, 2011 marked the tenth anniversary of the September 11th attacks by examining the response of the NYC GIS community regarding mobilization of geospatial resources after the event, evolution of procedures, data and technologies since the event, and exploring unmet needs for improved emergency planning and response, as well as future challenges posed by emerging social media and enterprise-wide deployment of software and hardware advances that underpin geospatial application development. I worked with several of my colleagues at GISMO to produce this event, which was co-located with NYC GovTech 2011. We will be launching a GIS design challenge in Spring or Summer 2012. Stay tuned.

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This Roadmap Could Use a GPS

I just finished reading Roadmap for the Digital City: Achieving New York City’s Digital Future (PDF 2.17MB). A glaring economic concern struck me, which the report acknowledges but does not address adequately, despite devoting several pages to it, and that is the issue of access by underserved populations.

Solutions offered by the plan include noble goals. Free wireless access in parks, training and services in public libraries, senior centers and public housing facilities, a pilot project to bring computing into the homes and schools of 18,000 sixth grade students. These programs directly address the cost of access and a disparity of technology learning in our community. I don’t want to discount these efforts, but do wish point out that the issue of access of the disadvantaged goes well beyond free wireless access.

It is disheartening to learn in the NY Times today that “free” Wi-Fi means, “The Wi-Fi in the parks would be free to all users for up to three 10-minute periods per month. Beyond that, users would pay 99 cents for each 24-hour period in which they log on.” The Times reports that, “It would be free to all subscribers to the broadband services of Cablevision or Time Warner,” which may include public housing where these services are available. In fact, the free Wi-Fi deal was a condition for renewing the cable franchise with the City. I would be interested in learning how many public housing residents are broadband subscribers with these services.

Here is another example: I have been providing computer training to an acquaintance who is a senior citizen and retired bookkeeper. She lives alone, is seeking employment, has worked with computers extensively in the past, but is about 15 years behind on the latest accounting technologies. She has a netbook with internet access but no mobile phone. For her, an iPhone app is useless and Twitter is bewildering (though she does like Facebook). Nothing really works the way she expects it to, including NYC.gov.

A large part of the Digital Roadmap involves community engagement through initiatives like PlaNYC’s Change By Us and the NYC Big Apps contest. Change By Us is a map-based website to collect thoughts from citizens about how to make New York City more livable. The NYC Big Apps Contest, an application development contest, sponsored by BMW, that invites developers to utilize open data collections from the City to address citizen needs, has indeed been a highly successful and exciting initiative raising awareness of engineering talent in NYC among the VC community and the technology industry at large. Keep in mind however, that it required an internet access to submit ideas to Change By Us and the Big Apps contest. So the citizenry making the requests are already connected.

The Digital Roadmap report notes challenges including staffing constraints and complicated legacy systems, and plans to a large degree to let its open government platform allow the developer community to create apps to address citizen needs, which they hope would be more cost effective than creating the services themselves. This crowdsourcing is indeed an effective way to get rapid development of products that the population actually wants and I am a big fan of the NYC Big Apps Contest. But while the Roadmap notes concern that the economically disadvantaged may not have access to the iPhones and Android technology that most of the Big Apps winners develop for, it’s the flashier apps that have the most appeal among those that are tuned into the contest.

There are competing needs at stake here. On one hand are the VC funders who want to earn money on apps that serve a deep pocketed consumer market and the developers who want to wow potential funders and employers with their mastery of the latest programs for the coolest toys. On the other are the City’s poor, senior citizens and those with developmental needs for which these toys may not be affordable, accessible or easy to use. The city is counting on corporate contract terms and good-hearted hackers to address citizen needs.

I understand that the City is forced to look to outside developers to serve these needs because tax revenue is so low. The strategy to open data and let developers come up with apps is a great way to provide services on a large scale, but not the best way to serve the needs of the underserved. And cutting inadequate deals with providers is more a way to say “We did it,” than to say “We did it right.” There needs to be an incentive for building apps for economically disadvantaged groups.

This all sounds very dreary. I should note that I am excited to see the level of engagement and openness in city government. After participating for 20 years in grass roots efforts to create an open discussion and sharing of public data, via my involvement with GISMO and the Municipal Arts Society’s Community Information Technology Initiative, it’s a step in the right direction.

But we can do more. And I’m working on an idea for involving my own developer community (IA, UX, GIS, etc) in coming up with a plan. If you are interested, please let me know.

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Open Government Forum at Internet Week NYC

Over the next couple of days I am going to post summaries of Internet Week sessions that I attended last month. Here is the first, a panel on open government in NYC:

In June, I attended a panel on Open Goverment in NYC, hosted by Time Warner as part of Internet Week NYC. I joined my friend, Queens Community Board 3 member, Tom Lowenhaupt, who has been advocating for a .NYC top level domain for over ten years. Given some of the road blocks he has faced in his campaign, I knew attending an Open Government forum with him would be interesting.

Presented in a panel format, the event focused on Setting the Digital Standard for open government. NYC Deputy Mayor for Operations Stephen Goldsmith introduced Jesse Hempel, a senior writer for Fortune Magazine, who moderated a panel of experts in government information technology including:

  • Adam Sharp, CEO, Twitter
  • Carol Post, Commissioner, NYC Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT)
  • Rachel Sterne, Chief Digital Officer, NYC
  • Seth Pinsky, President, NYC Economic Development Corporation

Commissioner Post opened with a brief description of the city’s plans for a digital roadmap, including a range of web 2.0 tools that allows the City to to communicate and join with citizens to make a better city, break through hardened boundaries between people, neighborhoods, agencies, etc. “The fundamental responsibility of government being to allow access to information,” she said.


An example is the “311 to Text” project, a platform for app developers, that allows the power of the 311 service to reach a mobile community, in particular, underpriviledged people whose primary access to city information and the internet at large is via their mobile phones. Carole indicated that the 311 phone channel has been very successful, so it is a priority of her office to get the message about the system and its various access points out to users.

There is even a 311 iPhone app (clearly for those who can afford an iPhone). I have a neighbor who would love that.

Image from iTunes, Apple Inc.

Chief Digital Officer, Rachel Sterne, the 27-year-old founder of citizen journalism site GroundReport and an adjunct professor of social media and entrepreneurship at the Columbia Business School, described the City’s digital domain, reaching 2.8 million on NYC.gov, 1.4 million on social media. Some of these include @nycgov, an umbrella Twitter account for the city, @nycmayorsoffice, which also has its own hashtag #askmike, referring to Mayor Michael Bloomberg. In addition, 311 NYC Twitter account (@311nyc) focuses on service related questions, maintaining a public record of issues. Agencies also have twitter accounts, the and similar department Twitter feeds). The primary focus for these efforts is access, open government, engagement and accessibility.

NYC Economic Development Corporation President, Seth Pinsky, took a turn explaining his view of the role of technology in NYC. “New technology lowers the barriers to entry in industries where NYC is traditionally a leader. It helps industries transition to new business models, promoting entrepreneurship, and highlight talented workforce,” he said.

Adam Sharp of Twitter discussed how he sees governments using Twitter and compared how NYC measures up. “Technology is good at wholesaling mass audience, and is scalable,” he said. But there is a growing gap of people who have actually met their pubic servants. There has been confusion about who to contact for which services. Technology like Twitter allows increased interaction and communication with public figures.

Mr. Sharp sees innovation particularly at the federal level. USGS is using Twitter to spot seismographic activity 2 minutes earlier. The agency has seismographs in various parts of the country that measure earthquake activity with feedback within 60 seconds of the quake; however, they have found that often tweets from citizens experiencing quakes allow them to locate possible activity faster, so they have set up the experimental Twitter Earthquake Detection project to test how well Twitter can work in reporting possible disasters. I had tweeted about this myself the day before. For a more local example, Adam noted that Newark, NJ’s mayor was using it for response for snow removal during winter storms, showing up Mayor Bloomberg a bit after this past year’s storm mitigation problem, and which citizens were quite vocal about on the social media at the time.

Image from Recover.gov, U.S. Dept of the Interior.

Mr. Pinsky described social media in government as a process. The first generation of tools are designed to get the information out to the public (like press releases, broadcasts). The second generation gets information from the public (web forms, phone systems). The third generation, where we are now, is interaction: the open and ongoing conversation between government and citizens (Twitter, Big Apps Challenge, Change By Us – a new initiative launched on July 7, 2010, which is very similar to the Institute for Urban Design’s By the City, For the City app). The hard part to all this, says Seth, is linking incoming and outgoing messages to see the conversation. That is something that needs some work.

Ms. Sterne said that the BigApps competition was launched in response to the significant amount of data at agencies that was either not available to the public or not really being used by the agencies. Big Apps gets that data out to development community to create applications that citizens can use. This in turn, spurred the creation of several businesses, which is in line with the City’s push toward fostering a friendlier environment for entrepreneurship in New York City, a noticeable part of PlaNYC 2030, the City’s plan for a “greener, greater New York,” with a ideas for improving the quality of life and economic welfare of New York City.

The second round of the Big Apps Competition this year, doubled the number of data sets and had a much higher number of responses from developers and sponsors. This year, sponsor BMW doubled its prize offering and set up venture capital fund for startup businesses.

Some of the Big Apps Winners:

  • Roadify – (2010) traffic/transit delays, parking spaces; draws from google transit, mta data, crowd sourced information.
  • donteat.at – (2010) list of restaurants with health code violations
  • My City Way – (2009 winner that ultimately received a $300,000 grant from Michael Bloomberg) broad range of city data, wifi hotspots, restaurants

At this point, Ms. Hempel began asking directed questions tot he panelists. She asked panelist Adam Sterne how much government activity on Twitter is citizen led. He said that this it isn’t necessarily happening yet, but will happen when government sees it as more than a broadcast forum, and when it relieves pressure on other platforms, such as calls. Cities are learning lessons from the private sector about adopting a customer service approach, proactively looking for mentions of their brands and engaging customers. It is a messaging and marketing focus that will evolve as more initiatives like BigApps and Change By Us come into the public eye.

Ms. Hempel asked Carole Post how and whether each City agencies interact with each other. Post stated that the mission of agencies is not to exist in a silo, an she encourages interaction with other agencies and the digital office. As someone who has been involved with data advocacy through GISMO, I can certainly attest to how far we’ve come in getting agencies to talk. It took years to get a working, flexible base map of the city and years longer to get data shared in a meaningful way. I worked on the City Information Technology Initiative for the Municipal Art Society in 2004 to demonstrate to local community boards the power of layering GIS data on a map, with the goal of eventually getting an open, accessible map onto the Department of City Planning website. NYCityMap was launched in 2006.

Ms. Post says that agencies have called DoITT to see what of their data they can pull out for public mining. She sees more and more city workers are finding venues to pull folks together outside of their daily mission, sort of like what Drive author, Daniel H. Pink advocates. They may not know what the end result will be, but they do make the data available and see what happens. Agencies have come to terms with the fact that these days people expect government to be “open and unlocked.”

Mr. Pinsky said that BigApps 3.0 will offer opportunity to significantly expand this initiative, with more sponsorship money and new law that opens up even more data. “This allows the marketplace to select the most effective app for different datasets,” he said. “When citizens judge the apps they are selecting most effective one.”

Twitter’s Adam Sharp commented on NYC’s approach to innovation. “The proof is in the result,” he said. “Great third party developer ecosystems help tear down walls and barriers to development.”

And now the citizen response. Ms. Hempel passed around a microphone to allow audience members to ask questions. Here are some of the interesting ones:

What is NYC doing for multi language community?

Carole Post responded that 311 exists as a gateway to services. It is offered in 170 languages, with a language line translator. 311 online and NYC.gov also prioritizes language access.

How about expanding access to people who don’t have iPhone or Internet?

Ms Post said that $40 million of federal stimulus fund is going toward expanding broadband access and knowledge of how technology can improve education and communication. The City plans to extend access through libraries and community centers.

Ms. Sterne also says that public/private partnerships are working to improve access. Mobile strategy, SMS and text information for those who don’t have broadband at home

Mr. Pinsky ensured us that the City has not plans for eliminating the phone system, and that they plan technical improvements to that system as well.

Mr. Sharp says that “fast follow” via text messaging means that you don’t even need to have a twitter account in order to get information.

How do people find out about these services?

Ms. Sterne said that they do outreach through the New York City Housing Authority and other NYC programs, as well as through public/private partnerships.

How does the City plan to leverage the acquisition of .NYC TLD?

Ms. Post answered that DoITT is “ready to capitalize on .NYC.” (The City, in fact, committed to acquiring the .NYC TLD in 2009). Mr. Pinsky added that a .NYC TLD represents “…an opportunity to allow locally based company to brand and associate themselves with NYC.” The long term goal is to use the initiative to promote NYC innovation.

Tom pressed. “NYC has apparently decided on what the economic development plans for .NYC is, what about public input?” He asked.

Mr. Pinsky said that they are looking to public to help, and that it will be a collaborative process. However, no one on the panel seemed ready to talk about what their plans are yet.

Okay. I was waiting for my friend Tom to ask a question about the .NYC Top Level Domain, and he wasn’t going to take any one-line talking point. Tom’s vision is to have a .NYC top level domain that gives citizens a geocoded directory of information about resources their neighborhood and the city at large. Not just businesses shouting “I am NYC!” but civic groups, community services, block associations and personal websites.  I added privately that with the 128-bit IPv6 internet, which expands the possible addresses (Wikipedia’s article on IPv6 cites 2128 or 340 undecillion – 3.4

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I Joined Google+ Today

I appear to be a late joiner to Google+, if the list of people in my contact’s circles are any indication. It appears to have pulled my info from LinkedIn and has features of Facebook and a very interesting what if discussion among designers going on. I expect it will be a similar experience to LinkedIn and Facebook, perhaps with less of the silliness of Facebook but with similar features, such as Circles which lets you categorize people into groups. 

Just like Facebook, only better.

I’ve always liked that Facebook lets you group people. It’s so natural. I tend to get frustrated by LinkedIn’s degrees of separation – you are either in someone’s network or you have someone or a chain of people between you and the other person. In a way this is nice because you are still able to contact people in your second network while preserving how you know that person (so and so’s friend). Without a grouping feature, once you accept a person to your network on LinkedIn, you lose information about how you are connected to your new contact, unless you go to their page to see shared contacts.

Circles makes Google+ more personal and organized than LinkedIn. It is also more spare, sort of like the defunct Facebook Lite, but I’m witholding judgement for now. Facebook ended up dropping its Lite feature, and I suspect Google will eventually add in Facebook-like distractions and ads, since advertising is their ballywick.

If you are interested in learning more, let me know and I’ll invite you to my Circle.