Concerned Citizens

Recently I have been following the City of Austin’s efforts to revamp its website and some of the issues associated with this upcoming project. Back in March the city had planned to award the contract for redesign to a Cignex Technologies, a California based company that prides itself in leveraging open source technologies to provide solutions. Some of Cignex Technologies prior customers include the City of Austin and the University of Texas at Austin. Apparently Cignex developed the current website which seems to be a collection of technologies including Plone and Cold Fusion. Based on the way the bid was worded development would have to be done in Plone. After considerable citizen feedback the city has decided to rebid the contract and look at new local options.

One of those options could be a coalition of creative resources in Austin that plan to crowd source the project. William Hurley, chief architect of open-source strategy at BMC Software, is leading an effort called Open Austin that plan to leverage a crowd sourced model to bid the effort. By utilizing Austin’s technical community through a non-profit organization the city’s website could take on the image of a community barn raising and address the needs of Austin from the ground up. It could also serve as a catalyst to engage the community in the governing and policy making of Austin through the act of building and maintaining the site. Granted you can’t turn the controls of a city as complex as Austin completely over to the public but maybe it’s time to allow for some donated labor and service.

What is novel about Open Austin’s approach is how they are soliciting feedback on functionality for the site. Of course the site should take care of the basic needs of city government but it could also serve as a new way for Austinites to connect and keep up with activities and changes in the city. If you check out the Ideas section you’ll see some very innovative ideas and some basic service needs listed with the voting up or down noted. At this posting the #1 idea is something most San Antonians take for granted regarding the ability to pay your bill online. Others are new innovations such as resourcers for those in need. One interesting thing to note is that this is the first time I’ve ever seen ideas voted “off the island.” The worst idea at this point appears to be “I’d like to see a list of all the vendors along Town Lake, coded on a map so I can walk straight to them. Also, need to have their phone numbers & email addresses.” It’s at a -27 votes at the time of this posting.

This type of idea solicitation is not a novel concept. Starbucks used it when they were taking a hard look at their business at the beginning of the economic downturn. The Obama administration used it for ideas for government through the Change.gov website. Several tools provide the capability such as Idea Scale, the one providing the service for Open Austin, and Salesforce.com’s Ideas tool. While the idea generation should not serve as the sole prioritization scheme it does provide a good place to gather new ideas to help feed the process. It also engages the public in the process of design and development. You can see how many ways it can be used. Once again, leverage the Wisdom of Crowds to help spur the innovation.

So can this work in San Antonio? There are a lot of ideas that newly elected Mayor Julian Castro has mentioned that he wants to put forward. With a constrained budget it will be a challenge to see many of these accomplished if he relies solely on city funds to develop them. This might serve as a new alternative to help meet the needs of the community and engage the public at the same time. Personally I think it’s a great way to move a new administration forward and something San Antonio should consider as the new Castro administration progresses. The question is if city government is willing to allow some free thinking to occur to help facilitate the change needed.