Civic Hacking In The News: August 22, 2015

For your weekend reading pleasure on August 22, 2015, several recent online items relevant to civic hacking are presented herein. Click on the item headlines to read any whose excerpt is of particular interest to you.

The Civic Hacker Hacked

“Ever since I read Brett Scott’s engrossing piece on what he refers to as the “gentrification of hacker culture” I’ve been thinking about how this idea might apply to the world of civic hacking… 

• “The countercultural trickster has been pressed into the service of the preppy tech entrepreneur class. It began innocently, no doubt. The association of the hacker ethic with startups might have started with an authentic counter-cultural impulse on the part of outsider nerds tinkering away on websites. But, like all gentrification, the influx into the scene of successive waves of ever less disaffected individuals results in a growing emphasis on the unthreatening elements of hacking over the subversive ones.” — The Hacker Hacked, by Brett Scott 

Many early civic hacking projects grew out of frustration with the quality of public services and the lack of available data from governments...These early civic hacking projects often used FOIA requests or web scrapers to obtain data that governments were reluctant to open up, and some even drew the ire of the government lawyers. The “subversive” nature of civic hacking continues to this day through the work of people like Carl Malamud and others. It would be unwise to forget the many institutional barriers that still exist to releasing open data from government, and collaborating effectively with outside parties... 

There is much to be gained by building bridges between the world of civic hacking and government. There is a long history of volunteerism to help government in this country, of which civic hacking can be viewed as a contemporary extension. Engaged civic hackers can help build solutions that help governments deliver services more effectively... 

But is there a risk that the civic hacking community will become gentrified? Has it already become so? Do civic hacking groups that work regularly and closely with government officials feel empowered to ask tough, direct (often uncomfortable) questions about data releases and procurement practices? Do groups that collaborate regularly with government feel that they have standing to hold public officials’ feet to the fire when needed?...”

Civic hacking has probably been gentrified at the local and federal level, and it absolutely is gentrified at the state level. That can be detrimental in situations where there are big problems that civic hacking could fix.. If the civic hackers become afraid to ask hard questions, are reluctant to push for faster changes or don’t work on certain useful projects because government employees are resistant to change, then it’s the hacked civic hackers who need to be hacked! That situation seems most likely to happen in the larger cities (200,000+?) that have bigger problems. Maybe I’m not looking in the right places or at the right things, but I’m not aware of any big problems in NE Wisconsin that aren’t being worked on because civic hackers in the region are too gentrified.

The only civic problem I’m aware of in NE Wisconsin is that city officials and others are too satisfied with the way things are to want to change the way things have always been done. Because there is very little change to the status quo, our region makes small changes and minor improvements while more innovative regions race off to the future. By not making major changes, we get further and further behind. Unfortunately, that’s a cultural attitude that the civic hackers of NE Wisconsin don’t have the funding, tools and support to change...

130 Chicago Youth Learn Web-based Tech and Earn Microsoft Laptops

“Smart Chicago Collaborative in partnership with Get In Chicago and Microsoft will celebrate 130 student’s completion of the 6-week Youth-led Tech Program...“Youth-led Tech | Summer 2015” is a pilot technology mentoring program in five Chicago neighborhoods...This program is funded through Get IN Chicago, whose mission is to support programs that lead to a sustainable reduction in violence for individuals and communities most affected by violence and poverty. Youth who completed all of their learning hours will earn the Microsoft based laptop used during programming at the certificate ceremony. 

The conceptual model for this program is “youth-led tech”, which means teaching technology in the context of the needs and priorities of young people. Youth learned how to use free and inexpensive Web tools to make websites and use social media to build skills, generate revenue, and get jobs in the growing technology industry. The youth also learned about other jobs in tech— strategy, project management, design, and so on. Additionally, the youth were provided introductory content about game design and app development. 

All of the youth now know how to set up a website, have been exposed to sophisticated tech skills, and know how to find real customers and employers for their skills.”

NE Wisconsin doesn’t have as much need for programs that “lead to a sustainable reduction in violence for individuals and communities most affected by violence and poverty” as Chicago does. Thank goodness! But our region can still learn valuable lessons from the Youth-Led Tech program. It would be awesome if NE Wisconsin pulled together corporations, foundations, educators and civic hackers to do a multi-city version of Youth-Led Tech in the summer of 2016. Click here to  download the Youth-Led Tech curriculum set.


Why Govenment APIs Are Essential To The US Economy

“Data is playing an increasingly-prominent role in business as more records are made more easily available through open data portals and public APIs. Writing for DigitalGov back in April, Bill Brantley discussed the importance of government data to the US economy...Combining data in innovative ways can provide valuable informational products and services, and this is a solid argument for encouraging the DOC to release more data via APIs...This information could be used to determine commercial opportunities or environmental impacts, or to track any series of metrics to determine the health of the industry...”

Government data is fuel for job creation, says Commerce Department CDO

“...government agencies publish data about labor, energy, health, transit, telecommunications, criminal justice, and just about everything else than can be measured, managed, performed, or regulated by state entities. The 12 bureaus that make up the US Department of Commerce are among the most important collectors and publishers of data in the nation, and thus on the planet... 

In Washington, DC, Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker hired Ian J. Kalin in March 2015 to be the agency's first CDO, tasking him with improving the quantity and quality of data available to the public he serves. Our interview with Kalin...follows, lightly edited for length and clarity... 

My job is to help create jobs with information. That's what I do. Information helps people. Data is one way to talk about it. There's a lot of great data from the government that can help people create jobs and services. My job is to insure that there is a great quantity and quality of that information so that they can create those fantastic products...”

A participant at the August 19 civic hacking meetup in Appleton asked me if anybody makes money doing civic hacking. The two items above address the issue of figuring out how to provide and use federal public data to power or assist a business. Government open data and APIs can be translated into multi-million dollar businesses. Some civic hackers have converted successful civic hack projects into for-profit companies. Other people have paid their dues by civic hacking for a couple years, then leveraged their skill and knowledge into a job in the govtech sector. Civic hacking, govtech and government jobs will never pay as much as for-profit companies, but civic hacking has led some people into a full-time job they truly enjoy.

Keep plugging away

“BallotPath founder Jim Cupples sent me a follow-up note (see below), and it hits home two important points. 

First, if someone is excited about a civic or government technology idea, and they reach out to you for advice or feedback, take the call and listen. Don’t be dismissive or unload your cynicism. Be encouraging...It’s easy for those of us who’ve been doing this for a while to be cynical, but we’re the ones that should be the most helpful... 

Second, if you’re like Jim and are excited about changing how civics works, don’t let the curmudgeons bring you down...With his permission, here’s the full email from Jim... 

Hey Luke,
A long time ago I emailed you through LinkedIn and you encouraged me to keep plugging away at my project of building a national database of all elected officials. I was new to civic tech and didn’t know anyone and rarely received any support. Most people said to me (unnecessarily aggressive and condescendingly) “How are you going to make money with that?” but I didn’t care because I had this need to continue working on it. 

Fast forward 18 or so months later and I’ve: received funding from the Sunlight Foundation, completed the entire state of Oregon and 50 of the Top 100 Counties in the US, found a permanent position with NationBuilder working on the project with their tech resources, and have a network of universities around the country that help me recruit political science interns to do the candidacy filing procedure research (almost all of the UC schools, U of Oregon, U of Washington, Boise State, U of Hawaii, CUNY, and others). Thanks for responding to me when you didn’t know who I was and probably seemed like a lot of other people who have a passing thought on a project...”

This item highlights the value of persistence for civic hackers who identify a significant civic need, believe deeply in their project, and continue reaching out to people affected by the civic hack and people who may be interested in collaborating on or supporting the civic hack project. It would be fun to meet with Jim Cupples and hear about his two-year journey to get to where he is now.

Collaborative Project Management

“Collaboration is at the heart of the Smart Chicago Collaborative and is essential to achieving the goals of the civic technology movement. The hard problems that need to be solved can not be solved in isolation. 

There is an art to collaboration. Being in a collaboration means that you’ve agreed that your partner or partnering organization is already highly capable at what they do. It means that you’ve agreed upon a common goal and a plan of action to achieve that goal. Being in a collaboration means that you’ve opened up the lines of communication for the duration of the project. 

Working collaboratively isn’t always easy – particularly when the project involves multiple partners or complex problems. Things can get exponentially more complex each time you add a moving part.  Here’s some thoughts on how I’ve approached collaborative project management in my consulting practice and in my work at Smart Chicago...”

The author of this post is a leader of Chicago civic hacking, and it seems likely he wrote this post because Chicago civic hackers need to do better on their collaborative project management. It’s easy to see why that might be the case.

1. Civic hackers are, for the most part, volunteers. That means the leaders of various civic hack projects need to have even better people skills than managers in companies, because the volunteers can quit working on the project any time they don’t feel they’re being listened to or aren’t enjoying the project work. And there is no ‘paycheck leverage’ to help keep project contributors accountable for their portion of the work.
2. Computer code is a significant aspect of many civic hack projects. It’s hard enough to find effective project managers for coding projects when you’re paying them $100K+/year. Can you imagine the odds of finding an effective project manager of a coding project when you’re paying them nothing, and you’re paying the coders working on the project nothing?
3. Civic hacking is a relatively new trend. As a result, few civic hack project leaders have much experience with it, there aren't many examples showing how it's done, and the tech platforms and tools have not yet been standardized. These aspects make project management both more difficult and more needed.

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Open Data: Privacy & Security

Civic hackers and open data are children of public-spirited and trusting Gen Xers in the same way that personal computers, open source software and the Internet were the children of altruistic and ingenuous Baby Boomers. Unfortunately, altruistic and trusting children of the sun don’t think the same way as people who lurk in the darker corners of society.

For better or worse, digital security is one of the last concerns of digital innovations. By definition, these innovations are significantly different from anything that came before, and in the early stages of an innovation, there is no way to predict if the innovation will be successful and last for years, or if it will be a flop and fade quickly from everyone’s memory. The only innovations created by people skilled in digital security are new digital security objects. Extremely few innovations in smartphone apps, integrated circuits, connected cars features, or any products on Kickstarter will be developed by digital security ninjas because they aren’t highly knowledgeable about or experienced in those fields. Pretty much nobody has enough money, time and knowledge to bake top quality security into their innovation before the product is shown to be a success. Even after the innovation is a proven success, very few people or companies will spend the time or money to go back and redesign the product with bulletproof digital security.

Personal computers and the Internet suffer from the same digital security issues as a result of the open design approach of many of their early users and product developers. Not only weren’t these people skilled in digital security, they purposely avoided security in favor of convenience and collaborative sharing. When it’s easy and convenient for well-intentioned people to use complex and powerful computing systems, it is also easy for ill-intentioned people to abuse and misuse the systems. The result of this philosophy and approach to real-world implementation was described in 1986 in a conversation in “The Cuckoo’s Egg” by Clifford Stoll.

“...Dennis saw the hacker problem in terms of social morality. "We'll always find a few dodos poking around our data. I'm worried about how hackers poison the trust that's built our networks. After years of trying to hook together a bunch of computers, a few morons can spoil everything...The real work isn't laying wires, it's agreeing to link isolated communities together. It's figuring out who's going to pay for the maintenance and improvements. It's forging alliances between groups that don't trust each other...The agreements are informal and the networks are overloaded," Dennis said. "Our software is fragile as well—if people built houses the way we write programs, the first woodpecker would wipe out civilization..."

Billions of dollars are being spent annually on cybersecurity now for personal computers, organizational networks and the Internet, but much of that money is being spent, sometimes unsuccessfully, to address problems created by the original lack of security described in “The Cuckoo’s Egg.”

Open data and civic hacking has numerous benefits and shouldn’t be avoided or squelched, but it’s critical  to get more digital security specialists integrally involved in this space, and we need those specialists to build security into the DNA of the civic hack ecosystem. This is not always done, and the absence of a secure foundation will limit the reliability and usage of civic hacks. It may eventually cause many government organizations to shut down their open data sets and revert to locked-down public-data files.

In addition to the issue of digital security for open data and civic hacking, there is the even more important challenge of protecting personal privacy. Because the data which civic hacking works with is often tied to personal data and geolocations, there are concerns about maintaining appropriate privacy.

The related third topic, in addition to security and privacy, is data quality. If open data sets have inaccurate or incomplete data, or if the data is interpreted inappropriately, civic hacks created with that data may be useless or cause unnecessary problems, such as driving poor decisions or creating misplaced public concern about issues related to the data. Because most civic hackers are unpaid volunteers, it’s unrealistic to expect all their civic hacks to have expert-level security, privacy and data quality.

There are online documents and guidelines for dealing with open data security and privacy concerns. But I suspect that many smaller cities which are providing or considering providing open data do not have employees with necessary knowledge, skill and responsibility to ensure all those cities' open data is managed with high levels of security, privacy and quality. Some cities may not realize they need to have someone like that taking care of open data, while other cities may not have the budget to cover the costs of top shelf security, privacy and quality for open data. This is something that organizations like the National League of Cities should get involved with.

Because of the current US and global push to release increasing amounts of open civic data, more open data guidelines, manuals and practices will be developed, especially through programs like the Bloomberg “What Works Cities” initiative. Mesa, AZ, and some of the other cities involved in that initiative have never provided open data, so I’m sure part of the Bloomberg program will address and refine how to provide secure, high quality open data that appropriately addresses personal privacy issues.

Open data and civic hacking are good for NE Wisconsin, as explain in various posts on this blog. However, all NE Wisconsin cities, counties or other government bodies publishing open data need to take the time and effort to make sure digital security, personal privacy and data quality are appropriately addressed.

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If you’re highly interested in digital security, personal privacy and quality issues related to open data, the items below may be of interest to you. You can also search with Google for “open data” and additional relevant keywords to meet your needs.
“How to protect privacy when releasing open data”
"Open Data: Where to start, what to keep close"
"National/Homeland Security and Privacy/Confidentiality Checklist and Guidance"
"A Realistic Look at Open Data" 
"The problem with Open Data"

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Day After Report: Civic Hacking At The Appleton Makerspace

Appleton Makerspace civic hackers

This is a brief roundup of the civic hacking activity at the Appleton Makerspace in Appleton, Wisconsin, last night, the evening of August 19th.

The Appleton Makerspace event was an informal meetup for civic hackers to continue improving civic hacks from the June 6 civic hackathon and July 22 civic meetup, as well as start new projects and discuss various civic hacking topics.

The first few civic hackers showed at 5 PM, although the nominal start time was 6. There was no agenda for the evening and a few more participants popped in after 6 as schedules allowed, while the molto delizioso Stuc’s pizza and soda showed up in the hands of super civic hacker Mike Rosack a little before 6:30, courtesy of Omni Resources. Thanks, Omni! Two more civic hackers showed up around 7 PM, and we ended up with 12 people total for the evening.

We started out with everyone introducing themselves and talking about what they planned to work on for the evening, then people got busy coding, researching, improving the NE Wisconsin city APIs and the recycling Android and Pebble watch apps, and discussing their hacks with each other.

A couple gracious civic hackers provided short summaries of what they worked on during last night’s meetup:

MP:  Moved the canonical source code repos from my personal GitHub account to the dhmncivichacks GitHub organization for "AppletonAPI" and "Is It Recycling Week?" Android app. Also ideation on "coder cooperative" + TIME community website as a civic hack. 

MR:  I worked with Ross to fork his Pebble app to use the API locator so it can support any city that implements the contract (my beta version now works with both Appleton and Greenville)!  Also, I worked with Chris Jaure on getting his Outagamie county data to conform to the common recycling contract so we'll have support for Little Chute, Kaukauna, etc when he's done. Brady started working on the upgrading the API locator service to the new version of ASP.NET that has cross-platform support (OSX & Linux), so people not on Windows can help out if they want. 

RL:  I got Diane Doersch set up on Slack and GitHub and showed her the dhmncivichacks github org and the DHMN Civic Hacks blog, then helped get Mike Rosack set up with CloudPebble and setting up a watch application.  I think he completed that during the night.  I also talked about learning opportunities for coding and women in tech. 

CJ:  Last night I introduced a fellow Kaukauna resident to the work I had been doing on collecting enough data to be able to determine recycling dates for areas in Outagamie County, and together we created the start of an api server in Azure.

Stuc's deep dish & Moon Man!

There was additional civic hack work last night at the Appleton Makerspace by people who didn’t send me an update. I was doing more yakking than hacking -- should have focused on listening and watching so I'd know what to be writing here... But we did have worthwhile discussion about a slew of future civic hacking projects and getting more people involved with civic hacking.

A couple future DHMN Civic Hacks blog posts are anticipated from last night’s participants -- they’ll be able to do a much better job than I could of explaining the civic hack they worked on and what future plans are for their hack.

In another week or two, we’ll pick the date for the next NE Wisconsin civic hacking event, either on a week night or weekend in September. Watch this blog for event details.

If you want to work with the DHMN to organize a civic hacking event in your area, email Bob Waldron at bwaldron (at) gmail [dott] com. We can do anything from a short session discussing what civic hacking is all the way up to helping you organize a civic hackathon in your city.

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Onboarding v.0.1 For NE Wisconsin Civic Hackers

If the civic hacking community does its job well, there will be first-time civic hackers at every new event, and there will periodically be people who want to learn about and start ‘doing’ civic hacking between events.

In order to quickly and effectively help first-time people understand what civic hacking is and enjoy their first experiences as a civic hacker, we need to have an appropriate onboarding process. That onboarding process should have four components:

1. Written material about civic hacking with links to various online resources.
2. Written intro to NE Wisconsin civic hacking.
3. Activity / project suggestions for new civic hackers.
4. Several core members of NE Wisconsin civic hacking group who make sure first-timers have a good initial experience. All non-first-time civic hackers welcome first-timers, answer questions and help them find a specific civic hack project.

There is way more written and video material about civic hacking than any one person has time to absorb. So the onboarding goal is to most quickly introduce first-timers to civic hacking in a way that helps them enjoy their first experience so much that they make it a priority to participate in the next civic hacking event.

For first-timers planning to go to a civic hacking event, no preparation is required -- just show up! If you’re the type who wants to be totally prepared, here are basic resources to check out before the event:

1. Catherine Bracy TED video, 
2. "What Is Civic Hacking??" blog post
3. If you’re not a programmer / coder / developer, read the blog posts “What Are Some Non-coder Activities In Civic Hacking?” and “Do Non-Programmers Participate In Civic Hacking?”

NE Wisconsin civic hacking events are listed on the DHMN Civic Hacks ‘Events & Registration’ page and are also discussed in DHMN Civic Hacks blog posts.

*Participation in NE Wisconsin civic hacking events requires and implies familiarity with and consent to our Code of Conduct, which is on DHMN Civic Hacks code of conduct page, and is based on the Code for America code of conduct. The code of conduct ensures an event that is safe and welcoming for everyone.*

To get the most out of your first civic hacking event, you should bring your laptop to the event. If you haven't already looked at the three items above, that's a good starting point after you introduce yourself to people.

There is more written and video material about civic hacking than any one person has time to absorb. So the goal is to most quickly introduce first-timers to civic hacking in a way that helps them enjoy their first experience so much that they make it a priority to participate in the next civic hacking event.

The above resources and process steps are NE Wisconsin civic hacking onboarding v.0.1. I'll check with the people who showed up at tonight's civic hacking session to get their input on what additions or deletions they've recommend for v.0.2.

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Cybersecurity & Civic Hacking # 11: What If There Is No NE Wisconsin Collaborative Cybersecurity Initiative?

This blog has numerous posts discussing cybersecurity and civic hacking. A collaborative regional cybersecurity initiative has been proposed for launch in 2015, or 2016 at the latest. The posts highlight bad digital security situations that will get much worse in our region if we don’t launch this initiative for NE Wisconsin. My words can be, and probably are, seen completely or mostly as ‘Boy Cries CyberWolf,’ or the rantings of a Cyberspace Chicken Little.

But I wholeheartedly agree with the July 2015 article in The Guardian that said, “Companies are nowhere near prepared for it. Neither are the Feds...“A slow-moving train wreck,” one executive said. Forget about coordinating with each other or the Feds: companies don’t even know how to deal with their own hacks, never mind worry about someone else’s…”

So what do I think will happen if we don’t launch the NE Wisconsin Cybersecurity initiative and intentionally build next-generation regional cybersecurity expertise here?

There are three type of impact to consider

1. How will people in NE Wisconsin be impacted when the ‘slow-moving digital train wreck’ happens?
2. How will companies in NE Wisconsin be impacted when the train wreck happens? 
3. How will people throughout the US be impacted when the train wreck happens?

As of August 2015, the ‘1% of companies that can identify and afford to pay for effective cybersecurity teams and products, and the minority of internet users literate enough to jump through the hoops needed to be safe online’ are dispersed throughout the US and the world. Many regions of the US have a higher concentration of tech companies and much stronger tech communities than NE Wisconsin does (more of the 1% companies and individuals), which will translate  into decreased regional impact from cybersecurity issues. Consumers and businesses in NE Wisconsin will be much worse off than those regions with a higher cybersecurity IQ.

Below are specific ways people and organizations will be impacted.

NE Wisconsin Consumers

1. People are unable to identify or afford adequate security for their computers, smartphones, cars and homes. They suffer losses or use fewer up-to-date connected devices because of inadequate cybersecurity in NE Wisconsin, which is measurably worse than in better prepared regions of the US.
2. Credit and debit card fraud means increasingly frequent card reissue and accompanying hassles.
3. Identity theft requires frequent straightening out of a myriad of documents and accounts.
4. CryptoLocker and other ransomware cause increasing loss of files or continuing ‘ransom’ payments.
5. Increasing cyberlosses due to skimmers in gas pumps and ATMs.
6. Electronic access security flaws result in increasing theft of items from cars, garages and homes, as well as increased car thefts.
7. Health care problems are caused by attacks on hospital and Electronic Health Records systems (billing, misdiagnoses, delays for treatment, health problems caused by taking wrong meds, hassles to figure out or straighten out records).

NE Wisconsin Economy

1. Per capita income decreases.
2. Unemployment increases.
3. Tech people (college students, young workers, workers at tech companies, tech workers at non-tech companies) leave the region to live and work where they can learn about and have improved cybersecurity.
4. Businesses close in our region at higher rate than in more secure areas of the country.
5. Companies highly dependent on digital world and the Internet leave the region (insurance, banking, web development).

US Economy

1. Cyberattacks and cyberlosses increase significantly.
2. Frequent Internet outages.
3. Groceries, gas, clothes and most consumer goods costs more.
4. Shortages occur for consumer and industrial goods due to shipping system problems, manufacturing problems and general economy slowdown.
5. Profits decrease for most companies due to digital security issues.
6. More businesses shut down due to major digital losses.
7. Cyberinsurance and more expensive cybersecurity systems become legal requirements for US companies.
8. Job losses spike because of business shutdowns, digital attacks and cyberlosses.
9. DHS and NSA are given more legal authority because of digital attacks. In an attempt to figure cybercrime and real-world crime, US government surveillance limitations and personal privacy become just a fond memory.

Some of the above impacts will gradually occur over the next five to ten years. Some of them, like large spikes in unemployment, frequent consumer goods shortages and widespread transportation problems will only occur if we have major digital attacks.

But we need to start on the NE Wisconsin Cybersecurity Initiative NOW because it will take several years to get the program under way. The longer we wait to launch the program, the less effective it will be.

One collaborative regional approach to an epic problem that needs action which is not forthcoming from the state or federal government is the approach taken by the Southeast Florida Regional Climate Change Compact. Maybe we could use the Southeast Florida approach for educating NE Wisconsin community leaders and influential people about how cybersecurity will impact our region and why the proposed digital security initiative will minimize that impact. The excerpt below is from the article “Pioneering Climate Resilience...Through Regional Action” published on August 19, 2015, on the Christian Science Monitor website.

“...the Southeast Florida Regional Climate Change Compact is considered a national model for the kind of shoulder-to-shoulder effort needed to address the problem. They came up with an agreed estimate of sea level rise and identified the most

vulnerable areas of the region, and now are plowing through more than 100 recommendations for action. 

“There are no new funding sources coming down from the state or the Feds,” says Susanne Torriente, assistant city manager for Fort Lauderdale, one of the participants of the compact. “Would it be good to have state and federal dollars? Yes. Are we going to wait until they act? No.” 

Their cooperation was born, essentially, on the back of a napkin. Kristin Jacobs, now a state representative who was a Broward County commissioner in 2008, was lamenting at the time that the 27 disparate municipal water authorities in the region could not agree on joint action. So she and others came up with the idea of getting local officials together in a classroom. 

“We said, ‘Let’s have an academy,’ ” she recalls, and the Broward Leaders Water Academy began offering elected officials in South Florida six-month courses in water hydraulics and policy...”

Climate change is a topic somewhat like cybersecurity -- a difficult-to-prove issue that some people believe is real and others believe is nonsense. Below is a fictional re-write of the above article, addressing cybersecurity in our region rather than anthropogenic climate change in SE Florida.

Northeast Wisconsin Regional Cybersecurity Compact 

“The Northeast Wisconsin Regional Cybersecurity Compact is considered a national model for the kind of shoulder-to-shoulder effort needed to address the problem. They came up with an agreed plan to tremendously improve the cybersecurity of consumers and organizations in the region, and now are plowing through more than 100 recommendations for action. 

“There are no new funding sources coming down from the state or the Feds,” says John Johnson, assistant city manager for the City of Middle Chute, Wisconsin, one of the participants of the compact. “Would it be good to have state and federal dollars? Yes. Are we going to wait until they act? No.” 

Their cooperation was born, essentially, on the back of a napkin. Bob Waldron, a TIME community advocate (Tech, Innovators, Makers, Entrepreneurs), was lamenting at the time that the 49 disparate community and college leaders in the region could not agree on joint action. So he and others came up with the idea of getting local officials together in a classroom. 

“We said, ‘Let’s have an academy,’ ” he recalls, and the NE Wisconsin Leaders Cybersecurity Academy began offering community and college leaders three-month courses in personal, organizational, and regional cybersecurity…”

What should YOU do regardless of whether this cybersecurity initiative is launched and regardless of whether a digital train wreck occurs? In the early days of personal computers, users were warned to back up files because hard drives could crash or virus could corrupt or delete files. Most people didn’t backup like they should have in those days. Most people today still have lousy cybersecurity. But much more of our lives are digital now compared to the early days of PCs, so not following basic digital security good practices can hurt you much more in 2015. Here are my top four recommendations to make sure your personal cybersecurity is as good as the top 1%.

1. Begin with a backup of all digital personal files this weekend and update that backup monthly. This includes contact list info (phone numbers, addresses, etc), photos, financial documents, and all other digital information you don’t want to recreate from scratch.
2. The next step is to do a personal digital audit. Part of that audit is making a hardcopy of all your personal financial information.
3. Find a reliable and highly knowledgeable company that provides personal cybersecurity services and work with them to ensure that all your digital devices have the best security you can afford.
4. Develop a written plan for how you’ll cope if your are forced to live your life for several months without digital devices and without access to your digital information.

I won’t even try to make a list of what businesses should do to prepare for cybersecurity problems. That’s way beyond my pay grade...

WE CAN change the situation. Let’s take personal responsibility to improve things in our cities and our region.

If you feel the NE Wisconsin Cybersecurity proposal should become reality and you want to see it happen, please share a link to this post with everyone you know and encourage them to support the proposal. We need the Right Influential Person to hear about this cybersecurity proposal.

If you’re a community leader or an influential person in NE Wisconsin who can in some way help this cybersecurity program get launched, please contact me, and we can start defining Next Steps to make it happen.

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DHMN Civic Hacks posts about 'Cybersecurity & Civic Hacking':
C&CH # 01: "Cybersecurity: A New Horizon For Civic Hacking?"
C&CH # 02: “Cybersecurity & Civic Hacking # 2: Public Wi-Fi”
C&CH # 03: "Cybersecurity & CH # 3: The Right Person / Topics Of Interest"
C&CH # 04: "Cybersecurity & CH # 4: Malware"
C&CH # 05: “Cybersecurity & CH # 5: Even Cybersecurity Companies Get Hacked!”
C&CH # 06: "Cybersecurity & CH # 6: How Cybersecure Is Your Car?"
C&CH # 07: "Cybersecurity & CH # 7: Data Breaches"
C&CH # 08: "Cybersecurity & Civic Hacking # 8: Hype or Reality?"
C&CH # 09: “Cybersecurity & Civic Hacking # 9: Digital Attacks On Hardware”
C&CH # 10: "Cybersecurity & Civic Hacking # 10: NE Wisconsin Cybersecurity Proposal"
C&CH # 11: This post, published August 18, 2015

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Writing this post was challenging, depressing, frustrating, and fun. My mind kept bouncing between “this is a waste of time because a digital train wreck will never happen” and “this is depressing because the train wreck is happening and nobody in NE Wisconsin can see it.” At times it felt like I was writing the outline for a cyberthriller novel, while the next moment it felt like I was project manager of the NE Wisconsin Cybersecurity Initiative writing the project proposal section titled “Consequences Of Not Approving Project”. During my research for this post, I even read an article that began with the sentence, “Have you ever had a “must do” project fail to get funding even though you knew it was a winner?” At the end of my vacillations, I found myself back where I started when I wrote the first cybersecurity post:

This is a serious problem we can and should work to address, but the history and culture of NE Wisconsin tells me there will be no action taken to create a regional cybersecurity program.

This is my last post about cybersecurity and civic hacking. I could be totally wrong about the train wreck and NE Wisconsin being worse off than other parts of the US. It will be interesting to see the state of cybersecurity in ten years.

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TIME Community & Civic Hacking

This blog post takes a short look at the intersection of the TIME community (Tech, Innovators, Makers, Entrepreneurs) and the civic hacking community. Because you’re reading the DHMN Civic Hacks blog, you probably at least somewhat understand the types of people who are in the civic hacking community. But you may not recognize the term ‘TIME community.’

The NE Wisconsin TIME community is an informal network of technologists, innovators, makers and entrepreneurs, like-minded and complementary-minded people who live in the 18 counties of northeast Wisconsin. Currently, these community members are loosely connected or not connected at all with each other. They can be briefly described as ‘doers’ and are sometimes called ‘creatives,’ ‘people who don’t watch much tv’ or ‘participants, not spectators.’ When 200+ members of the region’s TIME community become well-connected and active in local TIME community activities, this ‘virtual critical mass’ will begin to impact the culture and economy of the region. A connected community results in many serendipitous interactions between community members, making it easy to find relevant events and to connect with people who have a lot in common with each other.

There are TIME communities in every metro area or multi-county region. However, in many of these areas, the geographical density of of the TIME demographic is too low to create an in-person critical mass or ‘tipping point.’ With respect to a TIME community, a critical mass or tipping point means that no intentional person or group of people needs to connect and support the creation of a cohesive TIME community or to make many connections between individual members of that community. Where there is an in-person critical mass, there will be so many TIME activities and so many serendipitous interactions between members of the TIME community that a person interested in such a community will easily be able to find relevant events and connect with other like-minded people.

In low geo-density TIME communities, there needs to be intentional but ‘distributed’ plans and actions in order to create a ‘virtual critical mass’ if that region’s TIME community is to be well-connected and resilient. Distributed refers to two concepts. The first is that activities and connected people need to be geographically distributed throughout the 18 counties of NE Wisconsin. If we only have connected people and TIME events in Green Bay, Appleton and Oshkosh, we’ll end up with three weakly-connected metro area networks that have infrequent events with low participation levels. We need TIME events in many more communities than Green Bay, Appleton and Oshkosh, and we need TIME community members in Fond du Lac who know lots of other members in Sturgeon Bay, Shawano, New London, Manitowoc and Kiel. And we need people connections between so many other cities in the region that it’s hard to keep them all straight.

Distributed also means that the TIME community is primarily self-directed, or has distributed leadership. People in the TIME community need to take personal responsibility for helping organize TIME events, like civic hackathons, barcamps, Meetup.com groups for tech topics, mini makerfaires, Startup Weekends, etc. They also need to take personal responsibility for connecting like-minded members of the region’s TIME community who don’t already know each other.

The civic hacking community is, for the most part, a subset of the TIME community. Most people who self-identify as civic hackers would also consider themselves to be tech people, innovators, makers or entrepreneurs.

Because it’s mostly a subset of the TIME community, the civic hacking community in NE Wisconsin has even more of a low geo-density challenge than the TIME community, and it has the same need for intentional connecting and support. For both the civic hacking community and TIME community of our area, we need to strongly connect enough community members that a virtual critical mass is developed. We need to make more in people in the TIME community aware of civic hacking activities happening in our region. Civic hackers should also be connecting TIME community members with each other, even if they’re not interested in or involved in civic hacking.

One of my personal goals is to find a couple other people to work with me on a civic hack for much more strongly connecting the NE Wisconsin TIME community. This will be a fun hack to work on, because small successes in the early stage will lead to faster growth and a more active TIME community, becoming a virtuous cycle that reinforces itself. When you know 200 people nearby who might be interested in working on a project with you, instead of knowing two or three people you could ask, things get a lot more interesting. And when you have a TIME event, like a barcamp, or a civic hacking event, like an informal weekday meetup, you know 200 people you can invite, or you and nineteen other people each know ten different people you can invite to the event.

Speaking of civic hacking events and barcamps, one is coming up this week and another one just became available for registration this week.

On Wednesday, August 19th, you are invited to join others in an informal civic hacking meetup at the Appleton Makerspace, in Appleton, Wisconsin, USA. See the post “Civic Hacking, August 19, Appleton: Put It On Your Calendar!” for details. The event has a nominal start time of 6 PM, although I’m sure a few people will show up by 5 PM.

Looking into the future a couple months to an event on November 7, 2015, BarCampGreenBay 2015 opened up just this week for registration. Go to the event website to register (free). This is an ideal event for TIME community members, and civic hackers will also enjoy it. For those who don’t know, barcamps are participant-driven technology unconferences. I’ll be writing a post in the near future about barcamps, so check back if you want more info on that, or put Google to work for you.

Future posts will also have more about connecting the civic hacking community in NE Wisconsin, as well as the TIME community.

Hope to see you on Wednesday at the Appleton Makerspace!

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Disabled Accessibility & Civic Hacking

Accessibility, or disabled accessibility, appears to be a topic ripe for civic hacking, although I use the term ‘appears’ because thus far I’ve only glimpsed the tip of the accessibility iceberg.

I’m writing this post as a result of two things that happened last week. The first was a conversation with my sister and her family while they were on vacation at a rental cottage in Wautoma, Wisconsin. The other catalyst for this post was an article I read about open data from the US Census Bureau.

The first requirement for a discussion about accessibility is to define what is meant by that term. Today’s post will deal primarily with mobility accessibility, but there is a whole spectrum of other accessibility issues which civic hackers may want to consider. The two definitions below from Wikipedia help show what those other issues include.

“Accessibility refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities...which includes not only physical access but access to the same tools, services, organizations and facilities for which everyone pays.” Disability is defined as “the consequence of an impairment that may be physical, cognitive, mental, sensory, emotional, developmental, or some combination of these.” As mentioned, today I’ll just focus on mobility accessibility.

The article I read last week that connected accessibility and civic hacking was “How the Census Bureau evangelizes open data.” The article was about open data from the US census and the five finalists in the Census Bureau City Software Development Kit (SDK) Data Solutions Challenge.

“The five finalists in the Census Bureau’s open data challenge showcased their apps...highlighting how they used open data from the census to tackle a multitude of social problems. 

One of the finalists, Disabled Accessibility Score, developed in Minneapolis, uses open census data to allow people with disabilities to find the best places to live or travel in Minnesota. The app lets users search accessibility scores of five data sets: mobility, housing, hospital, safety and community. “I can think of many different federal agencies at this very moment [that] aren’t even aware of this and could use this application,” said Bender. “It has tremendous implications in health care and veterans affairs...”

Disability Accessibility Score (DAS) shows how publicly available data can help address mobility access issues. DAS is one of the early attempts to use accessibility open data, but I can see how the usefulness of this type of open data will improve tremendously as more accessibility data is provided in an open format and people begin using it more.

The conversation in Wautoma with my sister’s family was about finding family vacation spots that are enjoyable for people with mobility limitations. They like to do annual extended-family vacations at rental cottages, but they need to have a place that is wheelchair accessible, both the house and its surroundings. If just the house is wheelchair accessible and not the surroundings, then family members with mobility limitations can’t fully enjoy the vacation and are stuck in the house.

For my sister’s family, their ideal vacation spot will include, among other things, a one-level house or cottage with a swimming beach. In the years before they had mobility limitations, they enjoyed several cottages at a beautiful Lake Michigan beach, but that location has long stairs to get down to the beach. Their goal is to have the same enjoyable summer beach experience as those years when the kids were young, but be able to have it with wheelchair accessibility, which may also be listed on rental sites as handicapped accessibility.

Their other needs and wants are having every entrance wheelchair accessible, ramp to the beach, boardwalk on the beach or a beach wheelchair available, walk-in shower with assist bars and a bench, assist bars for the toilets, no carpet / rugs, plenty of space for a wheelchair throughout the house, and a large driveway for several cars with space for getting assistive devices in and out. Oh yeah, and they’d like the house(s) or cottage(s) to have at least five bedrooms and sleep at least twelve people. This is not the description of a common rental property!  :)

I’m going to have to do several weeks of research before I can make suggestions to my sister for how she can more easily find wheelchair accessible rental vacation cabins with a swimming beach. One answer might be that she should use certain search keyword phrases and operators. Another might be that a list of ten specific sites will help her find the best choices for a vacation rental. A third option might be that there are very few places like they need, and they should consider working with others to remodel or build one or several large wheelchair accessible cabins to fill that gap in the vacation rental market. A ‘civic hacking’ option might be to create a website (and mobile app?) that allows people who need wheelchair accessible vacation rentals to more easily find them. Research on this topic might also point out other potential civic hack projects for websites or mobile apps that would be very useful to people with mobility or other accessibility needs.

There has been some civic hacking around disability issues, and Philadelphia appears to have been especially active with this topic. Some of the work done in that city is discussed in “These locals are making tech more accessible for people with disabilities,” “Six projects from #Hack4Access: hackathon on disability, aging issues,” and “Civic hacking with Impact: Raising Visibility of (In)Accessibility in Philadelphia.” In the latter article, James Tyack explains,

“Just over a year ago I started a volunteer civic project...at a Hackathon called Apps for Philly Transit...to raise awareness of good and bad accessibility by mapping accessible stations, elevator outages and accessible venues in Philadelphia… 

UnlockPhilly is a great example of a civic hacking project that has gone beyond the Hackathon to provide useful tools that take into account the needs of the community and make a positive impact...People have found the project online and contacted me; new volunteers have joined the team and contributions have even been made by volunteers I’ve never met via Github... 

Recognition of the hard work made by groups like ADAPT and the Disability Rights Network (DRN) is important. Accessibility has improved dramatically in Philadelphia over the past 20 years thanks to tireless campaigning by advocates and activists. For example, all city buses are now wheelchair accessible and elevators have been installed at many stations. However, there are still huge problems: shops, restaurants, bars and recreational facilities are often completely inaccessible, many stations are still inaccessible and extended elevator outages reduce the number of accessible places still further...”

NE Wisconsin cities are nowhere near as large as Philadelphia, but there are bound to be mobility accessibility issues even in our smaller cities. An accessibility project would be a great way for someone to get involved in civic hacking if they’re motivated to improve accessibility in their city or in the region, regardless of whether they (a) are disabled, (b) have a relative or friend who’s disabled, or (c) just want to make our communities better for those who are disabled.

The concept of civic hacking using 21st century tools to make our communities better or solve problems definitely applies to disabled accessibility issues. Here are four potential Next Steps for civic hackers in NE Wisconsin or elsewhere to consider in the realm of disabled accessibility.

1. Research disabled accessibility issues to identify (a) major needs of disabled people nationally and in NE Wisconsin, (b) relevant local, state and federal open data or non-open data, (c) existing resources, apps and assistance for disabled people, and (d) all the existing civic hacking projects working on that topic. Parts of this information will be available in reports from state, federal or private organizations; other parts will be scattered across numerous websites. This is a great civic hacking project for non-coders to work on because there is a mountain of research needed that requires no coding skills.
2. Recruit disabled people as civic hackers to work on this type of project because they’re the people who best know the challenges they face, the existing resources and what types of civic hacks would be most useful to them.
3. Recruit as civic hackers people who are very knowledgeable and passionate about resources for disabled people, whether that involves mobility or some other type of disability.
4. Show up for the August 19 civic hacking meetup at the Appleton Makerspace at 6 PM and start working on an accessibility civic hack! If you’re not sure where to start, I’ll be happy to help you.

Update -- 05 Apr 2016 -- This article, "Facebook's first blind engineer is revolutionizing social media as we know it," gives one look at why people with disabilities should be involved with civic hacking and other technology innovation efforts.

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