Can I Park Here?
Last Friday morning I sat down at my computer and tried to answer a simple question: whether I needed to move the car that day. On a normal Friday the answer would have been “Yes”, but last Friday there was a light coat of snow over the city that I hoped would bring a snow day from the street cleaning regulations. I ended up disappointed, not because the rules were in effect, they had been suspended hours before, but because the government sites hosting that information (DoT’s site and NYC’s 311 site) were not updated so I ended up with no better information at the end of my search than when I started.
Instead of putting snow day suspensions on the Department of Transportation’s official website, the DoT sent the announcement via twitter, an external, closed, data feed service, though admittedly one with many users. So, rather than using smart tools that could send out twitter feeds and update the official site as part of the same action, or using simple tools like the official website, which would let more capable tools like civx process the information into whatever formats you want, the DoT did the digital equivalent of announcing the news at church and assuming all the relevant people would be there.
Twitter is a closed community with membership and the technology of communication controlled by one company. What bothers me is not that the government went into that system to spread public information; I think we should spread public information wherever the public is, which is why in 2008 I advocated running “get out the vote” drives in World of Warcraft, an online video game much more closed off than twitter. What bothers me is that a single, closed, tool has taken the place of meaningful change in how government communicates with citizens.
Spreading time-sensitive information like parking rule suspension or weather-related school closings using a live feed is a great idea. We should do more information sharing like that but we shouldn’t be doing it only in closed communities and only using closed tools. We should not abandon the simple tools like department websites or the open tools like RSS in an attempt to follow users down whatever latest rabbit hole of closed communication tools it is that they’re using today. And if the tools our government has for publishing information aren’t as capable at distributing that information as twitter, then our government needs new tools, not just twitter accounts.
January 21st, 2010 11:11
[...] buddy Ian has a great post about his experience trying to find out if he had to move his car. Seems the DOT updates this info on Twitter rather than putting it out on their own [...]