Notes from City Camp Oakland sessions.
2012
CRIME & DATA (Hearing Room 3)
HEARING ROOM 3. Crime and Data.
MAX: Do we have good or bad data? Certain types of crime data in Oakland can be inaccurate or bad data. One year ago, OPD said they can't collect in person crime reports and asked people to start submitting them online. Soon, a news article came out that said burglaries up slightly in the flats and through the roof in the hills. Online reporting could skew the statistics because home owners in the hills are more likely to file reports (they have to file a claim with home owners insurance) versus people in the flats (renters may not file)
MARGO: Graffiti. We are in 10x. Includes some of heaviest gun zones, homeless and drug abuse. Industrial businesses feel they are completely on their own. Police won't respond unless someone is being shot at at the moment. We have a vast group of people who are trying to get connected by emailing each other. We know know all the perpetrators.
RICH: There's a problem. What would a solution look like to you.
MARGO: Real-time communication of crimes as they are happening.
MAX: Put together a survey that assesses likelihood of crime reporting based on beats. (Do estimate)
ROB: Expose multiple data sets. ....let's go after low hanging fruit. Example shotspotter. Expose that data.
TONY B. Classic big data approach.
TIM from AC: There was a question about what Alameda County is doing. Just exposed a bunch of crime data and it's the number one crime set. You can get an idea of what is out there. We feed our data to crimereports.com. Publicly available site. And we are actively promoting alert ID. Community based smart phone web app.
ELISE: One quick hack for Margo's question is to create a citizen's crime reporting site that would immediately send out SMSes to subscribers. You can build this on Twilio in just a few hours and the cost would be one penny per SMS plus the cost of hosting the site.
JJ. OakMobi does that. Just an email that confirms your email has been enterd in Comstat would be helpful. I want to see where is my case in the pile. I need more insight in order not to be frustrated and scream that the city is not doing anything. Part of the problem is Nixle system is it will report on somethings but it won't report on other things.
LIBBY SCHAAF: I am a council member and I have trouble getting updates on a homicide in my district. Part of the problem is that crime is handled by multiple jurisdictions.
TIM (AC) The county is spearheading modernization system. We have CORPUS system. It was in the 70s a hallmark system but it needs to be modernized. There is a lot of work being done on realignment 8109. The struggle for us as IT people is technology can do this.
TONY B. Are there jurisdicaitonal restrictions and regulatory problems? If that's the case we in Code for America and the brigade might not be able to do much.
There is tons of data we can share. Something we can do ...the camera system. We just need the layer available in GIS.
JORGE: Coming from the big data perspective. Lots of information is available in the data we have, but how can we expose these insights and turn them into something useful.
TONY B.: Please join the brigade.
RICK: How late is this session going?
It's ending at 12.
RICK: Let's find the one thing we can chew on.
MAX: If you put shotspotter data in real time gangsters will start using it to back each other up. Still we need to err on getting as much information out as possible.
MARGO: We need to integrate with Alameda County probation.
ELISE: Lets do a data audit of what records are collected by OPD and what form they are stored in. Let's make sure those records systems are aligned with county records.
LIBBY SCHAAF: We put together a website: "SafeOakland.com." I just found the city can generate the information we were doing ourselves.
JJ: Oakland crimespotting is using the public data that is also available to us. Around 2009 and 2010 we had a dive in crime. Why did we have that and can we replicate it?
LIBBY: That's true for almost every major city in America. There are books written about it.
RICK: What's the one thing we can do. I think Data Normalization is a good idea. (Doable.) More difficult to me is what things are sensitive.
TONY B. What we need is a product roadmap. The goal here is to come up with something acitonable.
MAX: If action is the word that matters. Nothing in this city gets done without people pushing. I strongly suggest that wonks and coders and geeks align with activists like Marlene and myself.
JJ: I'd like to be able to figure out how safe a neighborhood is. Then I want to gamify it.
JULIAN WARE (city of Oakland IT) it sounds like people want more data to work with. ...
RICK: I want to thank Asan publicly. (Certain data is available.)
CHRIS RICHARDSON: One way of solving the problem of how much data should the city publish is to build an independent archive.
TONY B. Cloud storage is the answer and Chris is a cloud guy.
IFEOMA (city IT) City is thinking of going to a cloud solution.
OPEN DATA (Hearing Room 3)
ROBERT. Lots happening: Data.openoakland.org. Is where we are storing data sets. Alameda County: data.acgov.org.
tile mill...mapbox.com is very interesting. If you want to see tile mile, you can pull in shape files. One of the people in the meetings was interested in reports of asmatha and toxic hazard sites. I was able to do that in just 30 minutes.
There are interesting data at AC gov, including food safety.
MAX: I have a quesiton about cost and practicality about getting as much open data out there as possible. What is the cloud storage cost per gigabyte? Ultimately getting more data out there will hinge on (budget)
LIBBY: We already budgeted for it. I think they selected Socrata.
RICK: Unless we go to video, data storage costs not an issue.
TONY B: I think CoA would be well advised to build common infrastructure for different brigades. It's not like there's a paucity of cloud service providers. And CoA has the klout to ask for free cloud storage space. It makes sense for CoA to work on infrastructure.
ANCA: There is concern about data being owned by corporate entities.
MATT: Can anyone tell us about the open data legislation?
LIBBY: I can. I sponsored the ordinance. We put the money in the budget for implementation. Issued an RFP. I think we awarded it to Socrata.
ASAN (from AC) I am personally not involved with Socrata project. (But that is moving forward.)
TIM: (head of IT for AC) AC is also based on Socrata
DAVE: Cost has to do with migrating and validating the data.
ACCELA: trying to make data available on C- CRAM
TONY B: will you open source the adaptors
MAX: Let's break up into small groups.
SMALL DISCUSSIONS:
Neighborhood gamification
Making public records request accessible (when this was proposed in Sacramento the media objected)
Concerns about making financial data available without context
Need to make sure that city obtains a copy of the data architecture and design documents of data that is stored in cloud service providers like Accela. Otherwise we will be migrating public data from one black box (a 1960s-era cobol system) to another black box.
Discussion of tactics: confrontation versus collaboration
Discussion of the fact that public records and public data or not the same thing
Oakland City Government 101
by Karen Boyd (notes from Matt, they are not totally complete)
City Charter is at the core of the city's legal operations and governance structure.
The mayor is the CEO, appoints City Administrator, is able to resolve a tying vote with the City Council, and also appoints folks to boards and comissions. There are lots of opportunities there and is a great way to get involved.
Districts review, . Lynett Macelhaney (spelling?) new for District 3 (sudo's district). Rebecca Kaplan is the member at large. City's Attorney Office -- advice and representation for the whole organization (Advice unit and Litigation unit). Protect the city's interest, defend the city in lawsuits (litigation), pursue lawsuits, and deal with liability.
City auditor is the watchdog of the city, look for evidence of fraud and that the city follows the letter of the law. The audit both day-to-day performance and financial information.
Office of the City Administrator, Deanna Santana, manages all day-to-day functions--she is the buffer between the Council and city staff (if there's a problem on either side). She's totally excited about "innovation" and will be talking later.
With respect to education, the city does work with the School District, but it's an independently elected board. Jean Quan was on the school board, as well as the new city council rep for the Fruitvale district.
Planning, permitting, zoning, housing, housing projects. However there is a HOusing Authority which is independent from the city.
Most of the human services are delivered by Alameda County, but there is a department in the City of Oakland. Most federal money comes through the county for these purposes.
Economic development, business attraction, army bases, and also around the port of Oakland. The port under a charter is a department of the city, but the board of port comissioners is appointed by the Mayor, and there will be a new president of this board coming in soon.
Infrastructure. By and large all the infrastructure is managed by the city (lights, traffic control, streets, sewers, all of that).
Who are the city's customers anyway? Quotes someone else: "You have to really love public service to do this job. And if you don't like service and you don't like the people, this might not be the right job for you." Oakland is an outward-focusing
Residents, businesses, agencies (counties, state, fed), but the city itself is a customer--they provide each other services.
What is good customer service? Genuine desire to help other folks, values-oriented, working hard.
Notion of what it is to be a public servant-- "we are the guardians of the public trust" if you don't like something--you can't go to Walmart, the city has a monopoly on public services. City employees should be ambassadors in their communities. Oakland residents are very generous with tax dollars, and when they feel like they are not benefiting from their city's services, they don't feel trust with the city.
Most civil servants are put through a competitive hiring process--many of them are organized in labor unions: police, fire fighters, professional employees, service employees (street sweepers, administrative staff, etc). Labor negotiations are coming up. Employees are incredibly generous in maintaining staff in the face of cuts. Every few years "Memoranda of Understanding" are re-negotiated.
"Black boxes"
Q: How do we change the city charter?
A:
Q: What are the different ways measures can be put on the ballot, and what are the thresholds? (a) for city council and (b) up to the voters
A: '''Demystify the measures:''' Money requires 2/3, rank choice? simple majority, and taxes have to go to the voters. (More details). Fees can be imposed by the city council (things that recoup costs, administrative and operational). 2-year budget, but every year the city re-evaluates its master fee schedule and may increase or decrease fees, etc.
Q: Top two or three opportunities (what's needed?)
A: Just launched "MindMixer" engageoakland.com -- looking for feedback. It's brand new, Nicole reads it, and different staff read it as relevant. They think it's a great place.
Q: Outstanding issues or day-to-day problems of the city government.
A: Compliance with Oakland Police Department potential federal take-over. Also, downsizing with no adjustment in expectation for service delivery. Council expects as much if not more with city staff. Have not interface with the public about not being able to maintain the same capacity. Thinks that Code for America can provide an opportunity to increase efficiency be eliminating complex, paper-based processes. But it becomes very calcified and not able to move as nimbly, with fewer staff today. Most are administrative processes w/o having to change the City Charter. Public Records system is not working well. Further, contracting needs some improvement. Comparative to other cities, IT staff is extremely limited. We need technology, we need training, and we need new systems.
Some examples from Public Works -- only 2 people on the help desk (8 to 5), longer than 6 months to get a new hire. 20% salary cut in furlough days. Lots of thoughts and feelings.
Q: What kind of data do department heads get on a regular basis?
A: It's not good. It's getting better, even over the current year. Professional and trained staff are open to improving this. Internal technology systems are really limited.
Q: What are the avenues for citizens to be heard? (Any particular stories?)
A:
Q: What roles does the city see as its lack of core competency and thus ripe for reaching for outside contractors?
A:
