Chip Oglesby

Given my current situation with my car, I decided that now might be a good time to look into buying an electric car.

It seemed like a good idea at the time. The Nissian Leaf gets 100 miles on one charge.

There’s even the Chevy Volt which is a gas/electric hybrid. It gets 35 miles on an electric charge and 340 miles additional mileage on gas.

The idea of having a fully electric car in the city is very appealing. My average commute to work is 6 miles round trip so I would be there perfect audience.

But what happens if I want to go out of town? How far could I really make it?

I built the map below that shows all electric car charging stations in South Carolina.

Data provided by Plug-in Carolina.

As you can see, it’s very sparse. There are stations in Greenville, Union, Spartanburg, York (Rock Hill), and Columbia.

If you were to buy a Leaf your travel options would be very limited. Greenville  is 103 miles away from Columbia. Spartanburg is 93 miles away, Rock Hill is 68 miles away and Union is 72 miles.

Granted, these are towns that provide dedicated charging stations and you can still plug your car in at a friend’s house but will that stop you from traveling with your electric car?

Here’s another Google Map I’ve found by a user, Jim, while searching for EV stations. His map has a few extra additions my doesn’t.

View Larger Map

So the big question is, with most large towns spread out around South Carolina will you be willing to take the risk of traveling to these towns in a fully electric town?

I’ve been trying to teach myself how to do more interactive visualizations using free tools. I made this visualization using Google Fusion Tables and data from data.gov.

I’m still learning, so bear with me!

Another project that I’ve been working on is converting Shapefiles into a KML file for South Carolina County Boundaries.

If you need polygon files for South Carolina counties, feel free to download the table and reuse it for your purposes.

If you would like to read my previous post, you can find it here. It goes into more depth than this post explaining more of the transparency cycle.

Hopefully this will serve as a reference guide for those looking to post their data such as check registers online.

All data should be machine readable

1. The basic reason to post data online is to inform citizens.
2. PDF’s are good for scanned pages, they are bad when they’re from computer generated programs.
3. Data is much more useable when it’s in a machine readable format such as a csv file. It makes it easier for developers and designers to massage data into a format they need.
4. Extracting information from PDF’s can be tedious and labor intensive. It’s easier to provide an open standard format for people to use.

All data is dirty

1. The main question when releasing data is always: What if we release the wrong info?
2. Data can be incorrect. Names can be misspelled, numbers can be input wrong, descriptions can be off.
3. When working with data, always go to the source. Double check your sources.
4. When exporting data, choose which information will best suit your consumers needs. The more information you can include, the better.

All data needs context

1. Schools, government and municipalities needn’t waste time giving data context. Allow developers to take your information and do that for you.
2. Developers need an easy way to access your information. CSV files and API’s are a developers best friend.
3. Designers can work together with developers to best highlight data and make it more meaningful.
4. If you feel compelled to give your data context, show examples highlighting your dataset. For example, how much did your school district spend per month on lodging and meals. How much as your government spent on cell phones and technology?

All data needs a central storage location

1. Storing pdf’s by month on the same page is a good start, it gives people a way to categorize things, but is bad for computers.
2. Data should be stored in a publicly accessible database such as socrata.
3. Storing your data in socrata will centralize information, allowing for quicker, easier access to material.
4. Databases should have methods of exporting data: JSON, REST, CSV.

All data needs action

1. While pushing to have more information online is great, if no actions result from publishing, what good is it?
2. Engaged citizens and advocacy groups need a way to export and share their findings through social media.

Further Reading: For more in-depth reading about data check out these resources.

1. Civic Commons/OpenMuni Wiki: A great resource for any municipality looking to make the leap into the digital world. Case studies, best and worst practices and more.
2. The five stars of open linked data: The father of the internet, Tim Berners-Lee explains why he wants to build a new internet using linked data and what we need to do to get there.
3. Socrata: A free and paid service for municipalities to store their data online. Their basic service is free and prices increase depending on needs.
4. The transparency cycle: From the sunlight foundation. This graphic and blog post explains why we must all work together.
5. The eight principles of open government data: Government data shall be considered open if the data are made public in a way that complies with these eight principles.

Recently, SCPC wrote about the problem with online check registers in county school districts. As more and more data is placed online, we need a way to standardize data so that has context and it’s not just sitting there. That’s what we would call ‘naked transparency.’

The naked transparency movement marries the power of network technology to the radical decline in the cost of collecting, storing, and distributing data. Its aim is to liberate that data, especially government data, so as to enable the public to process it and understand it better, or at least differently.

Before we rally the troops, we have to realize that getting more data, data that we own, from government officials on all levels doesn’t equal more transparency or accountability.

Data is only part of the Transparency Cycle

In a blog post by the Sunlight Foundation, they posted a very interesting graphic that shows how the ‘Transparency Cycle’ works. It has no beginning or end because it’s part of an ongoing process. Government Agencies (State Ethics Board) for example, are responsible for organizing data and giving web developers API’s who work with Graphic Designers who Give data context by visualizing it. Designers work with Journalists who help build public awareness through context and raising public awareness by reporting anomalies. Engaged Citizens work with Advocacy Groups who Organize and take action to hold the public and lawmakers accountable for what’s going on in government.

Tim Berners-Lee, the founder of the internet has envisioned a new type of web, one of linked data, where the dots are able to be connected. Berners-Lee gives five points of open linked data.

1. make your stuff available on the web (whatever format)
2. make it available as structured data (e.g. excel instead of image scan of a table)
3. non-proprietary format (e.g. csv instead of excel)
4. use URLs to identify things, so that people can point at your stuff
5. link your data to other people’s data to provide context

State Comptroller Richard Eckstrom’s state government spending transparency site accomplishes 4 of the 5 goals, a great accomplishment in my opinion. Our school websites on the other hand, meet only one of the 5 requirements. PDF’s with no structure, give engaged citizens no way to ingest and analyze more than one month worth of data.

I was able to go in and scrap a PDF off of Berkley County’s transparency website and run the information through Many Eyes to get this chart that’s featured below. Ideally, there should be a simpler way for a developer or designer to visualize this information through API’s.

Eckstrom’s website is faced with the same type of problem. It focuses on the month to month expenditures, and if I want to build a database, I would have to download 12 separate .csv files to enter into another database to visualize.

All data is dirty

Once we’re able to actually collect data through publicly accessible API’s, does that necessarily mean the info is clean? Not really.

Since data input still relies on human-beings we are all prone to make mistakes. Remember the disaster of recovery.gov? There was a huge scandal because of all of the ‘ghost’ districts where money was being spent. The to main views here are simple “It happened on purpose, democrats are trying to steal/take our money” or “It was just a simple mistake, a slip of the finger or some congressional page didn’t know what district they were in.”

Also, if you browse the transparency data portal from the Sunlight Foundation and look for campaign contributions, names can be misspelled and instead of using proper nouns for occupation such as “Owner: Fast Bucks” a donor may simply list occupation as “store owner.”

This can lead to a few errors. It makes it hard to track who’s actually giving because a researcher will have to double check which company the donor works for to help connect the dots.

Data needs context

Once the data is published, it still needs context. PDF’s are good for looking at a small record, but what if we want to compare values over a given year, or the past six years? How do we know when a company a lobbyists represents gives a lawmaker money for his PAC so that he may be influenced to vote a certain way?

Spending all day pouring through massive amounts of information can be tedious and lead to the wrong conclusions. Instead, there should be automated processes in place that alert people via email, text, tweet when anomalies arise. Like the internet, quietly working in the background, but always on.

Designers and reporters also play an important roll in this because they can help clarify misunderstandings someone may have.

Data doesn’t equal transparency

Once we get the data, it’s been check to be accurate, and given context all is not complete in the transparency cycle. Government could publish every single bit of data it has, recorded votes, transit information, gis maps, but what good will it do if it just sits there?

It’s up to engaged citizens and Advocacy Groups to take the information from Designers, Developers, Journalists and Bloggers and form grassroots movements to hold government responsible. Data without action is done for naught.

Once Citizens and Groups organize and take action, they along with others can work with Lawmakers to actually make a change.

Transparency alone will not lead to more accountability in government. Data.gov and recovery.gov are great examples, Federal government have given citizens monitoring tools.

In South Carolina, we face battles of our own. South Carolina Senate, comprised of only 46 people cannot simply decide if they’ll vote on the record because they say it’s unconstitutional. They’ve also argued that verbal roll-call voting takes too long, and I agree, it does. But there are solutions out there. Open-source software can be written so that bills, amendments and earmarks can be posted online 72 hours early for the public can expect them, then house and senate members could vote on the bills so that we can connect the dots to see where change and influence is happening.

The question that South Carolina faces is: Who’s going to be first in the Transparency Cycle?

While driving down I-26 to Asheville North Carolina last weekend, I noticed a sign that said “Project funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.” This was passed in 2009 under the Obama administration as a way to create jobs and promote investment and consumer spending during the recession. The measures of ARRA are worth about $787 billion.

The road sign got me thinking about acts that were passed as part of the New Deal: The Works Progress Administration (WPA) and The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). The WPA was created by President Roosevelt in 1935. Expenditures from 36-39 totaled nearly $7 billion. As a side note, my grandfather use to refer to the WPA as “We piddle around” for their lack of work.

The CCC was a public work relief program for unemployed men age 18-24 to provide development of natural resources in rural areas from 1933 to 1942.

In North Carolina, both the WPA and CCC helped build the Blue Ridge Parkway:

On June 30, 1936, Congress formally authorized the project as the “Blue Ridge Parkway” and placed it under the jurisdiction of the National Park Service. Some work was carried out by various New Deal public works agencies. The Works Progress Administration did some roadway construction. Crews from the Emergency Relief Administration carried out landscape work and development of parkway recreation areas. Personnel from four Civilian Conservation Corps camps worked on roadside cleanup, roadside plantings, grading slopes, and improving adjacent fields and forest lands. During World War II, the CCC crews were replaced by conscientious objectors in the Civilian Public Service program.

What does this have to do with technology?

The CCC and WPA were good ideas in the 1930′s, but there are new and greater demands that need to be met during our current recession. Government spending is at an all time high while red tape and bloat hinder a system that our founding fathers helped establish.

One of the main problems facing the government is a lack of innovation and creation with technology.

It’s time that we take the next step and create new agencies that will help bring us into the next era of a public and open government.

Large strides could be made by putting people to work in the technology sector of government. Designers, developers, community activist could all work in stride to help make how the government spends your money and help hold your elected officials accountable.

What could these jobs produce?

Designers across America for example could help redesign websites such as the South Carolina Governors Mansion website.

These jobs could help create databases of information that are publicly accessible by all. A good start would be to build a system for Roll Call voting as outlined in the South Carolina Policy Council’s 2009 transparency report. The US Senate has an XML feed of their votes available, a key piece of legislation that was championed by S.C. Senator Jim DeMint. Politico goes further into the pro’s and con’s of this.

Sites like scvotes should have API’s that work with counties GIS departments to report voting results for precints statewide in realtime on election night.

Any state ran or supported website should also make their analytics avaiable under FOIA laws. This could help determine the sites actually impact to cost ratio.

Copyright laws should also be updated and any text and photograph make publicly available. On the South Carolina Flim website for example, in the footer the following information appears:

Photographs and art on this website and any downloadable publications are copyrighted and cannot be reproduced without the written permission of the photographer and/or the South Carolina Film Commission. © 2010 by the South Carolina Film Commission, a division of SC Parks, Recreation and Tourism. All rights reserved.

All information on any taxpayer supported website needs to be licensed through a Creative Commons license. Government entities should also use open platforms such as drupal, django and share their code using Github.

SCPC also supports the idea of an online check registery. [PDF] After submitting FOIA’s to 85 district counties, 12 counties quoted an expense of more than $10,000 to complete the request.

A technological workforce reinvestment could help solve these problems by working with those 85 districts to move their financial records online using open linked data.

There are five stars to linked data: 1. make your stuff available on the web. (whatever format.) 2. make it avaiable as stuctured data (excel instead of pdf.) 3. use non-proprietary format ( csv, tab delimited instead of excel.) 4. Use urls to identify things, so that people can point to it. 5. link your data to other people’s data to provide context.

If you think about it, it’s a pretty simple idea. Why can’t citizens log in to one website and see a single view of their account with a city or state. (water, sewer, real estate, auto excise tax, registration, etc.)

All of this requires a massive amount of imagination and innovation, but it has to start from the ground up. People need to learn that they have just as much control of what happens in government as the people they elect. The media does a good job of informing what’s happening in government, but they miss a great opportunity when it comes to educating people on how to make changes.

In conclusion, it’s time to take a serious look at the types of projects we’re funding with ARRA and look for ways to promote real change through a digital workforce reinvestment.