Open Gov Partnership -> Crossfit for Democracy

[KerryOConnor]

Short description of the idea (140 character tweet):

Help design Austin's commitments to up our game in transparency, accountability, civic participation, and civic tech innovation.

What is your project concept or idea? What challenge or opportunity will it solve?

Pitch Slide

In April 2016, the international Open Government Partnership (OGP) invited Austin to join 14 other local governments worldwide to up our game in accountability, transparency, civic participation, and technology/innovation by co-creating 3-5 commitments and action plans with civil society partners. We have until approximately October to draft the commitments and action plan, which will be assessed by OGP’s Independent Reporting Mechanism.

We would like to catalyze the co-creation process for developing these commitments starting with the ATX Hack for Change. A representative from the Open Government Partnership Support Unit, as well as the creators of this Open Government Manual will be present during the ATX Hack for Change to capture and share our experience with our 14 counterparts from around the world.

Who will benefit from your project? Describe the humans at the center of the problem - who are they?

How would they benefit? Can you tell their story?

Do you have photos of them? Or quotes?

Here are a few quotes from humans at the center:

"I'm totally out of my comfort zone on this city policy stuff and often unclear about how to proceed. Many valid perspectives to every issue." - member of the technology community after Prop 1.

"What's missing is culturally relevant models of engagement." AND "People are passionate and aware, but they don't know where and how to make big changes happen." - East Austin resident during the Spirit of East Austin forum on equitable economic development.

"I wouldn't know, I'm not very good at that." - Austin resident when asked about how well city government performs.

You shouldn't have to be good at government in order to interact meaningfully with government. And yet, the issues we face are complex and coming together as a community around these issues is difficult. How might we tailor our commitments to open government to support a better way of coming together around the issues we collectively face? How might "Imagine Austin" become a living, breathing continuous act of co-creation rather than solely a report and a plan?

Issue area(s) relevant to your project idea:

• Open Government/Transparency

What is the current state of your project idea?

• I understand the challenge well but don’t yet have ideas for a solution

Tell us more about the current state of your project idea.

Do you have any links to news articles, text, mockups, code, or data?

We are at the beginning to designing 3-5 commitments to up our game in open government.

Tell us about yourself.

What is your background? Why is this challenge important to you?

Are you representing a group in submitting this project idea?

I am the City of Austin's Chief Innovation Officer. This challenge is at the heart of why the Community Technology and Telecommunications Commission, Open Austin, City Council, City Manager and the broader community decided that my position should exist - innovation in government. I, along with the City's Law Department, will be bringing this challenge to the hackathon.

[danielhonker]

Thanks for the submission @KerryOConnor -- love it! I added some labels.

[polunsky]

Promising. If I understand this right, potential points of focus could be the digital divide, a cultural divide, or a knowledge gap?

[danielhonker]

You're in, @KerryOConnor! We invite you to pitch your project at the 2016 ATX Hack for Change!

Now that your project has been approved, here are some things we suggest you do next:
https://github.com/atxhack4change/2016-project-proposals#once-your-project-is-accepted-here-are-some-things-we-suggest-you-do-next

You will receive an email shortly regarding you speaking slot for the Saturday morning pitches. Please let us know if you will no longer be able to champion your project at the hackathon.

[danielhonker]

@KerryOConnor - The Slack channel for this project is #opengovpartnership. We'll be sending out an email with details on pitches soon.

[Marion3Sanchez]

Individuals with diverse backgrounds have different experiences with government. Because of the global challenges, a lot of people have a negative concept attached to government. Openness and transparency are great tools to change the view of our City government. This is important because we are basically inheriting these experiences regardless of how well we are trying to serve the community. I would like to add to the idea the following... could we have some kind of AustinGovernment 101 with this application?

Another random thought: I feel that openness and transparency are shared activities between the community we served and the City. Without the feedback of the community, how could we know what is important to know for them? If we dont have some kind of mechanism to prioritized the things that matters to the community, we probably would have a huge bible of information from the City.