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MINUTES
CITY OF FORT COLLINS
FUTURES COMMITTEE MEETING
Date: September 11, 2017
Location: CIC Room, City Hall, 300 Laporte Ave.
Time: 4:00–6:00pm
Committee Members Present:
Wade Troxell, Chair
Ray Martinez
Kristin Stephens
City Staff:
Darin Atteberry, City Manager
Jeff Mihelich, Deputy City Manager
Jackie Kozak-Thiel (Staff Liaison)
Presenters:
Sonny Bhagowalia, Treasury Department
Lawrence Pollack, Budget Director
Wade Troxell, Mayor
Additional Staff Present:
Jackson Brockway, Business Analyst
Victoria Shaw, Senior Financial Analyst
Molly Saylor, Environmental Planner
Olivia Terrell, Systems Analyst
Ginny Sawyer, Policy and Project Manager
Tyler Marr, Policy and Project Analyst
Community Members:
Dale Adamy, Fort Collins citizen
Ted Settle, Economic Advisory Commission
Sam Solt, Economic Advisory Commission
Kevin Jones, Fort Collins Chamber of Commerce
Meeting called to order at 4:05 pm
Approval of Minutes:
Ray moved to approve October minutes. Kristin seconded. Motion passed unanimously, 3-0-0.
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Think Tank Item 5-2017: Data Transformations: The Future of Open Data and
Visualizations in Government
Sonny Bhagowalia, Treasury Department, presented on open data and his experience with
open data transformations in government.
The Digital World Today
o Moore’s law: technology doubles every 18 months. To keep up with this,
technology requires analytics and innovation.
o Increasingly digital, mobile world with more sensors is increasing data
consumption.
o Power has come to people’s fingertips – information is readily available. The
need for a CIO in government entities is paramount.
Cybersecurity Challenges are increasing exponentially
o Quick analysis and timeline action is appropriate
o Cybersecurity incidents have grown 700+% in the government.
Open data and data visualization
o Benefit: allows for virtual interactions with government
o Government innovation can service citizens better in the digital age.
Innovation is what distinguishes between a leader and a follower
The government must engage partnerships to collaborate to solve
problems.
Share everything and protect what you must, or protect everything and
share what you must – two paradigms to consider with open data
o Government needs to continue to tap the ingenuity of the American public
Everyone can/should participate
Access to info unleashes creativity to solve problems
3 examples in government
o Ex: an Innovation Agenda defined the building blocks of federal innovation
(2009-2016)
Creative funding strategies
Promoting competitive markets
o Other examples:
1) data.gov
Visualize, socialize, mobilize, and analyze information
2) Digital Accountability and Transparency (DATA) Act
Makes Federal spending data more accessible, searchable, and
reliable.
3) “Dashboards”
Leverage modern tech, data analytics, and existing open data to
create a central portal for demonstrating progress of a
transformation agenda and services to citizens and/or business
intelligence for internal audiences, as appropriate.
Government can co-create and engage with citizens to solve common problems
o Ex: Socrata created prime shelter app during Hurricane Irma
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The future road ahead: challenges and opportunities
o What data do we open and what do we close?
Multi-factor identification, something you know and something you have,
to offer increased security.
o Organizational culture can often present a major challenge. What is the
risk/reward structure?
o Willingness to embrace new technology is important
What services or data should be internal (Intranet) versus what should be external for
citizens (Internet) and G2G, G2B (Extranet)
o Idea: secure portal to internet
o Challenges: people, process, policy, technology, governance
o Opportunity: security, privacy
Potential approach:
o MVGOP: Mission, Vision, Goals, Objectives, Metrics
o Decide strategy and tactics
o Execute your strategy (measure and refine)
o Empower your team
Five Rapidly Evolving Technology Areas to Watch
o Artificial intelligence – machine learning and software will automate
Positive: makes things easier
Negative: better govern it carefully
o Internet of Things – censors track information in objects so you can track them on
the internet (ex: some household appliances utilize this technology).
Positive: can conserve energy
Need to find out how to incorporate this in gov
o Cybersecurity
o Big data
o Data analytics
Allows us to learn how to change data into information and knowledge so
we only acquire what we need and what matters to us
Summary
o To transition into open data successfully: first, define your mission; continuous
engagement is key (people, process, policy, technology, and governance); focus
on the importance of the data (data and info are the new currency for citizens at
the speed of life); big data will help agencies provide better info and create an
Information Economy; build trust and a sense of community; speed is important
but you must be vigilant about security and privacy.
Comments/Q&A:
How do we present this data so that it’s understandable to all citizens?
o Start by focusing on your local area.
o Broadband in rural areas will change the world; broadband is a driver of
awareness.
o Host hackathons to make people aware.
o Hopefully cell phones are one common, universal engagement tool.
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How can we capture everyone’s input that helps to drive what our
city becomes and from their perspective?
o In every successful example, irrespective of size of city, they all started out with a
stakeholder group that was comprised of folks from the top (industry and more
benevolent) to citizen groups that represent different groups (representative
sampling) and the media and others can get the word out regularly.
o In Hawaii for example, the Hawaii community foundation did random sampling
and got 70% of citizens to agree.
o Leverage federal initiatives to take advantage of. Need a citizen engagement
officer; include universities and colleges.
Getting the word out to the media; what do you see in social media realm?
o Citizens can be more trusting of the government if a lot of effort is put into the
media, specifically LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
Focus on culture as a key aspect of open data transformation.
Culture of innovation and risk-taking = minimal fear. Where you create more safety you
generate bigger ideas. Communicate more openly about the potential for failure when
experimentation is taking place.
o Persevere through mistakes with honesty, but continue to innovate.
o Encourage intelligent risk-taking and then learning from failures.
What does innovation look like in a municipal setting? How do we talk about failure as a
learning and managing tool?
o Not what went wrong from failure, but how can we learn from it.
o Public entrepreneurship to cultivate and engrain in culture.
Proposed Changes to the Community Dashboard
Lawrence Pollack provided a summary of the proposed changes to the community
dashboard.
Overview:
o The community dashboard went live in 2013; modifications are to be proposed
every two years and approved by ELT and Council Futures Committee.
o Goal: individuals and businesses to gather the health of the city as a whole based
on measures that would allow people to understand what it’s like here.
o 6 modifications are being proposed for implementation in 2017
Proposed changes:
o Economic health
Proposing to remove one metric (cumulative new residential permit unit
volume) that is no longer reported by the US Census Bureau. Don’t have
access to this metric anymore.
Might want to look at other metrics to ensure that US Census
Bureau still reports this. Review data source vulnerability. Is this
an anomaly?
o Environmental health
Change reporting timing of outdoor air quality metrics
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Significant lag time in when we get that raw
data and clean to get into final form. Suggestion to have a blank
value for reporting quarter but include a note to explain.
o Safe community
Change PFA response time to reflect ‘Hello to Hello’
Dispatch time of when the customer calls 911. Recommendation to
change metric to measure how long it takes for officials to arrive
after citizen placed call.
Reporting of crime activity
Recommended change to replace with ‘Number of Part 1 Crimes
per capita reported in Fort Collins.’ Utilizing standard deviation to
help adjust for when spree crimes occur.
Police services response time
Replace the average quarterly response time to similar to PFAs.
Measure how often the goal response time is met.
Council Futures Committee members expressed favorable feedback on the proposed
changes.
DO:
Lawrence and Darin will write a memo to Council on business needs and reasons for the
proposed changes.
Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative
Kelly reported on the 4-day in-residence portion that she and Darin Atteberry attended in
New York City as part of the initiative.
Highlights:
o Educational and dialogue-rich experience with 40 different communities around
the world and Harvard professors as the instructors.
o 2 relevant concepts:
1) Public entrepreneurship. What is the role of local government?
Convening and diagnosing problems
Translation
2) Moving from expert intelligence to crowd intelligence
Narrative and how to take strategy + narrative to action.
Communicating in a series of moments to lead people to action.
o Area to focus on:
Collaborate with community foundation (Love the Fort and City Fund) to
develop compelling narrative about how we can create things here that we
wouldn’t be able to without the collaboration.
Additional Discussion:
None.
Meeting adjourned by Wade Troxell at 5:50 pm.