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Tracking the tech that will make government betterCrowdsourcing, fraud detection, and open data tools were touted at a recent Senate hearing.
Last week, the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information, Federal Services, and International Security held a hearing on "Transforming Government Through Innovative Tools and Technology" that looked at the potential for technology to improve government transparency and accountability. The first part of the hearing featured testimony from Daniel Werfel, controller of the Office of Federal Financial Management within the Office of Management and Budget, and Earl Devaney, chairman of the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board (RATB). You can view their written testimony and archived webcast at Senate.gov. Riley Crane, a post-doc at the Media Laboratory Human Dynamics Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, shared one of the most successful examples of crowdsourcing in history: the strategy that led to the MIT balloon team's victory in the DARPA Network Challenge. "For the first time, we can bridge the gap between online and the real world," testified Crane. A challenge "thought impossible by the intelligence community using traditional techniques" was solved in 8 hours and 52 minutes, said Crane. "We leveraged the problem-solving capabilities of the participants," said Crane, and "built the infrastructure that allowed others to solve the problem for us." As Brian Ahier pointed out on his blog on healthcare IT, Crane praised Tim O'Reilly's "government as a platform" concept and Gov 2.0 principles in his Senate testimony: More on the potential of crowdsourcing and how open data analysis is improving fraud detection after the jump. Tools for government transparencyDevaney asserted that stimulus tracking technology is the model for government transparency. As Gautham Nagesh reported for The Hill, Devaney said that "the amount of fraud he has seen in the Recovery Act is significantly below what he would expect on a program of its size. He argued that the transparency inherent in the program has acted as a deterrent to scam artists, keeping fraud down to a minimum. He said the RATB uses software to identify risk factors associated with particular awards, contractors or grant recipients, then refers the information to specific inspector generals for further investigation." And as Aliya Sternstein reported for Nextgov, "compu-forensics saved stimulus funds and Devaney from some pointed questions by John McCain on how the RAT Board's data analytics has saved money or resulted in convictions. Devaney said that there are more than 350 ongoing criminal investigations into fraud and abuse of Recovery Act funds, and, while none have resulted in any convictions yet, he expects to see resolution on some of them within six months. Devaney also noted that the Recovery Board put up two separate websites in under six months, Recovery.gov and PaymentAccuracy.gov. "Government usually takes years to do that," he said. "We didn't do it the way the government usually does it but that's probably what made it work." Challenges in data accuracy or clarity in project updates continue, however, despite Devaney's assertions. That said, there's more to the story than data or website infrastructure. As Jason Miller reported for Federal News Radio, the Recovery Board's success inspires others within government. It's not the success of the "RAT Board" in moving Recovery.gov to the cloud or redesigning the site: it's the use of a data visualization software for fraud detection. This tool is a key a component of the enforcement of the Obama administration's "do not call" list, which was announced in June of this year. Crowdsourcing and the power of open dataFor those who weren't familiar with the tool that Werfel or Devaney described, the second panel that testified before the Senate provided the answer: Palantir Technologies. Until TechCrunch's recent coverage, in which Evylyn Russell called Palantir the next billion dollar company, the data analysis software developer was operating under the radar, at least outside of the beltway. Analysts within the intelligence agencies are using Palantir to fight cybercrime. Transparency wonks are exploring Data.gov with AnalyzeThe.Us. And the Department of Health and Human Services is using Palantir internally to detect fraud with the Medicare system. That innovation, incidentally, is precisely why Palantir is in the technology spotlight at the Gov 2.0 Summit next month. "We're specialized in the least glamorized part of finding fraud," testified Alexander Karp, founder and CEO of Palantir. "Palantir is based on a methodology that reduced fraud at PayPal from something that takes thousand of hours to something that could be done in real-time." When applied within government agencies and enterprises, Palantir helps non-technical analysts see latent patterns in open data. Effectively, it is a platform that allows subject-matter experts to perform highly sophisticated analyses. "The inspector general community has never had these tools before," said Devaney in his testimony. Karp's written testimony is embedded below:
Following Karp, Rob McEwen, founder and former chairman and CEO of Goldcorp, told a story about the power of crowdsourcing that will be familiar to readers of "WIkinomics." As described in this excerpt, Goldcorp published online every element of geographic data the company held, investing nearly $1 million in prize money and website development. Virtual prospectors spread to the site and, in time, identified more than 100 sites on a 55,000-acre property that yielded 8 million ounces of gold. "Incentives can be much more than cash," said McEwen. "Nobody is as smart as everybody. The biggest goldmine in the world exists between everyone's ears." After McEwen, Crane offered insights into MIT's win in the DARPA Network Challenge, as described above. I talked to Crane later about crowdsourcing and government. Here's our short interview: Crane's written testimony is embedded below:
Related:
The link between technical innovation and government improvement will be explored at the Gov 2.0 Summit, being held Sept. 7-8 in Washington, D.C. Request an invitation.
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Comments: 3
Dave Atkins [17 August 2010 10:25 PM]
These examples of how technology can be useful may help incrementally advance government engagement with citizens, but I think the greatest change that needs to happen is a willingness to truly embrace the idea that openness and collaboration with "the public" is good. Accountability is good, but it is reactive and presupposes the old methods of governance would work--if only we could ferret out the waste, fraud and abuse.
The real game-change will be when it becomes routine for policy to be discussed in the formative stages through public forums and collaborative tools like wikis. The revolutionary idea will be a shift from an accountability focus to an effectiveness focus--to stories of how crowdsourcing and collaboration are resulting in better policy and better programs--when it becomes unthinkable that an elected official would refuse to participate in a blog discussion or demand that participants identify themselves before responding. On the citizen side of course, that day will also need to be characterized by civil, rational, constructive engagement...
These are great stories--but I hope the takeaway is that "engagement" is the value--not technology. We are not held back by a lack of technology--no more than we are held back by lack of intelligence. The great policy challenges are not to find answers but to navigate workable solutions through the politics of conflicting interests.
JZ [18 August 2010 09:31 AM]
As far as Tim O'Reilly's concept of government, I do not like the idea that the analogy illustrates government as a *foundation* that all else is built on. O'Reilly has also said of gov doing the least and that enabling citizens to develop, etc. I prefer a clear mention that citizens be developers of the platform. Government workers are citizens are they not? They know people who know people and it's all connected, not a separation of person and platforms/system. If we allow too much drift between person and state, we get closed data, closed process, less accountability, more corruption, more waste, less quality of life, etc.
Related comments by many people are being posted in relation to open data for public transit at http://www.streetfilms.org/a-case-for-open-data-in-transit
[ http://PhiBetaIota.net ]
Christina Morrison [19 August 2010 09:59 AM]
I would agree with Dave’s comment here – openness and public collaboration will be key to the continued improvement of our government. However, I think crowd sourcing and data mining tools can be used right now to make significant impacts in the government, and the tools themselves can pave the path for successful with open government. As Senator Carper mentioned in the testimony linked above, hundreds of millions of dollars could be saved by setting up a better system of counting the census. I think the potential cost savings afforded by new technologies like this could be a precursor to the embrace of more collaborative and innovative technologies in government.