icegov2012 proceedings
icegov2012 proceedings
icegov2012 proceedings
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The Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC) is an<br />
independent government agency charged with fostering regional<br />
planning and collaboration for 101 municipalities in Metropolitan<br />
Boston, a mission which includes developing and sharing<br />
information. However, the agency’s limited budget prohibits<br />
ongoing large-scale manual data collection. There are also many<br />
public agencies, advocacy organizations, researchers, and other<br />
stakeholders who would benefit from more accessible and<br />
accurate information about planned and proposed development<br />
projects in the region. MAPC developed this tool not only for<br />
specific organizational purposes, but to also create a new public<br />
resource fitting its broad mission of fostering collaboration and<br />
discussion.<br />
2. THEORY AND PREVIOUS WORK<br />
2.1 Theory<br />
The development database was initially developed to facilitate<br />
inter-agency spatial information sharing. Phase I demonstrated the<br />
usefulness of tools that reduce the transaction costs of information<br />
sharing, but also the ongoing barriers to information sharing<br />
explained by inter-organizational relations theory. In addition, it<br />
demonstrates how technology can substantially improve sharing<br />
for certain contexts. The second phase plans to combine interagency<br />
information sharing processes with crowdsourcing. For the<br />
purposes of this project, we define crowdsourcing as a method to<br />
collect data from a large number of people using nonmonetary<br />
incentives.<br />
In practice, many government agencies are hesitant to share<br />
information, even when it falls within their legal mandate or<br />
would advance the ideal of government transparency. One<br />
explanation for this behavior is inter-organizational relations<br />
theory, which argues organizations avoid data sharing since it<br />
results in a loss of autonomy and increased interdependence [1].<br />
Overcoming these barriers requires the negotiation of<br />
arrangements with mutual benefits, often requiring a lengthy<br />
process of problem-setting, cooperation, and coordination. A<br />
recent survey of inter-agency spatial information sharing found<br />
relationships started with staff interactions, but was often<br />
facilitated by formalized mechanisms such as contracts,<br />
regulations, and policies [2]. At a technical level, data sharing is<br />
further limited if the information resides in multiple information<br />
systems, or even paper records, and does not share a similar<br />
underlying structure. For information with modest sharing<br />
benefits, crafting data sharing agreements is cost-prohibitive for<br />
participants. In this case, absent a mandate, municipalities lack the<br />
resources and motivation to compile and report development data<br />
regularly.<br />
This project is also related to the e-government literature on<br />
intergovernmental information integration, an emerging area of egovernment<br />
research [3, 4]. Studies in this area use<br />
multidisciplinary methods to document the technology,<br />
organizational factors, interorganizaitonal context, and policy and<br />
social environment required for successful information<br />
integration. This project differs from much of the research in this<br />
area since it focuses on local government. The success of the<br />
project suggests local government is particularly ripe for technical<br />
innovation, since interagency norms of information sharing are<br />
present but technical infrastructures are lacking. In fact, the<br />
development database is an example of a locally-generated<br />
461<br />
infrastructure for information interoperability called for by<br />
Lansbergen and Wolken [5].<br />
Crowdsourcing is dividing a large task into small pieces that can<br />
be completed by a “crowd” of participants. A study of successful<br />
crowdsourcing projects argues participants can be motivated by<br />
either money, “love,” or “glory” [6]. Crowdsourcing has been and<br />
is used to collect spatial information for crisis response projects<br />
and to develop the Wikipedia of maps, OpenStreetMap.<br />
Goodchild has proposed the term “volunteered geographic<br />
information” to cover the expanding datasets compiled by<br />
volunteers [7]. Linders has proposed this form of “citizen<br />
reporting” fits into a broader spectrum of ICT-enabled<br />
coproduction of public goods, where governments facilitate data<br />
collection [8]. The development team is considering how to<br />
operationalize nonmonetary incentives for the members of the<br />
“crowd” through game mechanics, such as providing public<br />
recognition for users who contribute information.<br />
2.2 Data Crowdsourcing Examples<br />
This section describes two examples of similar projects that use<br />
crowdsourcing principles to collect spatial information about the<br />
urban environment.<br />
OpenStreetMap (http://openstreetmap.org) is often referred to as<br />
the Wikipedia of maps and geographic data. Anybody can login,<br />
create and edit this freely available world map. The project started<br />
in 2004, mainly as response to restrictive European public data<br />
policies and was the first high-profile project in the realm of<br />
volunteered geographic information. OpenStreetMap’s core is a<br />
simplified geographic data model, specifying “nodes” (points),<br />
“ways” (lines between points) and “relations” (relations between<br />
map objects), which are used to describe and map virtually many<br />
real world objects, such as streets, buildings, and other features.<br />
Since its beginning, the OpenStreetMap community has grown to<br />
about 700,000 users worldwide and provides detailed and up-todate<br />
maps for many parts of the world that are higher quality than<br />
available government or commercial maps.<br />
OpenTreeMap (http://opentreemap.github.com/) is an Open<br />
Source platform to search and contribute to a collaborative,<br />
interactive and dynamic map of a community's tree population.<br />
The project can be freely downloaded, customized and installed<br />
by any interested organization or community. It is not a hosted<br />
service and requires some resources to be deployed and used in a<br />
community or region. Users can sign-up and map, update data or<br />
add photos about trees in their community and work<br />
collaboratively on a publicly accessible tree inventory, which is<br />
traditionally a resource intensive process for local authorities.<br />
These two projects take different approaches to their geographic<br />
scale and user communities. OpenStreetMap maintains a<br />
centralized technical infrastructure for the world, and has<br />
developed a large user community who are able to edit any of the<br />
worldwide data. This approach seems suitable for a project with a<br />
simplified data model, a project goal to develop a worldwide map,<br />
and a small coordinating organization. The development database<br />
described in this article shares more similarities with the<br />
OpenTreeMap. In this case, an open source tool is designed to be<br />
implemented in specific places. This approach allows the system<br />
to be tailored to local conditions and implemented by local<br />
organizations which can leverage context-specific resources (such<br />
as interorganizational relationships and positive name<br />
recognition).