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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).

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