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Photos: Hack to the Future

Posted by Burt on June 2, 2013 in Events

On June 1, 2013, Honolulu participated in the National Day of Civic Hacking with its own Hack to the Future. Our event was attended by more than 80 people, which I might add was capped at 60. The day was designed to be an overview of applications and tools the community build around government open data from sites like data.honolulu.gov and data.hawaii.gov. It also consisted of presentations from government representatives from both the City and State.

The agenda consisted of:

  • Burt Lum – Welcome comments
  • Sen Glenn Wakai – Intro to Open Data Bill (HB632)

Open Data Tools

  • Patrick Kelly – Infrastructure crowdsourcing
  • Joe Heaukulani – Google Fusion Table
  • Ben Trevino – Visualizations, D3
  • Kyle Oba – App dev tools
  • Royce Jones – Mapping
  • Lindsea Kemp – GovLab update

Government Presentations

  • Mark Wong – City Dept of IT
  • Colin Kippen – Homelessness
  • Cathy Ross – Public Safety
  • Dorreann Kaehuaea – Environmental Svc.
  • Brandon Au – Urban Forestry
  • David Kho – Health Data
  • Kristin Izumi-Nitao – Campaign Spending

Notes from the day are captured on the Hack to the Future Hackpad. One of the objectives for the event was to brainstorm ideas and to initiate team formation around potential projects. Several interesting projects include, infrastructure data collection, open tree mapping, neighborhood board project management tool, campaign spending data dive, homelessness icon design challenge and a neighbor island open data initiative. If you have any additional ideas, feel free to add them to the hackpad document.

Thanks to everyone who came and participated in Hack to the Future. Special thanks to Code for America Brigade, Kathryn Higa and Interisland Terminal & R&D for hosting us.

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Hack to the Future

Posted by Burt on April 20, 2013 in Announcements

There are a couple of events I would like to bring to your attention. First off, on Saturday, April 27, 2013 is the Governance Futures Lab. It’s a two day event being sponsored by The Institute for the Future (Palo Alto, CA).

GovFuturesLab_logo_wh

The global event is organized to bring a world-class cohort of critical thinkers together at the IFTF headquarters on April 26th to diagnose our current and future problems in systems of governance. The end product of this work will be the a series of design briefs outlining the problems and parameters for a number of critical issues in government and social policy.

On April 27th, these design briefs will be distributed to teams around the world. Teams of designers, creatives, engineers, architects, political scientists, and futurists will be stationed at global nodes in Singapore, Abu Dhabi, New York, Birmingham, San Francisco, and Honolulu. These design team will spend the greater part of April 27th imagineering and creatively problem solving the contents of these design briefs; presenting models, policies, constitutional preambles, info-graphics, and other “artifacts” of the design process. These artifacts and presentations will be shared collectively with all of the Governance Futures Lab participants and will lay the foundation work for a new wave of rethinking governance for our futures. Your participation is welcome.

HacktotheFuture_blueOn June 1, 2013 Hawaii is participating in National Day of Civic Hacking by holding its own Hack to the Future. Join the Code for Hawaii Brigade on this day of civic demos, code expo and updates on civic hacks. We will use this day to plan the remainder of 2013 and brainstorm projects to infuse government with community based innovation. Civic engagement is taking hold in our community so let’s focus on what we can accomplish in City and State government over the coming months.

National Day of Civic Hacking is an event when citizens from around the country will work together with local, state and federal governments as well as private sector organizations with the common goal of improving their community through technology. It’s a national initiative to promote transparency, participation and collaboration between governments, companies and citizens.

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HB632 HD2 Crosses Major Milestone

Posted by Burt on March 21, 2013 in Legislation

HB632 HD2 crossed a major milestone today and passed a joint hearing of the TEC/JDL committees with small amendments from the Hawaii Bankers Association (see testimony). Also an appropriation amount of $100K was inserted in the section as requested by the Office of Information Practices. TEC is Chaired by Sen Glenn Wakai and JDL is Chaired by Sen Clayton Hee.

The list of submitted testimony in Support was impressive and included: Office of Information Management and Technology, Office of Information Practices, Hawaii Open Data, Common Cause: Carmille Lim, League of Women Voters: Janet Mason, Lindsea Kemp-Wilbur, Todd J. Robertson, Ryan Ozawa, Vanessa Michelou, Michael Casey, Forest Frizzell, Misa Maruyama, Tara DeWitt Coomans, Benjamin Trevino, Wynnie Hee, Cathy Ross, David Kho, Don Kosak, Jason Axelson, Javier Mendez-Alverez, Kyle Sleppy, Tory Abraham, Peter Kay and Mark Nakagawa.

Thanks to everyone who submitted testimony and joined us in person at the hearing. It was a strong showing support.

The next stop is Way and Means committee (WAM) Chaired by Sen. David Ige. I will keep you posted when that is scheduled. Again, Big Mahalos to all your continued support.

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The politics of Open Data

Posted by Burt on March 17, 2013 in Legislation

I should have known that marshaling a bill through legislation involved some politics. As an update, SB448 SD1 died in the Senate. It was re-referred to a joint committee if JDL/WAM and never got scheduled.

On the House side, HB632 HD2 passed through the FIN committee and crossed over to the Senate. This House bill is referred to TEC/JDL and WAM on March 5th. I had high hopes that by now I would be writing to let you know when and where to send your testimony. Unfortunately, the bill is not yet schedule for a hearing and we are deathly close to the cutoff date.

Where the politics come in is both Chairs of TEC and JDL need to agree upon a joint hearing of their respective committees. For some reason, unbeknownst to me that agreement is not happening. I have a meeting with Sen. Clayton Hee this Thursday, March 21st and will give you an update on his perspective on the bill. Sen Glenn Wakai is in full support as he introduced the original Senate version SB448.

As you can imagine this part of bill process is the most frustrating.  There a many people telling me what I could-a, should-a, would-a done and as it looks now, I may have that chance next year if this bill does not get out of the Senate. In the meantime, I am spending quite a bit of time walking the halls of the Capitol talking to anyone that will listen to me. If I can break the log jam (or not) will keep you posted.

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Open Data Bills: SB448 & HB632 Update

Posted by Burt on February 22, 2013 in Legislation

The good news is that both bills in the Senate (SB448) and House (HB632) are still alive. SB448 was heard by the TEC committee.  As a result of that hearing there were numerous amendments added to the bill language. If you compare SB448 with SB448 SD1, the modifications include clarification of what open data is. It is data that is already deemed public. There was concern that in the original language it could be interpreted to mean all data. “Open data is not data that is governed by privacy, security, or any pre-existing legal protection.”

Another change is replacing rule making with policy. My understanding is the rule making process is a long and complex one. Rule making does mean that processes and procedures are codified which on the surface sounds like a good thing, but could also be perceived to be forcing this down everyone’s throat. We did have this discussion in the JUD on the House side with Chair Rep Karl Rhoads. We all agreed that changing it to policy would give OIMT the opportunity to develop it in collaboration with other agencies. Much less of a hammer. This language made it into the House version and the Senate.

Another change was the inclusion of appropriation language. It was a recognition that managing open data will require additional people. We agreed that the Office of Information Practices would have more requests to help determine if a dataset was public or not. With the added appropriation language the bill needed to go to the financial committee. It was originally to go to JDL, but now had to go to both JDL and WAM. In this case the bill had to be “re-referred” to JDL/WAM. This has not been schedule yet and we are calling JDL Chair Clayton Hee’s office to encourage them to hear the bill. As the lead committee Sen Hee can choose to hear the bill or not. WAM Chair David Ige told me they could hear the bill with JDL & WAM but JDL needs to schedule the bill first.

On the House side HB632 got modified and was heard in the CPC committee Chaired by  Rep Angus McKelvey, then the JUD committee Chaired by Rep Karl Rhoads. We successfully passed through both committees where most of the discussions and changes took place. The third committee hearing, as a result of the appropriation language is FIN Chaired by Rep. Sylvia Luke. I was just notified tonight (2/22) that HB632 HD2 will get heard on Mon. 2/25. This is very encouraging and means the bill has a good chance of getting through the House and making it to crossover, where the bill goes to the Senate. Similarly if the bill makes it through the Senate, it will crossover to the House.

So for now the important date to remember is Monday 2/25 to get testimony of support into the FIN committee. In my opinion the House bill HB632 HD2 is well written and I wouldn’t change anything. In the Senate version SB448 SD1, I would remove the reference to “alpha” and “alpha testing” for Data.Hawaii.Gov. This site is in production already and it is not necessary to refer to it as alpha which implies pre-beta and the software is pre-release version.

Submit your testimony here for HB632 HD2 and I thank you in advance.

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HB632 HD1 Relating to Open Data

Posted by Burt on February 7, 2013 in Legislation

The first draft of HB632 HD1 Relating to Open Data is now online for your review. It better defines what open data is and which datasets are considered under this open data bill. The schedule for rule making is set for July 1, 2015 to give time for the process. There is also added language for an appropriation for headcount and $$ requested by the Office of Information Practices. Thanks to Rep. Angus McKelvey and his staff for drafting the bill and helping to get this through their CPC committee. Next stop, the JUD committee. And after that it still needs to go to the House FIN committee. If the bill survives then it crosses over to the Senate. It’s a long road but at least we are still alive.

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Open Data Bills: SB448 & HB632

Posted by Burt on January 29, 2013 in Legislation

We are in the new 2013 legislative session and there are a number of bills we are following. Two in particular are the open data bills, SB448 and HB632. The Senate version SB448, is being introduced by Sen. Glenn Wakai, Chair of the Technology and the Arts (TEC) Committee. In the House of Representatives, Rep. Clift Tsuji is introducing the HB632 bill. He is Chair of the Economic Development and Business (EDB) Committee.

Once the bills get introduced, they get schedule for hearings by the appropriate committees. On the Senate side SB448 got referred to the TEC and JDL committee. It has since been scheduled to be heard by the TEC committee on Feb 5, 2013. It has yet to be scheduled for the JDL.

On the House side, HB632 was referred to the Consumer Protection and Commerce (CPC) Committee and the Judiciary Committee (JUD). HB632 got scheduled to be heard on Wed. Jan 30, 2013 and is yet to be scheduled to be heard by the JUD committee.

The amazing thing is the CPC Committee is hearing 28 bills on Jan 30th. HB632 is number 19 on the list. For anyone interested in testifying in person you need to devote a lot of time to wait for the legislators to wade through all the bills on the table. It’s not for the feint of heart. Luckily you can also submit testimony online which is conveniently enabled on each of the bill pages. But testifying in person is quite an experience.

To be perfectly honest, just writing this post has helped me understand the intricacies of getting a bill introduced to the legislative process. As an open data wonk I am interested in this process but I am an admitted novice and we are only at the very beginning. I hope the bill gets through the initial hearings. No matter how much you believe in a bill, there is no guarantee it will ever get the to the Governor’s desk. That is the long road and I hope to bring you impression of the journey here.

 

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#HonCelerator Video

Posted by Burt on December 16, 2012 in Events


Video courtesy of Ryan Ozawa. You can also find additional photo links here:
Burt Lum – Flickr photos
Ryan Ozawa – Flickr photos

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Congratulations #HonCelerator Teams

Posted by Burt on December 2, 2012 in Apps, Events

Hon*Celerator
December 1st was the culmination of an exciting year of open government, open data and citizen collaboration at the City & County of Honolulu. We had CityCampHNL, Honolulu’s first Civic Hackathon, Geeks on DaBus, Code for America, Honolulu Answers Write-a-thon and others. Hon*Celerator took advantage of the new datasets on Data.Honolulu.Gov and Data.Hawaii.Gov to build more civic apps. We had approximately 70 people attend and 11 teams presenting their projects. I want to personally thank all the people who challenged themselves over the last few months to create these projects and contributed to making Hon*Celerator a resounding success.

Also a big Mahalo goes out to our judges who had the tough job of selecting winners:

  • Steve Bretches – Senior IT Architect – IBM
  • Melialani James – Principle – Hawaii Apps
  • Royce Jones – Hawaii-Pacific Region Manager – Esri
  • Gordon Bruce – CIO – City & County of Honolulu
  • Sudesh Kumar – Director of Sales Engineering – Hawaiian Telecom
  • Kevin Merritt – Founder & CEO – Socrata
  • Jeffrey Loo – AIIM, Aloha Chapter

Although we did select 3 teams to be winners of cash prizes, all the teams did an excellent job. We look forward to each being market ready in the coming weeks. Here is what to keep an eye out for:

Hon*Celerator
First Place: Honolulu City Budget Sankey – Team Lead: Ben Trevino

Hon*Celerator
Second Place: Shriram (Crime Mapping) – Team Lead: Shriram Bhutada

Hon*Celerator
Third Place: ChargD – Team Lead: Derek Gabriel, Shiloh Swanson

Mahalo to all the Hon*Celerator teams. The list was rounded out by:

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#HonCelerator

Posted by Burt on December 2, 2012 in Apps, Events

Capping off a historic year of government transformation and grassroots innovation, the first HON*CELERATOR competition aims to inspire the best apps and online tools that use open data to improve the day-to-day lives of Honolulu residents.

Local software developers, designers, and entrepreneurs are being encouraged to tap into growing library of government data to conceptualize, code, and ultimately demonstrate a useful or novel new app. HON*CELERATOR participants will have to present their work before the public and a panel of judges on Dec. 1.

That “demo day,” taking place at The Box Jelly coworking space in Kakaako, will mark the culmination of public, private, and non-profit efforts to harness technology to streamling government services and encourage civic engagement. These include the first-ever CityCamp

in January, launching the year-long engagement between the national Code for America organization and the City & County of Honolulu, and a series of community events that have earned national recognition and coverage.

Working independently or as a team, entrants will vie for a $5,000 first place prize, $3,000 second place prize and $2,000 third place prize, which will be provided by event sponsors that include Sirius Computer Systems, Google Maps, Hawaiian Telcom, ESRI, Socrata, and AIIM Aloha Chapter.

“You could say this will be the Superbowl of Hawaii hackathons,” said Forest Frizzell, deputy director of the city’s Department of Information Technology and a member of the inaugural class of Omidyar Foundation Fellows. “And all this great work on behalf of local residents is happening at no cost to taxpayers, being powered by enthusiastic volunteers and sponsors that see the great value and potential in what we’re doing.”

The HON*CELERATOR event is similar to other open, collaborative and competitive tech gatherings taking place around the world — from Silicon Valley “hackathons” to Startup Weekend — but with a civic-minded focus. It is part of a global movement to increase transparency, collaboration, and innovation at all levels of government and businesses.

“We’ve had a great year, opening up data sets and inspiring creative thinking across the board, from government workers to independent hackers,” said Burt Lum, executive director of Hawaii Open Data, Inc. and co-organizer of HON*CELERATOR. “With that momentum, and of course some cash prizes, we hope to see the best of the best.”

In addition, a video crew from IBM’s “Smarter Cities” group (in partnership with Centerline Digital) will be on hand to document the city government’s open government community engagement efforts.

For more information on HON*CELERATOR, visit hon.celerator.org.

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