Open Affairs Television

Technical and economic benefits of open source software are well documented within the IT world. However, these traits alone are not what has enabled open source to find a home within much of the government's massive enterprise system. This presentation will reveal some of the seldom discussed, yet essential tools and tactics that have directly lead to wide spread open source adoption within the US Department of Defense and Federal Government agencies.

The GovHub presentation will have an introduction to the general ideals of GovHub and what we hope it will be, and then use 3 roles or characters to describe the problems when governments and open source developers try to work together and how GovHub and other collaboration tools like it can help solve those problems. GovHub partners are Greg Lind, a web based software developer and architect, currently employed by Metro Regional Government in Portland, Oregon. John Miller formerly of Lewis and Clark College and Metro and Jarhid Brown from Metro and formerly the Department of Defense.

In addition to his 2010 Government Open Source Conference keynote, David Riley joined us at the conference to talk about details of the CONNECT initiative, with health IT expert and OATV co-founder Jeremy Murtishaw. David outlines the basics of the project, as well as it's acceptance in the health IT community. He also addresses the structure, the security architecture as well as detailing about how health information exchange happens in detail.

What happens when you combine two risk-taking government employees, an active developer community, and a bus schedule? Unlimited amounts of innovation, improved customer service, praise for an embattled government agency, and a model for building a government/citizen developer partnership. Hear how the Massachusetts Department of Transportation learned from TriMet that open is better. Laurel Ruma is the Gov 2.0 Evangelist at O'Reilly Media and co-chair of the Gov 2.0 Expo. She joined the company in 2005 after working for five years at various IT analyst firms in the Boston area. Laurel is also co-editor of Open Government, published by O'Reilly in 2010.

Max Ogden is a developer, open government and CouchDB enthusiast from Portland, OR. One of his recent projects, PDXAPI, is a developer interface to civic geo datasets in Portland, OR. Max recently accepted a position as a Code for America fellow for their inaugural 2011 Code for America fellowship program. Embracing Tim O'Reilly's concept of 'Government as a Platform' is easier said than done. I want to share some of my lessons learned on actually building the 'platform'. My talk will include methods and best practices for both developers and non-developers to refer to when negotiating open government data contracts with local governments.

Skip Newberry serves as Economic Development Policy Advisor to Portland Mayor Sam Adams. A significant portion of Skip's work focuses on developing initiatives to support Portland's software and digital media industries. Last year, Skip's projects included helping to draft the City of Portland's open source procurement and open data policy, which was adopted by Portland City Council in September of 2009. Since then, he has been working with Portland's Bureau of Technology Services to launch Civic Apps for Greater Portland the nation's first regional open data and software application design contest. Other recent projects include contributing to the development of a community broadband strategy for Portland and identifying ways for local government to serve as a test market for new and innovative technology. Since Washington, DC, launched Apps for Democracy, the popularity of public sector open data initiatives and software application design contests has been on the rise at the State and local levels. Nevertheless, these initiatives face three major challenges, and all three relate to support and adoption: 1. support and adoption from public sector agencies, departments, bureaus, and elected officials; 2. support and adoption from software developers; and 3. support and adoption from the users of software apps and open data. In the near future, collaboration amongst different jurisdictions in standardizing data across local, county, state, and international boundaries will pose significant challenges. I do not think these are insurmountable. This presentation focuses on the regional nature of a modest open data and app design contest in the Portland area called Civic Apps for Greater Portland, and attempts to share lessons learned.

Abraham Hyatt is the production editor at the technology news site ReadWriteWeb. He was the creator of the Digital Journalism Portland conference in 2009, and previously worked as the managing editor at Oregon Business magazine. He can be found online at abrahamhyatt.com and @abrahamhyatt on Twitter. Abraham is one of the editors at the tech news site ReadWriteWeb. Last February something happened that made him suddenly realize that there are a significant number of people who are navigating the Web in ways they don't understand. This Ignite presentation is a unique case study -- sometimes funny, sometimes serious -- that illustrates that the problem is bigger than those of us who develop online tools, produce content and create user interfaces realize.

Deb Bryant introduces the first ever IgniteGov, and she invites the Gov community at-large to put on IgniteGov events. Selena Deckelmann, IgniteGov Chair, informs the audience about what to expect from an Ignite for those unfamiliar with the format.