Science Library Pad

key steps for online science publications - Council of Science Editors

My presentation for the session "Culture Shock: Managing the Change in Publishing" at Council of Science Editors 2013 Annual Meeting. I presented the theory of how publishers can adapt to the online environment, and Cameron MacDonald, Executive Director, Canadian Science Publishing (NRC Research Press) presented the practice, the specific steps that they have taken as part of the development of CSP as a private company. CSP provided the funding for me to attend the event.

Culture Shock: Managing the Change in Publishing from Richard Akerman

A few key points I conveyed:

• online offers a much richer communications environment than print; take advantage of channels such as video for abstracts or demonstration of complex methods
• online is not just about moving your print journal experience to a screen using PDF; you are missing out on the opportunity to transform your processes and leverage the power of machine processing if all you do is post PDFs
• being OF the web means adopting new ways of developing online (what is often called "agile web development") - discovery, alpha and beta - but this is really just bringing the scientific method to journal service development - hypothesis, first small experiment, larger experiment
• social media demands that you be authentic, no corporate boilerplate - and the progress of science can hugely benefit from humanizing and demythologizing the work you do - expose some of the challenges of your work, the human interactions, and you may create more entry points for young people curious about science
• fundamental to the journal as part of the scientific ecosystem is an emphasis on replication and retraction - realise that in the online environment we could leverage the power of the machines to automate and connect, for connecting replication (and non-replication) of papers into a coherent body of work, as well as for ensuring that retractions propagate throughout the entire system and are tracked in a standard way
• another key support for replication is ensuring that the data and code associated with an article are provided alongside it - and that you consistently apply this policy, and measure yourself
• as indicated on the slides, the American Economic Review has an excellent data & code policy, but they did not follow it for the 2010 quick release of the Reinhart-Rogoff paper

Twitter hashtag for the event was #cse2013 but there wasn't a lot of tweeting.

open service development and the Expenditure Database

On April 22, 2013 TBS released the Expenditure Database.  It allows one to browse and search expenditures organised in ways that are easier to understand than the "votes" system under which they are actually allocated.  It is great progress within the overall open government initiative.

However, from a technology, design and process perspective, I think there are some opportunities that are being missed.

Victorian Service Delivery

Minister Clement is fond of saying that the government's data is like grandmother's silver, hidden away.  In fact, our current model of delivering applications is more like hiding the entire kitchen from view.  In Ottawa's Victorian homes, the kitchen is usually at the back of the house, closed off from the dining room.  The servants were supposed to work there in obscurity, with only the final result appearing with a dramatic flourish in the formal dining room. 

In most of those homes that wall has now been smashed down, because we found that in the post-servant age, the kitchen is the hub of activity in the house, where we socialise and cook together openly, a very human and social activity.

But in government software development, that wall still stands.  Applications are developed behind closed doors by public servants, and then suddenly appear, fully formed, on release day. This model of closed software development has some very real consequences:

• There is no opportunity for issues to be caught and corrected during the development process; instead we have to wait post-launch to find design issues that are only visible after public use
• It makes application development seem mysterious and closed off from the world.  In a country where we want young people--in particular young women--to see software development as an interesting career, we've hidden all the real human aspects of development away, all the interactions, discussions, decisions, and compromises that have to be made as we assemble the software from the available ingredients in our coding kitchen.
• It closes the government developer community off from the much larger national and worldwide community of developers, both reducing the network that they can tap into as well as hiding our own government excellence and expertise.

We need not just open data, we need the entire philosophy of open source web development: we need to develop in the open.

Modern Government Service Design

The UK Government has released a fantastic Government Service Design Manual.  It has some explicit statements and some built-in assumptions.  The underlying concepts are to develop government services using modern software engineering processes.  This means being open about the code as it is in development (e.g. through blogs explaining the work and github repositories making the code available) and iterating through the design, from Discovery, through Alpha, Beta, Live and (all important in the government) Retirement.

The UK Government Digital Service does its work in the open, through blogs, twitter, and github.

Software development is a process: the application you release at a moment in time is not an end, what's important is that the application should tell a story about itself, so that it can be improved and so that it can be an inspiration for further work.

The Expenditure Database

The Expenditure Database is a great step in providing easy citizen access to the underlying data.  But it doesn't tell any of the story of how it works, how the data is processed, and who did the work.  The meal has been delivered and it looks very nice, but the kitchen and the process of making it are still closed off from view, hidden in mystery.

Code on the Web

Of course this is not quite as simple a story because it is a web application, so in theory you could look through all of the JavaScript.  But that means reverse-engineering the code, trying to figure out how it works without having access to documentation (the recipe) and the developers (the cooks).  When someone is trying to understand an application the first thing they will do is read its story about how it works and how it was put together, and then ask the developers when there are aspects not clear or not covered in the documentation.  Without open code development, this avenue of understanding is closed.

Instead one has to dig through the code and make guesses.  For example, it looks upon examination that it is drawing the data from a local file: http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/ems-sgd/edb-bdd/data.js

If instead the code were in a shared repository and documented, it would be much easier to understand how it works and the rights to reuse and modify would be a lot clearer.  As well one would expect there would be both examples of using the data file as well as an explanation of how it was generated.

Expenditure Database Development

What Expenditure Database development would look like if it followed this model:

• In advance of coding, in the Discovery phase there would be an internal call for requirements and expertise, e.g. on GCpedia (the Government of Canada internal wiki)
• An alpha using open source code would be quickly released
• The alpha would use public budget open data from data.gc.ca
• If the data wasn't available, it would have to be released (the rule is, internal developers shouldn't have any special or privileged access to information)
• A beta would be released to the public incorporating feedback and code changes
• At the beta phase at the latest, code would be shared on github (a public code repository and developer community) and there would be public explanations and documentation of the work going on.
• The developers would be using their own accounts; it would be clear whom to contact for questions about the software.
• Once the system goes live, there would be an ongoing process to incorporate improvements to the code, improve the documentation, and respond to internal and external questions from other developers and users.

What We're Missing

Just a few examples of what we're missing as a consequence of the current implementation:

• There are no permanent URLs to departments or searches.  That means if I want to point you at the expenditures for the National Research Council, I can't just give you a URL.  I have to say "go to http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/ems-sgd/edb-bdd/index-eng.html and search or scroll to National Research Council and then click on it and then scroll down and click on the details for various parts of it".  A good standards-based design and testing process should have revealed this issue.
• The Expenditure Database "stands alone" on a difficult-to-remember GC standard URL.  You have to know to navigate to it, or get the link from somewhere.  Why not tbs-sct.gc.ca/expenditures as a short link?  There is also no link from the database to data.gc.ca nor is there a link from data.gc.ca to the database.
• Without documentation about how the data were created, it's not clear if it's using budget data from data.gc.ca or whether it is using a custom database, and how the numbers are being generated; without access to the code there is a lost opportunity for other developers to learn how to parse, manage and display the budget data.
• Without the code, it's not possible for developers to either make their own websites using a similar approach, or to improve the Expenditure Database code itself.
• Without pulling the data directly from data.gc.ca there is no opportunity to explore all of the challenges that external developers need to solve, such as how to deal with versioning (what if a number has to be changed in the released data? how to tell if it has been changed?  how to see the previous version?) and performance (should there be an API instead of a download?  should the download be cached locally?  for how long?) and updates (how to tell when a new budget year has been released?)
• Without the code shared and the work publically described, people are left to speculate as to how the results are generated.
• Without the code shared and the work publically described, there is no entry point for external developers; there is no community-building for external developers.
• There's no contact point. The site gives no idea who developed the Expenditure Database, how it works, or who made the design decisions. The code and its development is made mysterious, the work of the kitchen hidden, rather than being demystified.
• There's no way to download the data displayed; you can only take a screenshot.
• There is no standard web navigation (e.g. the back button doesn't work)
• There's no way to compare departments

Additional information

TBS PR - Searchable Information on Government Spending is now Just a Click Away

Call for Feedback

I welcome your feedback on this post, with any clarifications, corrections, suggestions or pointers.

Thanks to Stephen Anthony, Adam Frankowski, Patrice Collin and Nick Charney for providing ideas and feedback that improved this post.

LinkedIn maps my connections, 2013 edition

Above from March 30, 2013.  I previously did a map in 2011.

Basically the Government of Canada network (blue, on the right) gets larger and even more densely connected. That network also includes people from the City of Ottawa and people working in Ottawa. (Ottawa is basically a small and tightly connected town, in and out of government.)

The other two big clusters are still NRC (the National Research Council of Canada, where I work) and library/scholarly publishing/science.

It's interesting that NRC is still very distinct from Government of Canada. There are however more connections bridging the gaps between the three groups. Here's what it looked like in 2011:

UPDATE 2013-04-03: InMaps is one of several offerings from LinkedIn Labs. You go to the labs site, pick the service you want, and then authorize LinkedIn to activate it. ENDUPDATE

Previously:
January 31, 2011  LinkedIn maps my connections - I analyse the meaning

video: changes impacting scientific publishing

Below is video of me presenting a modified version of my 2012 CALJ conference talk "Springtime for Publishers" to an NRC Research Press audience in Ottawa.

I will be presenting some related topics (with less of an open access focus) May 5, 2013 at the Council of Science Editors conference.  The session is scheduled at 4:15pm and is called Culture Shock: Managing the Change in Publishing.  I will be presenting with Cameron MacDonald of NRC RP.

A few notes about the presentation below:

• as indicated in the talk, I'm using the "springtime" language as a hook to hang concepts of change and revolution - I in no way want to indicate that the changes in academic publishing are comparable to the multi-country struggle of the Arab Spring
• I said the We the People minimum for response was twelve thousand - at the time it was actually 25k signatures, and it's now 100k signatures
• I said the Jenkins report (a Canadian report about research & development) but what I meant was the UK Finch report about access to government-funded research (see executive summary or full report - both PDFs)

---

Here's the deck I am presenting from:

Springtime for publishers - 20120711 from Richard Akerman

Since the presentation, there have been two important developments:

• On July 16, 2012 the UK government announced it would "open up publicly funded research"
• On February 22, 2013 the US government announced its response to the We the People petition (which by then had reached over 65,000 signatures): Increasing Public Access to the Results of Scientific Research - also see White House blog post Expanding Public Access to the Results of Federally Funded Research

data.gc.ca - consultation on next version of open data portal

Some thoughts from the Canadian public service about Canada's national open data, specifically as delivered through the data.gc.ca portal

... a gigantic level of excitement around the potential for pan-Canadian federated open data.  So the work that we do to drive interoperability between open data activities of British Columbia, or Edmonton, or the federal government, recognizing the fact that users and developers are going to want to combine and integrate data from multiple sources... that really gets us going.  All of the possibilities around the... re-thinking around how we make an open data portal that does a lot more than the original open data portal (which was largely experimental at the beginning and was always a pilot), moving that idea forward, specifically around user engagement.

Those of you who have used data.gc.ca to date will know that it doesn't come with a lot of tools for user engagement.  Our hope--coming out of events like this one today--is to help drive the design and delivery of that portal to maximize its functions in terms of engaging the users, or bringing users together with each other, in order to facilitate greater use, greater uptake of the open data.

And just from a third point... this idea that we are driven to deliver open data to developers to help with the development of apps--interesting, innovative ideas that will drive the kind of time efficiency that Ray mentioned earlier as well.  But we do have to remember to think about the citizens.  So the capacity for the platform or any government department or jurisdiction to ensure that the data serves the citizens (who may not be as technologically advanced) is also very important to us, and that gets us very excited about things like visualizations and interactive tools that will allow the citizens to see data in different ways that mean something to them.

Stephen Walker, CIO Branch, Treasury Board Secretariat

from video Innovating with Open Data.

You can reach Stephen, who is also the contact point for Canada's Open Government Partnership country committments, at

stephen.walker@tbs-sct.gc.ca

(613) 946-3052

You can see previous postings in category opengovca

Also see related articles...

Related articles

Gov as a startup - notes on talk by Audrey Chen of the CFPB

open source in government - The Web Experience Toolkit

Gov as a startup - notes on talk by Audrey Chen of the CFPB

It is challenging to innovate from within a bureaucracy.  So when I saw a report about the work that the US CFPB is doing to bring better design, technology and culture to government service delivery, I was intrigued.

Background

For designers like [Audrey] Chen, the CFPB’s approach isn’t just about making the government’s work more tech-savvy or aesthetically pleasing: Horrible design leads to a bad user experience...

Washington Post - Who leaves Comedy Central to work for the government? - September 7, 2012

I contacted the US Embassy and they very graciously worked to arrange a presentation by Audrey Chen.

There have been more recent articles as well.

the change was tiny, a typo fix. Iceeey suggested the agency change the line “Daily rountrip cost” to “Daily roundtrip cost.” But this small request was a very big deal.

For the first time, the Consumer Protection Bureau was accepting a direct change to one of its internal documents not from someone inside the agency but from an average citizen somewhere across the country. The document had been published on the software code collaboration website GitHub, with the express idea that it could be hacked, commented on, and improved in public just like open source software.

Wired - How GitHub Helps You Hack the Government - January 9, 2013

This is an additional point of connection between the Canadian gov and the US CFPB, as Canada has put its Web Experience Toolkit on GitHub.

I later found this article from O'Reilly Radar as well

As the first federal “start-up agency” in a generation, some of those needs at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) are even more pressing. On the other hand, the opportunity for the agency to be smarter, leaner and “open from the beginning” is also immense.

Progress establishing the agency’s infrastructure and culture over the first 16 months has been promising, save for larger context of getting a director at the helm. Enabling open government by design isn’t just a catchphrase at the CFPB. There has been a bold vision behind the CFPB from the outset, where a 21st century regulator would leverage new technologies to find problems in the economy before the next great financial crisis escalates.

O'Reilly Radar - Open source is interoperable with smarter government at the CFPB - April 10, 2012 - by Alex Howard (@digiphile)

Presentation Notes

Audrey Chen is the Creative Director, Technology & Innovation, at the CFPB.

There was a short slide presentation followed by discussion. In the introduction, Audrey Chen emphasized the nature of the CFPB as a 21st century organisation, using design and technology to empower consumers.

She made the connection between design's user-centred nature and modern technology's agile development approach - with the two together you can work quickly to deliver designs that meet user needs.

She talked about the rapid growth of the CFPB, from 300 to over 1000 employees, describing it as the explosive growth characteristic of a startup, and bringing concepts that have been useful for startups:

• do more with less
• flexibility
• self-reflection

She noted that even with a large budget in the context of the startup space, the CFPB has a small budget relative to the banks that it regulates.  Thus the importance of maximising its resources, and adjusting to changes quickly.

She talked about innovative approaches for recruiting the necessary creative and design-oriented staff for the organisation, including embedding a recruitment ad in the page source for the website ("If you're viewing this, you should probably come work on our Technology & Innovation team.")

In order to connect all the new employees together, particularly in an environment where 1/3 of them are working remotely, there is a cfpb.local intranet site, enabling self-organisation and discovery of expertise, using e.g. tagging of employee profiles (anyone can add a tag to a profile).  The idea being that this was a flexible, crowdsourced way of building up knowledge about who is in the organisation and the skills that they bring.

The Importance of Design

Design was part of the core message that she presented, a natural fit with her core role as Creative Director at the CFPB.  She showed their design principles:

• public service, public trust
• give the user control
• aesthetic integrity
• design with data
• inclusion and accessibility
• coherent end-to-end user experience

Fundamentally, she said, "design expresses your value system".

She discussed the approach they took to create the Know Before You Owe service.  A key: you can see everything about how they did it online - every design they tried, every consultation they did.  This is not just about sharing, it's about building the public trust in the organisation through transparency.  "Radically transparent at every step" is how she described it.

She also talked about CFPB finding its strengths - data sets that are unique to CFPB, or the ability of CFPB to create a compelling online experience - and partnering with other agencies when it makes sense for them to take the lead (e.g. the Department of Education for student loan information in general, the CFPB for a well-designed Paying for College site)

Q&A

* I asked a question about how they have arranged their physical space to support collaboration and information sharing between all the new and diverse employees.

She said that they use an open space "bullpen" design, with small groups that are working on the same thing ("functional teams") all in one open shared space.  A difficult adjustment for many of the employees, but it was tested on a small scale and they could demonstrate that those teams were more productive.

She said that 1/3 of the agency is remote, in particular many of the creative people they hired were based in major US cities and didn't want to move to DC.  They deal with this by using video conferencing and screen sharing.

* I asked about the online tools

She said that the intranet is primarily wiki based, allowing easy changes, and that the staff directory with open tagging helps people connect.

* Kent Aitken asked about the challenge of placing such a high level of trust in employees (allowing them to make changes and add tags)

She said they always err on the side of trust, but that the wiki requires login, so all changes are tracked, providing accountability.

* Mary Beth Baker asked about recruiting, hackfests and change-making in an organisation

Audrey Chen's reply was that you have to be brave - you have to make a case for what you believe in, at high levels in your organisation, using business language.

She said that CFPB had found success with a code-a-thon that was very specific, centred around a specific data set unique to CFPB.

* I asked about approaches to internal information sharing

She said they have both lunch & learns and "hootenanies", where design teams can share more generally what they're working on and what interests them.

She said they would like to do Google Time (20% time) but they have been too busy with the core of their work to make it possible.

She concluded by saying that as a small agency, in a space dominated by players that have huge financial resources, CFPB is using design to compete and technology to lower its costs.

---

It was an informative presentation.  I wish more people had attended, I should have promoted it more widely.  Thanks go out to Audrey Chen and to the organising team at the Embassy.

open source in government - The Web Experience Toolkit

The Government of Canada has its Web Experience Toolkit on GitHub

https://github.com/wet-boew

By making the WxT open source, it has been possible for organisations outside of the government to use it for their websites and to improve it.  Both the University of Ottawa and the City of Ottawa are now using WxT.

There was a writeup in Wired about the WxT: Canadian [Coders] Solve Mystery of Open Source Government.

the Treasury Board of Canada hosted a CodeFest to invite hackers — mostly government staffers — to hack its Web Experience Toolkit, or WET — a set of open-source tools that the Treasury Board uses for building websites. One hundred and fifty people came. Many of them were young developers, excitedly swapping code and sharing ideas across tables.

There are some minor issues: It's Treasury Board Secretariat, not Treasury Board, and TBS is the government's central policy agency not an "obscure Canadian tax-collecting agency".  (Admittedly it is difficult to decode that from the TBS website, but if you read far down enough you get to "policies, directives, regulations, and program expenditure proposals with respect to the management of the government's resources".)

You can follow Web Experience Toolkit info on Twitter using the hashtag #wxt and the account @WebExpToolkit

Author of the article is Robert McMillan @bobmcmillan

Featured or indirectly mentioned are:

• Paul Jackson @pjackson28
• Mary Beth Baker @bethmaru
• Lucia Harper @Lucialand
• Laura Booker (of OpenPlus) @bookerlaura
• @OpenPlusSoft
• Mike Gifford (of OpenConcept) @mgifford
• Luke Charde @lukecharde

UPDATE: There is a Drupal working group, the next meeting is January 25, 2013 at Ottawa City Hall.

job - User Experience Specialist at NRC KM

NRC Knowledge Management
Ottawa, Ontario

Classification: LS-4

This is a 2 year term position from the date of reporting.

Your Challenge

To ensure the delivery of NRC search and discovery services of the highest quality, that are optimally configured, operationalized, and integrated in user workspaces and workflows, so that users can autonomously search for, discover, and access the content and services that they require to achieve their business objectives.

Experience

Significant experience with web-based library technologies such as integrated library systems, proxy servers, browser plugins, federated searching, link resolvers, federated or meta- search tools;

Significant experience in applying web accessibility standards and user-centered design principles, preferrably in a federal government context;

Education: An MLIS degree from an ALA accredited institution.

Bilingual imperative: CCC/CCC

Closing date: January 21, 2013

An eligibility list for this position may be established for external candidates only.

Apply at: http://www.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/careers/jobpost.nsf/EnglishAll/7D0D6E483A181C4E85257A8A0059356E

library job - StatsCan - Manager, Data Liberation Initiative Program

Location: Ottawa (Ontario)
Classification: LS - 04

Closing Date: January 23, 2013 - 23:59, Pacific Time

Bilingual - Imperative (CBC/CBC)

Education:

Graduation from a recognized university with a Master's degree in Library Science or in Library and Information Science; or graduation from a recognized university with a bachelor's degree in Library Science or in Library and Information Science for which another bachelor's degree was a pre-requisite.

Experience:

Experience in planning and managing traditional and web-based library client services

Recent experience in participating in the development of library policies and procedures

Apply online: https://psjobs-emploisfp.psc-cfp.gc.ca/psrs-srfp/applicant/page1800?toggleLanguage=en&noBackBtn=true&poster=200514&psrsMode=1

settings for limiting ad tracking in iOS 6

Like Facebook, Apple has taken to obscuring settings it doesn't want you to change.

There are three advertising-related settings buried in iOS 6.

In Settings->General->About-> (scroll down, down...) Advertising-> there is Limit Ad Tracking which you should set to ON

In Settings->Privacy->Location Services-> (scroll down, down...) System Services-> there is Location-based iAds which you should set to OFF (there are also a bunch of other things you may be surprised you're providing location data for).

In magical app (iAdOptOut) you can only activate by visiting a web page from Safari on your iPhone or other iOS 6 device

http://oo.apple.com/

There's "Interest Based iAds" which you should set to OFF.

Or you can just give up, because for-profit Apple, like Facebook and other corporations, really really wants you to have ad tracking turned on, and will keep moving around and changing the settings with every operating system release.

Canadian Open Government License consultation

Deadline is end of January 2013.

Proposed license: http://www.data.gc.ca/default.asp?lang=En&n=0D3F42BD-1

Provide feedback via web form: http://www.data.gc.ca/default.asp?lang=En&n=0D3F42BD-1#yoursay

French language Twitter chat about license 11 décembre 2012 de 15:30 à 15 :50 HNE - mot-clic #CTcauserieMin sur @SCT_Canada

English language Twitter chat about license December 11, 2012 - 4 to 4:30 p.m. EST - hashtag #TBMinchat hosted on account @TBS_Canada

December 11 from 4 to 4:30 p.m. EST @tbs_canada is hosting a #opengov licence tweetchat with @tonyclementcpc using #TBMinchat.

— TBS Canada (@TBS_Canada) December 6, 2012

Le 11 décembre de 15:30 à 15 :50 HNE @sct_canada vous reçoit pour une causerie sur la licence #gouvert avec @tonyclementcpc #CTcauserieMin

— SCT Canada (@SCT_Canada) December 6, 2012

President of the Treasury Board Clement has spoken recently about open data and other issues at an event called Public Sector Engage (PS Engage, #PSE2012).

Previously:
See previous posts in category opengovca

web communications positions at National Research Council Canada

Manager of Outreach

Classification: IS-6

Bilingual imperative: CBC/CBC

Security certification: Level II (Secret)

Closing date: November 28, 2012

The Manager, Outreach is the authority for NRC’s internal and external Web presence as well as media relations and internal communications, ensuring that all Council communications including electronic, maximize the strategic use of evolving technology and social media whether the goal is to generate income, reach the media, or build staff morale.

Apply here: http://www.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/careers/jobpost.nsf/EnglishAll/AB2AD0C00B5196B385257A9B00475076

==

Head of Web Operations

Classification: IS-5

Bilingual imperative: CBC/CBC

Closing date: November 28, 2012

The Head, Web Operations is responsible for the planning, implementation and evaluation of the National Research Council internal and external Web presence and corporate Intranet sites by providing strategic input to and managing the delivery of planned communications services.

Apply here: http://www.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/careers/jobpost.nsf/EnglishAll/205BDF2ED40D486B85257A9B00477B1A

Learn Hack YOW Dec 8, 2012 - City of Ottawa Open Data

Open data for the City of Ottawa has a citizens' group and city staff involved.

The citizens' group Open Data Ottawa is having a combination of hands-on learning and hacking on December 8, 2012 at City Hall.

Register at:

http://learnhackyow.eventbrite.com/

Citizens

You can also find the citizens' group on Twitter, Facebook, in a blog and via email

@opendataottawa

http://www.facebook.com/opendataottawa

http://blog.opendataottawa.ca/

info@opendataottawa.ca

As well there is a discussion group and a discussion website that the city monitors

groups.google.ca/group/dataott

http://www.dataott.org/

City

On the city side, there is the portal, an email contact address, mailing list and RSS feed.  The transit system also maintains a developers' site and an apps portal.

http://ottawa.ca/opendata

http://ottawa.ca/donneesouvertes

catalog: http://ottawa.ca/en/city_hall/statisticsdata/opendata/info/index.htm

opendata@ottawa.ca

UPDATE 2012-11-30: For OC Transpo data questions and issues, please contact OCopendata@ottawa.ca  ENDUPDATE

mailing list: https://secure.campaigner.com/Campaigner/Public/Form10.aspx?fid=776125

RSS: http://ottawa.ca/rss/open_data_en.xml

Transit Agency (OC Transpo)

http://octranspo1.com/developers

http://octranspo1.com/mobile/community_app_gallery

The city has run one apps contest and there will be a second in 2013.

Let it not be said that info isn't pushed out into a lot of channels.

Previously:
May 25, 2012  Ottawa Transit Data Day - June 2, 2012

another commute-time map, powered by open data

I've written previously about different ways of visualising transit on a map, including commute time, in my post visualising city transit layers.

Some Twitter buzz today and recently about Mapumental mashing up public transit open data with properties available to buy and rent - effectively letting you search for homes within a commute time range that you set.

Mapumental: The “I want a better commute” Property Finding Service for Britain bit.ly/RKPyrv via @mysociety @steiny

— Tim O'Reilly (@timoreilly) November 8, 2012

It's actually been around for a while with just travel times.

#lift12 @rufuspollock showing Mapumental bit.ly/z8E4UQ as an example of a map that helps one make decisions

— Richard Akerman (@scilib) February 24, 2012

The property part is new.

Here's the map with just commute time (20 minutes to arrive by 9am at SW1A 0AA which is Westminster, the UK Parliament)

and here's the map with available homes to rent overlaid

You can check it out at property.mapumental.com
or the specific one I showed is http://property.mapumental.com/map/SW1A0AA-a-0900/44d71ed3

Ontario launches open data portal

@OntInnovation announced a new Ontario.ca site on Twitter

Hey everyone, take a look! The new Ontario.ca is live! ow.ly/f85Q8

— OntarioInnovation (@OntInnovation) November 8, 2012

It is search-centric, reminiscent of gov.uk

And when I searched open data I found to my surprise that the long-promised Province of Ontario open data portal has appeared.

The URL is http://www.ontario.ca/government/government-ontario-open-data

It has 63 data sets in the catalogue and the license (which appears to apply to most but possibly not all files) allows for commercial re-use.

They say they want to get advice but it's not clear how to provide feedback, other than through the general site contact form.

Previously:
June 29, 2012  Province of Ontario - no sign of open data portal

ORCID: a unifying identifier for authors

The ORCID project has launched their service.  I had thought it would only be for participating organisations but you can register as an individual.

I registered and was able to pull in citations from Scopus and then from CrossRef.

To link to a personal page it's just http://orcid.org/[ORCID] e.g. mine is

http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4744-6336

You can also submit support tickets to http://support.orcid.org/ (which has a separate account from the main ORCID site).

It's v1.0 so there are lots of bugs.

You can follow @orcid_org and @researchremix for info about the system.

There's an API, see e.g. the documentation at http://support.orcid.org/knowledgebase/topics/19247-rest-api

It's important to understand what this is and what it is not.

It is a way to assign a globally-unique ID to every author, and to link that ID to other service-specific IDs (such as Scopus ID).  It is not a social network for scientists.

It is also a way to link that unique ID to research objects.  ORCID says it enables authors to

uniquely attach your identity to research objects such as datasets, equipment, articles, media stories, citations, experiments, patents, and notebooks

So ORCID is essentially a key piece of scholarly infrastructure.  Infrastructure like this can be hard to build because usually people are interested in the services they can build on top of infrastructure, not in the underlying support pieces themselves.

Experiments in Free Citation Management Online

The Citation and Author services that Google and Microsoft provide shouldn't be considered in the same space as ORCID.  They're more experiments in what can be done with the available data.  They don't have the same design requirements.

Google Scholar has a system that is mainly about citations and author connections, my profile is

http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=t3YXGOEAAAAJ

Microsoft Academic also has an authors system, although it auto-creates pages (Google gives you more control over creating and populating your profile).  My MS profile has an assortment of errors.

http://academic.research.microsoft.com/Author/18113495/richard-akerman

As you might expect you need to use a Google account to manage your Scholar profile and a Microsoft Live ID to manage your Academic profile. 

The MS site also lives at http://journalogy.com/

I Claim

With all of them the "claim" process is going to be a bit of a challenge.  How much infrastructure do we have to verify that the person who says they have the credentials to modify an author account actually is that specific author?  What happens when you use e.g. an institutional email and you're no longer at that institution?  It will be interesting to see how this issue is managed.

Previously:
July 21, 2011  Google Scholar adds personal profiles displaying citations

 

Helsinki University Main Library

I was fortunate to have a tour of the new Helsinki University Main Library (City Centre Campus).  Matti Hjerppe, Project Manager, gave me the tour.

The library opened September 3, 2012.

The design, with enormous specially-engineered glass walls on both street sides of the building, and open space with a central lightwell and staircase underneath a skylight, is very open and bright.  It was also packed with students.  There are interesting furniture designs (which I didn't photograph due to them being filled with the aforementioned students).  They have lots of open stacks, with various collections brought from several different source libraries.  If you have a chance, I recommend going up to the top floor patio.

The library is integrated with the city, with a department store and book cafe in the building.

The complete photo set is available on Flickr.

 

Previously:
September 12, 2012  OKFestival - tour the new City Centre Library
June 16, 2007  Stockholm City Library

thoughts on success factors for open data initiatives

Martin Tisné (@martintisne) asked at Open Knowledge Festival (#okfest) about success factors for open data initiatives (I'm paraphrasing the question).

My thoughts:

To some extent we are trying to describe a successful end or target state for an open data initiative, but all of the initiatives we have are in early stages - we have no mature model to look to. (This may indicate we need to identify similar initiatives that are mature as indicators of possible success factors.)

Scoping it to just open data is useful because we can talk about specific motivations and activities rather than the broader issue of open government. Many of the open data initiatives were, at least in part (and sometimes covertly) ways to drive a wedge of innovation into government (as well as a wedge of transparency). The motivators were to open government up to civil society, to open government up to modern technology approaches, and to unleash the creativity of civil servants who often don't have channels for their innovative ideas.

Initially we thought just creating the portals and getting the data would be the hard part. So a lot of effort was put into just getting data up in any format, using manual processes, and leveraging whatever data was released using apps contests and hackathons. This almost turned out to be easier than expected - maybe we succeeded too quickly in a way.

Now there is a struggle to define what a sustainable next generation open data initiative looks like, but confusingly this is happening at the same time as some countries are just embarking on their first open data steps.

The lessons I draw from the first generation of projects is:
* there is long-term value in pushing for specific types of data (geographical; budgets; health indicators)
* technical standards (eg machine readable formats) are important but shouldn't be used as an excuse for delaying data release
* community is more important than technology - there must first be outreach to developers, but ultimately there needs to be some direct connection to a community of interested citizens

There may be no one path to success; ultimately the sustainable and impactful sites will be the result of an ongoing conversation between the data owners and the community of interested users.

OKFestival - tour the new City Centre Library

My tiny contribution to OKFestival is to arrange a small tour of the new Helsinki University City Centre Campus Library (Kaisa House, Main Library).  The library just opened (September 2012).

_MG_6840.jpg by Flickr user locationunknown (location: unknown, Henkka)

Photo rights CC BY-NC-SA.

The tour is on Monday September 17 in the morning (before the main conference starts).  Please contact me via email or Twitter if you'd like to join.

Here's a video of the library under construction

video via Kiviluoma52 - architecture meets functionality

There's information in English on page 6 of this PDF http://www.helsinki.fi/kirjastot/kaisa_taloesite.pdf and from the International Staff Exchange Week 2012 section of the Helsinki University website there's a presentation explaining some of the background of the building http://www.helsinki.fi/international/ISEW2012_presentation_Nicola_Nykopp.pdf

There are also press photos at http://www.helsinki.fi/kirjasto_old/press/Keskusta/Kaisa/ with the following restrictions

These Helsinki University Library photographs may be used as illustration of articles concerning Helsinki University Library only in non-commercial purposes. The copyrights of the photographs cannot be transferred to a third party. When using the photos, the name of the photographer (if it has been mentioned on the site in connection with the photo) or Helsinki University as source must be mentioned.

via http://www.helsinki.fi/library/library/for-media/press-photos/

Hackfests and Apps Contests

Here's a thing I wrote on the government internal wiki (which is only available to government employees).  Some of the content was based on an email I received.

If you have ideas about how to make it better, please feel free to leave a comment (or edit it directly on the wiki, if you're in the Government of Canada).

 

Hackfests and Apps Contests

There are a number of ways to encourage the use of open data and the building of a community. This article uses the broad umbrella of "hackfest" (hackathon, codefest, etc.) to cover some approaches.

Common approaches include:

• an online community discussion channel (e.g. mailing list, discussion board)
• ideas-generating events or contests
• code development events or contests

Community-Building

Sites that offer data, APIs, or other technical capabilities often need support from a broader community in order to sustain and grow their capabilities. This is a key element of community engagement.

Communities may be sector-specific, or they may be based on particular skills or expertise.

Key communities may include:

• software developers
• user interface design experts
• technology standards experts
• domain experts (e.g. health experts, energy experts)
• intended users of a particular technology (e.g. parents for a consumer recall application)

Developer Outreach

In cases where a desired outcome is the development of new applications or hardware in order to promote economic growth, software development experts are a community that needs specific targeted outreach.

In the United Kingdom, the national Open Data White Paper identifies the need for a Developer Outreach Strategy

We need to work collaboratively to ensure that developers are aware of what datasets are being released, in what timeframes, and to maintain relationships with those at the cutting edge of technology who can help government do things differently and in more agile ways. This kind of conversation between government and users facilitates capacity building both ways to great benefit for the public good.

One approach to this for government websites is to ensure that every site has a /developer subpage that provides contact and community information. Such a page needs to be backed up with active community engagement.

In the US, the national Digital Government Strategy states

To establish a “new default,” the policy will require that newly developed IT systems are architected for openness and expose high-value data and content as web APIs at a discrete and digestible level of granularity with metadata tags. Under a presumption of openness, agencies must evaluate the information contained within these systems for release to other agencies and the public, publish it in a timely manner, make it easily accessible for external use as applicable, and post it at agency.gov/developer in a machine-readable format.

Ideas Generation

Many events have idea generation as a first stage of the event (typically online-only to get people started thinking). Others are ideas-only (no code created), or run idea generation in parallel with the coding.

Examples:

• ideas as first stage: Nokia Creating Innovation for People and Planet challenge closes July 31, 2012 followed by an apps contest (the "Do Good Hackathon") http://dogoodhackathon.com/ - if you don't "claim" your idea by registering for the hackathon, anyone can use it
• ideas-only: the GC IT Innovation Challenge ran in 2009
• ideas in parallel: the City of Ottawa offered separate prizes for ideas and for code in its 2010-2011 Apps4Ottawa contest

Apps Contests

There has been an upsurge in organisations offering prizes for creative use of their technology assets, most typically an "apps contest" using open data that they have released. This has ranged from the municipal to the international level.

It is an easy entry point into leveraging the value of released data, but it should be considered only one piece of an overall engagement strategy.

A caution on expectations from cash prizes - they will incentivize creation of individual apps, but they are not sufficient to help build community. Four Ways Summer of Smart has Reinvented Civic Hackathons states

Don’t (just) offer cash prizes. (Hackathons should build a community.) We have seen dozens of apps contents and hackathons where it’s assumed that a few thousand dollars of incentive as a prize will help seed the projects and produce innovation. But as many have found, this model simply isn’t effective – and there is a clear reason why: civic hackers are driven not by money, but by the potential of their work to create civic and social change.

Canadian Apps Contests

Completed or Currently Running events

• Apps4Ottawa - the City of Ottawa in 2010-2011 - with organising support and hackfests from citizen's group Open Data Ottawa
• Apps4Edmonton - August 2010
• Apps4ClimateAction BC - August 2010
• Apps4Good - May 2010
• London Open Data Budget App
• Canpages API
• e-Health 2012 Apps Challenge
• Royal Canadian Mint (RCM) MintChip Challenge - Deadline for submissions is August 1, 2012
• «Let’s Develop Together!» [Société de transport de Laval (STL)
• AppStar (UTSC Mobile App Development Competition)

Upcoming

The City of Ottawa will have a second contest in fall 2012. The lead at the City of Ottawa is Rob Giggey (Twitter: @rob_giggey).

US Government

The US government offers a general platform for citizen competitions of many different types called Challenge.gov The tagline is: "On Challenge.gov, the public and government can solve problems together."

Hackfests (General Information)

Developers will sometime create simply based around a data release or a hackfest event, without needing to have a specific contest. For example a wide range of applications for bus arrival times were created following the City of Ottawa's release of real-time transit open data - there was no contest, but the data release was widely promoted and there was a related 2012 Ottawa Transit Data Day event.

Canadian Hackfests

• Hack Regina Fall 2012
• Startup Edmonton Summer Hackathon 2012 - #hackathonyeg
• Hackons la corruption 2012 organised by Quebec Ouverte
• Gatineau Hackathon 2.0 - May 5, 2012
• 3rd Open Data Ottawa Hackfest - December 3, 2011 - @opendataottawa - #hackott
• Random Hacks of Kindness Montreal - December 2011 - @rhokmtl
• Random Hacks of Kindness Toronto - December 2011 - @rhokto

GC Hackfests and related events

• WET Codefest - July 2012 - event to work on government web standards
• Open Policy@DFAIT - February 2012 - although not a hackfest per se, it included an unconference where various aspects of application development and coding were discussed

National-level Hackfests

• Dutch Parliament Hosts Apps4Democracy Event - Sept. 2012 - "The Dutch Parliament is planning a major release of parliamentary data as open data, and the hack day is aimed at letting coders explore and work with the data."
• UK - 4th National Hack the Government Day - April 2012 - #nhtg12 - also see blog post National Hack The Government Day 2012 - hosted at http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/

Ottawa & Gatineau Groups

There are many Ottawa-area groups with expertise related to community-building and software development.

These include:

• Open Data Ottawa
• Gatineau Ouverte
• Girl Develop It Ottawa
• Geek Girl Dinners Ottawa
• Hacks & Hackers Ottawa