13 research outputs found

    Civic Hackers’ User Experiences and Expectations of Seattle’s Open Municipal Data Program

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    This study examines the challenges and the expectations that civic hackers bring to the use of open government data, building on Gurstein’s theory of barriers to effective use. Civic hackers are hobbyists who use open government data for social good applications. Drawing on individual interviews and a focus group with fifteen total civic hackers in Seattle, Washington, we synthesize findings on their experiences using open government data, including their expectations for the kinds of data formats, metadata, API functionality, and datasets that should be provided on the city’s open data portal. Respondents report challenges using the data, including low data availability, outdated datasets, limited API functions, proprietary formats, lack of metadata, and untidy datasets. These acted as barriers to their effective use of open data. Respondents expect higher quality data and more usable data portal functionality, in part because of their professional experience in the technology sector. In our discussion, we examine the organizational structure of the open data program, and the constraints it poses for the achievement of respondent expectations. Our analysis points to a demand for an additional, third party civic institution (like a local newspaper) to host cleaned data for wider use.

    The Making of a 'Top' Open Data City: A Case Study of Edmonton’s Open Data Initiative

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    In recent years, various models and indexes have been proposed to evaluate and rate the performance of open data initiatives. However, little research examines cities’ open data initiatives in relation to these indexes and how cities achieve open data success. Through an exploratory case study of Edmonton, Canada’s top ranked open data city, this research sheds light on the mechanisms contributing to top-rated and successful open data initiatives. Our findings reveal current open data indexes emphasize publication of data sets over the measurement of impact. The case study suggests that to be successful, cities should approach open data as a continuing journey and must actively engage other stakeholders, particularly intermediaries and citizens. Finally, we observe that common myths constructed around open data help promote open data at a strategic level, but must be viewed skeptically at the operational level

    The Making of a \u27Top\u27 Open Data City: A Case Study of Edmonton’s Open Data Initiative

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    In recent years, various models and indexes have been proposed to evaluate and rate the performance of open data initiatives. However, little research examines cities’ open data initiatives in relation to these indexes and how cities achieve open data success. Through an exploratory case study of Edmonton, Canada’s top ranked open data city, this research sheds light on the mechanisms contributing to top-rated and successful open data initiatives. Our findings reveal current open data indexes emphasize publication of data sets over the measurement of impact. The case study suggests that to be successful, cities should approach open data as a continuing journey and must actively engage other stakeholders, particularly intermediaries and citizens. Finally, we observe that common myths constructed around open data help promote open data at a strategic level, but must be viewed skeptically at the operational level

    Spacebook: Networked Public Places in the Personalized Metropolis

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    Today’s society is more connected than ever; we have constant access to information, to communication, and to various forms of social media. Ubiquitous mobile computing has significantly changed the public realm in a way that cannot be ignored. Socializing no longer relies on face-to-face interaction, and instead, vast quantities of people’s social lives unfold online via virtual platforms such as Facebook, WeChat, or Instagram. These virtual spaces have joined parks, plazas, and streets as spaces of public communication and interaction. However, these spaces create new questions of privatization and segregation, and may erode the public sphere as much as they extend it. Online discourse can be controlled and customized, allowing citizens to voluntarily segregate themselves with people to whom they are similar. This thesis suggests that physical public space needs to function as spaces that bring people of difference together: a role that is crucial to the health of our multicultural metropolises. Spacebook: Networked Public Places in the Personalized Metropolis embraces information technologies as public resources, and suggests a set of urban public space interventions that use interactive and sentient technologies to locate the network in physical spaces. As an attempt to counteract the segregation and privatization of the public sphere, these new spaces encourage greater user participation and agency in public space. In this research, two components of the public sphere were examined: virtual networks and physical public spaces. Physical public spaces were discovered as having been privatized through a number of policies of ownership and regulation. Virtual social networks were examined at two scales. The first explores these networks at the scale of the individual; in an attempt to understand the spatial implications of social networks, the second part explores the networks at the scale of the metropolis. This research proposes that we have produced a new condition, where the city is augmented and expanded by the individual’s networks, forming a personalized metropolis. Spacebook proposes a set of public spaces, called Networked Public Places (NPPs), which localize the global networks, and turn them into an interactive collective experience. NPPs are a set of interfaces operating at the border between online and physical public spaces. NPPs do not completely transform the public realm, but instead offer provocations for a way that architecture and information technologies can come together to benefit the public sphere. By embracing information as a public resource and asking what should (and can) be shared, Spacebook suggests a beginning of a more participatory and open public realm

    Cities on the path to 'smart': information technology provider interactions with urban governance through smart city projects in Dubuque, Iowa and Portland, Oregon

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    Information and communication technologies are increasingly being infused into city systems and services as part of a growing trend to make cities ‘smart’. Through the design and implementation of these efforts, large information technology (IT) providers are interacting with local government policy and planning processes via: (a) strategy—project objectives, priorities and approaches; (b) engagement—which actors are involved, the roles they play and the interactions between and among them; and (c) representation—how the local government portrays the project through narrative and brand. In the discussion below, I argue that as smart projects multiply, interactions around this proliferation will pave the way for IT providers to more broadly inform urban governance processes. For in effect, IT providers are not just selling smart technologies. Rather, they are propagating a set of assertions about the role, structure, function and relationships of local government. These assertions are informed by neoliberal and entrepreneurial principles, bound up with the concept of smart, and attractively wrapped within the smart city imaginary. This imaginary is largely created by IT providers, and cannot be pursued without them. Within my approach, I view smart initiatives not simply as technical but social and political strategies, for while these projects are about technological innovation, they are also about ‘innovations’ in the relationships, interactions and discourse that surround them. To capture both the discursive and material realities of these projects, my methods of examination included key informant interviews and case study analysis of two cities in the United States, Dubuque, Iowa and Portland, Oregon. I focus specifically on smart projects led by IBM, an influential actor in the smart city market, and use Dubuque as a primary case study with Portland for comparison. My work provides an in-depth view of the IT provider IBM alongside the rise of the corporate entrepreneurial smart city, and sheds light on what these initiatives might mean for municipal administrations and city residents in similar urban environments

    Vol. 40, no. 4: Full Issue

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    Bowdoin Orient v.126, no.1-23 (1995-1996)

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    https://digitalcommons.bowdoin.edu/bowdoinorient-1990s/1007/thumbnail.jp

    Bowdoin Orient v.131, no.1-24 (1999-2000)

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    https://digitalcommons.bowdoin.edu/bowdoinorient-2000s/1000/thumbnail.jp
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