Open Source Bridge - Thursday Keynote: Mayor Sam Adams on CivicApps

Sam Adams, Mayor of Portland

• CivicApps for Greater Portland
  • interaction at last year's OSB kicked off regional effort to put Portland in the forefront of open source and open data
• update on how Portland is leading in the area of open source
  • asked for city government to be an early client of open source work that is happening locally
  • also asked for financial assistance with open source projects
• civicapps can change the relationship between the government and the people they serve
  • give people new tools to get at what they need
  • greater accountability
  • example: iphone app where people can take pictures of potholes--this gives the photo and the exact coordinates of the pothole
    • submitters get notification when the pothole they reported is fixed
    • idea of government reporting back directly to citizens is huge source of satisfaction
    • now the challenge is to provide this type of customer service on more platforms
• civicapps has gotten a lot of national attention because it's regional--isn't specific to one city
  • portland isn't that unique--60K people who work in portland but don't live in portland
  • lots of other open data apps are specific to cities--not as realistic to the daily life of people
• contests to develop apps around open data
  • area that needs a lot of work ("significant mystery to citizens") is the inner workings of the decision making process
    • e.g. city council issues being considered
    • city council agendas can have 60-150 items on them
    • mystery to citizens how the work actually gets done
    • need to make actual decision making easier to access and more understandable to citizens
• have tried to surround these efforts around an economic development strategy
  • digital development is now one of the four targeted industries for economic assistance
  • investigated what local assets match growth trends regionally
• portland's value proposition
  • not silicon valley and don't want to be
  • where portland can compete and win on a proportional basis is that there's a more diverse group of technology folks in portland
  • clearly is smaller, but especially around software, there's a greater diversity of different talents and approaches than anywhere else in the world
  • portland technologists are also very agile
  • passion in portland in these areas is huge--everyone involved tends to work together very well
• how can portland's government help technologists succeed?
  • recession has hit some businesses, but software/technology has overall survived better than other industries
  • has been a lack of access to capital to bring best ideas to market
  • started portland seed business fund -- direct result of requests from software industry
  • http://mayorsamadams.com -- more details on this fund
  • portland development commission -- funded "Portland Ten"
    • bootcamp that works with 10 startups
    • access to capital, connection to very best thinkers from around the world
    • "tough love"--helping ten startups get to a million dollars a year in revenue
  • survey will be sent out to people participating in all these efforts--really need the feedback to make sure we stay on track
• "I want you to take over the world from your base here in Portland"
• 25 people involved with civicapps here today to help people hack on data and apps

Rick Nixon - project manager for civicapps

• first ever Civic Code Day
• lots of people here responsible for lots of data for the city, trimet, civicapps web site
• role of govt: supply data
• role of citizens: do something with the data
• seeking to transfer data collection effort to citizens as well
  • open source the web site, number of other efforts going on