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Money, Manpower, and Mojo: The three barriers to municipal open government

At a recent talk I gave to the Toronto Drupal User’s Group, I outlined an interesting  discovery I stumbled upon as part of our research for “The State of The Digital Municipality 2010” (as a bit of background, this is our ongoing research project into digital government in Ontario municipalities with fewer than 400,000 residents).

To recap, the crux of the Open Government argument is that governments should be platform providers, serving up public data and tools in a way that helps citizens to solve their own problems. Open Government encompasses three broad principles: transparency, participation, and collaboration. Because of the parallels to evolving web technologies and their utility in making Open Government happen, the concept is often called “Government 2.0”.

I mentioned previously that unelected municipal staff, like town clerks and IT managers, don’t appear to be familiar with the Open Government movement:

Fair enough; they all have jobs to do that don’t typically involve attending expensive conferences. Explain the concept differently, however, and in theory it has near-universal support. When asked to evaluate the statement "The web can help us to increase the perception that our municipal government is open, transparent, and fair", 76% of respondents agreed. None disagreed.

A follow-up survey of mayors and councillors, while preliminary, also seems to show a greater level of familiarity with the idea on the part of elected officials.

This is good news for proponents of open government. But it begs the question: If everyone agrees that this is a really good idea, why is progress so agonizingly slow?

Small and mid-sized municipalities have limited resources, and our research indicates that there are three barriers of particular importance which I will term the “Three M’s”: Money, Manpower, and Mojo (creative energy or vision). These age-old problems seem to be intractable, but I will attempt to make the argument that we can effectively tackle them by rethinking what Open Government really means.

Barrier #1: Money

The first problem is a classic one: with so many competing demands on municipal budgets, where on earth will they ever find room to make Open Government a priority?

This is particularly insidious because Open Government is often seen (and promoted) as an information technology problem. Collect all the data! Design proper XML schema! Create flexible APIs! To your average Chief Administrative Officer or Town Clerk, this just sounds like another big compliance headache.

Open Governent as simply an IT problem is a definition that will doom it to failure. Instead, the tools of Open Government present an opportunity for municipalities to streamline the legislative process, attract local investment, encourage tourism through grassroots efforts, and tackle municipal problems in a more cost-effective way. The fact that it can also improve transparency, encourage citizen participation, and enhance collaboration within and amongst municipalities is just the icing on the cake.

When reframed in this way, we can start to consider tapping into budgets already allocated for economic development and tourism, among others. After all, what better way to show the world your municipality is a great place to live than to lead the way in the adoption of open government?

Based on our research, I think it’s safe to say that most smaller to mid-sized municipalities will fall into the $50-500k range here, depending on their size. It’s not a gusher of funding by any means, but here’s where it gets interesting:

Most municipalities don’t spend much of their economic development and tourism budgets online. And this intuitively makes sense for anybody who has dealt with the sector – municipal staff generally get that the web is a great tool for informing citizens and delivering services. But attracting investment? Enhancing the democratic process? Promoting tourism? These are pipe dreams.

So there is money available – probably enough to get the job done if we can create cost-effective solutions – but it will take education and vision to make Municipal Open Government a reality. More on that in Barrier #3, Mojo.

Barrier #2: Manpower

Another considerable hurdle to overcome is manpower. In our survey, municipal staff almost uniformly agreed that, while their citizens want them to be doing more, they don’t have adequate manpower to make it happen.

Most Ontario municipalities are chronically understaffed as it is (or overstaffed, depending on who you ask, but all in the wrong places). Add to that the difficulty in budgeting for, identifying, and hiring qualified technologists, and you realize that this whole “Open Government” thing can’t necessarily rely on having Silicon Valley-grade folks in every town and city.

What it does require, at a minimum, is local champions with a passion for Open Government and a deep enough understanding of the technology involved to make good decisions.

This is a problem we can solve. Mayors and councillors are starting to recognize that they can embrace digital government in a big way. They, more than anyone else, need to be driving the adoption of open government in their own municipalities.

But what about implementation? One of the key ideas around government as a platform is that government agencies need to bring more expertise in-house. This task is easier at the federal level or provincial level, where agencies have larger budgets and national or provincial reach.

At the municipal level, I would suggest that there are a number of steps that can be taken to address manpower concerns:

1. Municipalities should seek out implementation partners with expertise in Open Government. This expertise is not likely to exist locally in many cases, but local companies can be included in the process as subcontractors or local subject matter experts.
2. Training must be used to get municipal staff and councillors up to speed on Open Government concepts and technologies. Everyone needs to understand and buy into the why and how of it.
3. Municipalities should use the web to attract passionate technologists who can work within municipal government and make a difference.
4. Mayors should lobby the provincial and federal government to provide additional funding for open government initiatives.

Barrier #3: Mojo

The final barrier to Open Government adoption at the municipal level is something I’m going to call “Mojo”  - creative vision and the desire to effect change.

First, let’s look at what the data tells us.

Town clerks generally indicate that they are “satisfied” when asked about specific functions their municipalities can perform online. When asked about what citizens want, however, they almost universally agree that there is significant pressure for them to be doing more.

Mayors and councillors paint a very different picture. They are generally satisfied with the ability of their site to deliver static information (something they’ve been doing since the 90s), but are not satisfied with most other functions. Some councils have even allocated money to address this issue but have not yet spent it.

The solution to the Mojo problem is not money or manpower, it is education and vision. The application of technology to the principles of Open Government represents what I believe is the biggest leap forward in democracy since our country was founded. It is an exciting and important idea that, as technologists, we should be embracing with all of the passion and enthusiasm that we direct towards the more trivial problem of knowing what our friends are doing at all hours of the day.

Moreover, we need to demonstrate to local leaders that they really can see a payback by investing in Open Government. We need to create a compelling vision, build the right tools, and make them cost-effective enough to be implemented wherever citizens live – from the smallest towns to the largest cities.

If we do these things, I believe we can make our government better; more effective, more responsive, and more transparent. If we fail to act in a big way, I believe that our status as a bastion of sane and reasonable government will wane in the future, victim to the bold advances of developing countries and other democratic nations that have seized the opportunity to make Open Government ubiquitous.

But enough rhetoric. What do you think?

thoughts?

the blogger: