Opening keynote address to CalGIS 2015 on behalf of Code for America titled Peoeple and Practice: The changing role of GIS professionals and civic tech in 2015
20. 1. Design for people's needs
2. Make it easy for everyone to participate
3. Focus on what government can do
4. Make data easy to find and use
5. Use data to make and improve decisions
6. Choose the right technology for the job
7. Organize for results
www.codeforamerica.org/governments/principles/
Principles for
21st Century Government
53. Open data helps make government better.
Governments hold a lot of information that is
valuable — and sometimes critically important
— to residents, organizations, companies, and
government itself
Make data easy to
find and use
54. #1. Data Stewardship
Civic technologists showed what’s
possible online, GIS experts made this
work accurate and sustainable.
68. Data was easily exported into
existing formats (shapefiles) and
served through an API
69. And the data was used by the GIS
department to set demolition
priorities
70. Make it easy for
everyone to participate
Serving everyone means working with, not just for, a true
cross-section of the community. Governments should
proactively collaborate with the community and seek
participation from all residents in decisions that affect
them.
75. Making SimpliCity has been a lean operation and much
of the time has been spent on usability testing; skills we've
picked up from CfA.”
Jonathan Feldman, CIO, Asheville, North Carolina
“
76.
77. Governments that use “human-centered design
practices” make it a priority in any project to
conduct research with residents to inform a
better picture of who they are, what they need,
and how they behave.
Designing for people’s needs
78. #3. Communicate in new
ways
Present information in the language of
the people you serve.
85. Modern technology tools and approaches helps government
build trust with their communities and better address the
challenges they face.
Choose the right
technology for the job
86. #4. Provide context to data
Information and maps are useful
communication devices, the web
requires context to make this
information meaningful.
88. Technologists can show
what’s possible.
Civic technologists excel at creating things quickly
and putting them up on the web. They’re not so
good at data stewardship or maintaining agreed
upon geospatial conventions.
89. GIS professionals
understand how
government works.
The day-to-day insight of working inside government
as a data professional. Special insight into what is
actually needed.
90. New tools need a louder
GIS perspective.
Though new tools are being created by so!ware
developers outside of the GIS space, there is an
opportunity to become more involved in the
broader civic technology space.
91. Context is key.
Without context around data and maps online,
information can become meaningless on the web.
93. so, let’s build a bridge?
Civic technologists are naturally adapted to both
care about public sector problems, use and support
the use of large datasets and also make maps. Get to
know one.
