Civic tech tools for better city budgets
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New digital tools have the power to make budgets more understandable, participatory and engaging. Using data visualizations, simulators and consultation tools, activists and city governments around the world have taken us out of the age of the 500-page dry as dust budget PDF. What can we do about it in Toronto? To learn more about Better Budget Toronto, visit http://www.betterbudget.ca/ --- This presentation was used in a workshop at Better Budget Day 2, in the Evergreen Brickworks, by Asher Zafar and Matthew Gray ---
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Civic tech tools for better city budgets
- 1. Civic tech for TO Using digital tools to make city budgets more understandable and engaging Matthew Gray (@matthewdhgray) Asher Zafar
- 2. What is civic tech? • ‘Civic tech’ describes the application of new technologies to help solve public problems • Citizens, activists, coders, public servants and entrepreneurs • A growing industry - investment in civic tech $431 million from 2011-2013 (Source: Knight Foundation)
- 6. Budget tools • Visualizations - interactive graphic representation of budget data • Simulators - visualization with a greater degree of interactivity, with modifiable variables • Digital consultations - platforms enabling citizen input into the budget process, from surveying to participatory budgeting
- 7. Budget Visualization Phildadelphia http://www.phila.gov/openbudget/ Arlington http://www.arlingtonvisualbudget.org/ Oakland http://openbudgetoakland.org/ http://openbudgetoakland.org/2013-2015-adopted-budget-flow.html Ontario Salary (Tableau) http://www.davidanalytics.com/ontario-public-salary-disclosure.html Boston http://budget.data.cityofboston.gov/#/ US Federal (d3) http://www.brightpointinc.com/interactive/budget/index.html?source=d3js Budget Simulation Mississauga http://mississaugabudget2015.budgetallocator.com/#ba Toronto Star http://www.thestar.com/news/city_hall/2015/can-you-find--86m-in-cuts-and- balance-toronto-city-hall-s-budget.html NYT Federal http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/11/13/weekinreview/deficits- graphic.html?_r=1& http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/13/behind-the-timess-deficit- project/ Budget Engagement Ontario https://talk.ontario.ca/ London, ON http://buildabudget.ca/budget.html
- 8. Discussion questions 1. What information would you, as a citizen, want to get out of one of these tools? 2. How well did these tools make that information understandable? 3. What would the ideal Toronto budget tool look like, and how might it get built? 4. How could we strengthen Toronto’s civic tech community?
Editor's Notes
- For as long as the Internet has existed, people have been creating technologies to help improve their communities It’s projects that help organize citizens online, improve the delivery of public services, and make government more transparent, accountable and accessible ‘Civic tech’ is a new term, which encompasses for profit and non-profit projects led by individual citizens, organized interest groups, and entrepreneurs Funded mostly by private investment, government grants & competitions, and money from foundations Civic tech is becoming a big industry Knight Foundation groups civic tech tools into two main categories: community action and open government tools These include: Civic crowdfunding, resident feedback, public decision making, data access & transparency, neighbourhood forums, mapping and information crowdsourcing tools
- Leading examples of civic tech tools include: NationBuilder, a suite of organizing tools for social and political campaigns Socrata, a platform used by governments to visualize open data sets, particularly relating to government performance NextDoor, a hyper-local forum platform connecting neighbours & city services
- From the Knight Foundation’s report on civic tech.
- Budget materials can be a flashy communications exercise. Infographics like these ones look appealing, but represent only a small part of what is in a budget. They’ll reflect positive ‘did-you-know’ style tidbits, but offer little depth.
- But you shouldn’t have to make tradeoffs between data completeness and aesthetic appeal. A new class of tools, some of which we’ll be demoing, find the perfect balance between the two.