Cick or tap the above image to download a .pdf of this article.The Knight Foundation’s report The Emergence of Civic Tech: Investments in a Growing Field reports interesting data on investments in “open government” and “civic action” that it refers to together as “civic technology.”
I’ll be looking at the data and report in more detail. Meanwhile, one of the first things that hit me was the distinctions made in the different “open government” categories. Here is how the report breaks down “open government” expenditures for 2010-2013:
Source data including data listings for individual companies and institiutions is available via a linked spreadsheet. This is how the above categories break down with the largest category being for “Data Access & Transparency”:are
OPEN GOVERNMENT Expenditures
| Data Access & Transparency | $20,759,050 | 39.0% |
| Data Utility | $11,124,321 | 20.9% |
| Public Decision Making | $605,140 | 1.1% |
| Resident Feedback | $14,712,779 | 27.7% |
| Visualization & Mapping | $3,014,000 | 5.7% |
| Voting | $2,987,000 | 5.6% |
| SUBTOTAL | $53,202,290 | 100.0% |
“Data Access & Transparency” expenditures are the largest single category and account for nearly 40% of Open Government expenditures. What’s also interesting is that the above “Open Government” expenditures — $53.2M U.S. — are overshadowed by the $356.5M U.S. on “Community Action” which breaks down as follows:
COMMUNITY ACTION Expenditures
| Civic Crowdfunding | $8,090,000 | 2.3% |
| Community Organizing | $38,172,446 | 10.7% |
| Information Crowdsourcing | $35,439,600 | 9.9% |
| Neighborhood Forums | $40,967,400 | 11.5% |
| P2P Local Sharing | $233,821,985 | 65.6% |
| SUBTOTAL | $356,491,431 | 100.0% |
Having once made my living generating research reports like this I’m eager to dive into underlying details provided in the report and its linked attachments. In the meantime this looks like a major effort that attempts to quantify and define activities that till now have been very vaguely defined if at all. In my book that’s a very good thing.
Related reading:
- Can Meat-and-Potatoes “Big Data” Help Detroit?
- AGA’s Citizen Centric Reporting and Government Transparency
- Questions About Google and Local Government Data
- Understanding How Open Data Reaches the Public
- The State of Government Data Transparency, 2013
- Transparency Is Not An End In Itself
Copyright © 2013 by Dennis D. McDonald, Ph.D. Dr. McDonald is an independent project management consultant based in Alexandria, Virginia. His web site is located at www.ddmcd.com and his email address is ddmcd@yahoo.com.
