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Open City Council #94

Open rskoenig opened 7 years ago

rskoenig commented 7 years ago

What problem are we trying to solve?

Making it possible for any citizen to openly participate in a council meeting whether or not they are present at the meeting.

Who will benefit (directly and indirectly) from this project?

The public. It creates a new official channel for citizens to be a part of their government. The full scope of the project includes automating availability of existing council and committee agenda items for comment as well as establishing a process for citizens to propose new items.

Links to any research/data available/articles

civinomics.com https://github.com/civinomics/city-council https://austintexas.granicusideas.com/discussions/enhancing-public-participation-at-city-council https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B03eSKsSW8_iT09pNEhKaVJMdTg/view

What are the next steps (validation, research, coding, design)?

Validation, coding.

What help is needed at this time?

We need citizens to use, test and help us generate/prioritize stories. We need developers to help us speed up the project.

Project management

Checklist for NEW ideas :baby:

Hey, you're official! You're now part of the growing civic hacking community in Austin. Here's a few things to get started (a couple you've probably already done).

Checklist for ACTIVE projects :fire:

Let's get this project started! When this idea starts taking off, the Projects Core Team will start helping this project's lead(s) out with project management and connecting you to resources you may need. To get there, please complete and check off the following:

Checklist for FEATURED Projects :tada:

To have your project FEATURED on Open-Austin.org, complete the following documentation. In past projects, well-documented featured projects have more contributions than other projects.

Once all of the above is complete,

If you get stuck at any point, feel free to reach out to the leadership team on Slack by adding @leadership to your message. We're here to help you make real changes to our city.

werdnanoslen commented 7 years ago

This sounds really neat! A couple questions:

  1. What is the (if any) official word on how/whether people can participate in meetings remotely?
  2. Do you need any non-human resources to work on this? https://goo.gl/forms/0PGtzsfUWvW2IQRO2
rskoenig commented 7 years ago

  1. To my knowledge, there is not currently any process for allowing someone to teleconference into a City Council meeting to provide a statement. Instead Citizens who cannot attend a meeting are encouraged to send their statements (calls, written text, video, whatever) to their representative council member directly. In theory that council member then considers that statement when they cast their vote. The problems with this form of remote participation are that... a) It is one to one. Citizens at best get a note back from their representative saying their feedback has been received. They cannot currently see statements that other citizens have submitted. Therefore, they don't get social validation for their opinions or have the opportunity to validate others. There is no chance for Citizens to build on each others input. b) It is not quantitative. Because citizen input comes from any channel, there is not a standardized way to measure how "hot" or "controversial" an agenda item is. There is no way to compare an agenda item from this months meeting to one from last month's meeting. c) No notifications. Citizens don't currently have any alert system that tells them an item they might be interested in is coming up for vote. This means participation tends to come from a select group of regular contributors.

  2. Filled out the survey. More humans is the most important but barring that money is always a good substitute. Any connections with grant or investor funding sources would be helpful. A space to work from in Austin would also be great if there is a coworking space of choice, etc. Other than that, what kind of resources has Open Austin provided in the past?

werdnanoslen commented 7 years ago

Great research here, glad to see so much progress already made! One thing, though, on 1c, there is a local service that does this: https://www.voterheads.com/. It's not the most usable or visually impressive thing, and there's plenty of ways it could be improved, but it's a good proof of concept. And afaik they're a closed-source company.

rskoenig commented 7 years ago

Thanks for the link to Voterheads - I've signed up to learn more. I look forward to next steps with you guys. I should be able to make your April 17th Meetup.

werdnanoslen commented 7 years ago

The City just posted this to Nextdoor:

The public now has the ability to participate during General Citizen’s Communications during regularly-scheduled City Council meetings via videoconferencing.

The City began piloting remote citizen communication on March 2, 2017 at three Austin public Library branches. This program has now been expanded to libraries in nine city council districts.

Remote citizen communication makes government more accessible to Austinites,” said Mayor Steve Adler. “This allows the City Council to hear from people we might not normally hear from.”

Time is set aside at noon at each council meeting for a maximum of 10 individuals to address the city council on topics of their choice.

A person who intends to speak at this time must register in advance with the Office of the City Clerk. Registration must include the meeting date, name, contact information, and location (either in Council Chambers at the meeting or off-site at a participating library). Contact the Office of the City Clerk by phone (512-974-2210) or by email (citizens.communication@austintexas.gov) to sign up. The registration period for a given meeting begins at 9:00 am 14 days prior to the meeting and ends at 4:30 pm the following Thursday.

Beginning May 4, 2017, Remote Citizen Communication will be available from the following library branches: • Carver Branch (District 1) • Southeast Community Branch (District 2) • Ruiz Branch (District 3) • Little Walnut Creek Branch (District 4) • Manchaca Road Branch (District 5) • Spicewood Springs Branch (District 6) • Yarborough Branch (District 7) • Hampton Branch at Oak Hill (District 8) • City Hall will remain the District 9 Citizen Communications venue • Old Quarry Branch (District 10)

“This program makes connectivity and civic engagement easier, and our City Council more accessible to the Austin community,” said Interim City Manager Elaine Hart.

Library staff are trained and ready to assist people in using the videoconferencing technology. For more information about the General Citizen Communication process please visit www.austintexas.gov/department/citizen-participation-council-meetings or contact the Clerk’s office at 512-974-2210.

For more information about citizen communication, visit www.austintexas.gov/council.

rskoenig commented 7 years ago

Awesome, thanks for sharing. That's interesting that a maximum of 10 speaking slots are available. I wonder if that's per district or just because that's the time they set aside? Will definitely look in to integrating the existing video feed into the app.

On Thu, Apr 20, 2017 at 2:48 PM, Andrew Nelson notifications@github.com wrote:

The City just posted this to Nextdoor:

The public now has the ability to participate during General Citizen’s Communications during regularly-scheduled City Council meetings via videoconferencing.

The City began piloting remote citizen communication on March 2, 2017 at three Austin public Library branches. This program has now been expanded to libraries in nine city council districts.

Remote citizen communication makes government more accessible to Austinites,” said Mayor Steve Adler. “This allows the City Council to hear from people we might not normally hear from.”

Time is set aside at noon at each council meeting for a maximum of 10 individuals to address the city council on topics of their choice.

A person who intends to speak at this time must register in advance with the Office of the City Clerk. Registration must include the meeting date, name, contact information, and location (either in Council Chambers at the meeting or off-site at a participating library). Contact the Office of the City Clerk by phone (512-974-2210 <(512)%20974-2210>) or by email (citizens.communication@austintexas.gov) to sign up. The registration period for a given meeting begins at 9:00 am 14 days prior to the meeting and ends at 4:30 pm the following Thursday.

Beginning May 4, 2017, Remote Citizen Communication will be available from the following library branches: • Carver Branch (District 1) • Southeast Community Branch (District 2) • Ruiz Branch (District 3) • Little Walnut Creek Branch (District 4) • Manchaca Road Branch (District 5) • Spicewood Springs Branch (District 6) • Yarborough Branch (District 7) • Hampton Branch at Oak Hill (District 8) • City Hall will remain the District 9 Citizen Communications venue • Old Quarry Branch (District 10)

“This program makes connectivity and civic engagement easier, and our City Council more accessible to the Austin community,” said Interim City Manager Elaine Hart.

Library staff are trained and ready to assist people in using the videoconferencing technology. For more information about the General Citizen Communication process please visit www.austintexas.gov/department/citizen-participation-council-meetings or contact the Clerk’s office at 512-974-2210 <(512)%20974-2210>.

For more information about citizen communication, visit www.austintexas.gov/council.

— You are receiving this because you were assigned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/open-austin/project-ideas/issues/94#issuecomment-295929438, or mute the thread https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AEWn3SlFILLPYKdxidXN-NQ0JfKC9rxzks5rx9KngaJpZM4Mr6WU .

mateoclarke commented 7 years ago

Heads up on a parallel project exploring this issue: https://github.com/Data4Democracy/town-council

rskoenig commented 7 years ago

Thanks!

Manu Koenig Co-Founder & CEO manu@ manu@civinomics.comciv.io http://civ.io/ | c: 831.234.3922 877 Cedar St, Ste 150, Santa Cruz CA 95060

On Mon, May 22, 2017 at 8:23 PM, Mateo Clarke notifications@github.com wrote:

Heads up on a parallel project exploring this issue: https://github.com/Data4Democracy/town-council

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stephtrinh commented 7 years ago

One complaint I have is the inability to track amendments made on the dais. Council gets amendments in advance and on the dais, but the public only sees it IF they project it on the screen. Can we at least require the city twitter account to tweet a picture of amendments as they're being discussed?

werdnanoslen commented 7 years ago

I wonder what would be more feasible:

stephtrinh commented 7 years ago

Often the amendments are not shown on the screen. Also it's a livestream, so you can't go back in case you missed something.

Stephanie K Trinh

2017-07-21 15:59 GMT-05:00 Andrew Nelson notifications@github.com:

I wonder what would be more feasible:

  • Getting council to tweet photos of amendment slides
  • CV program watching stream that screenshots and tweets when slides come up

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werdnanoslen commented 7 years ago

Hi @rskoenig, how are you doing on this project? Need any help?

rskoenig commented 7 years ago

Hi @werdnanoslen, we'd love some help. We're regrouping with Doug Matthews from the City of Austin on Thursday rgd implementation. We've also seen demand from Dallas and Tallahassee. What's the best next step to engage the group?

werdnanoslen commented 7 years ago

That's great news! Could you post here again with what you learn from Doug & CoA? I'm not sure who we know in Dallas in the CfA network, but you might invite folks to our Slack team as a way to keep the momentum up. I also posted in CfA's #florida slack channel but it seems their website is offline and thus probably not very active.

For next steps, I just added a checklist to your first post in this thread. The most important thing is to make a regular monthly post about progress, because usually folks who join Open Austin are looking for projects they can help with and get their feet wet. And let me know if you need anything specific!