 Friends, our next speaker is the honorable Gail Brewer, a member of the City Council of New York, representing District 6, which includes most of the Upper West Side, and I think a little bit of Hell's Kitchen. She is the former chair of the Committee on Technology and Government, and the current chair of the Committee on Governmental Operations. And she is the person in city government who we most wanted to bring here today to meet the Debian crowd. She has been a fighter and a leader on the issues that matter most to us as a community. In her work on the City Council, she has pushed the city to listen to its citizens on issues like net neutrality, open data standards, and fair broadband access. Council member Brewer sponsored the legislation that formed the Broadband Advisory Committee, and she has held countless public hearings to give people in the city a voice on the infrastructure and policies that will shape their digital lives for years to come. Today, she's gonna talk a little bit about net neutrality and also about open access to government data, an issue that she has fought very hard on. Council member Brewer has fought to get us raw data from the City of New York that we could download, manipulate, combine, analyze, and redistribute. And this stands in stark contrast to competing proposals that would wrap this data up into opaque web services that would be delivered to us in useful forms, but not give us any access to the underlying information. She's one of the people in government who truly understands how giving us the tools to create our own digital lives is valuable and will allow us to extract the most value out of the massive information that government has collected. So I give you the honorable Council member Brewer. Now it's on. Now it's on. There are 51 members of the City Council. We have a budget of $63 billion, with the only budget in the United States larger, United States, State of California, State of New York, and then us. So Florida, Texas, and half the countries in the world, maybe not the ones you're from, but all the others, less budget than in the City of New York. And obviously in today's world, budget cuts are very much a part of all of these discussions, but it's a big city. And technology is thankfully playing a bigger role and you're playing a bigger role. So Justice James stated for eight years, I chaired the Technology Committee. I know nothing compared to you, but what I do know, and I started working in government for John Lindsay. He was a mayor many years ago. I've always believed that government information should be public. So whether it was something silly like a kiosk in front of City Hall before the internet existed, or myself with friends building the first city website when I worked for public advocate Mark Green, I've always believed that government information should be public. So just the other day, when controller Lou, John Lou was our new city controller, and he has something called New York City Checkbook, which was just announced on July 1st. It's very exciting. It's all city transactions. 99% updated on a daily basis, something like $35 billion every single day is updated. So the first thing we looked at was how much is the mayor's office spending today? Or how much in my area is the board of elections spending for something today? And today's New York Post actually has an article, which I know where it came from, just from that database, listing some things that should not have been spent. That, I said as the news press release, I said something that I probably should have, well, this is the greatest day of my life, and I might be your marriage, I might be the birth of a child, but for me, getting public data to be public is incredibly important, particularly as I said, because our budget is so big. So just as a given example, how excited I am to be here, but also to talk about this issue, we have got to make sure that public data is public. One of the things that was mentioned by James is this idea of getting public information, something called the open data bill. We introduced it a couple of years ago, the city council reconvened in January 2010, so we have a slightly new bill, and we've had a couple of hearings on this issue. The good news, and I'll talk about the bill in a minute, is that now in fall 2010 coming up, the mayor's office and the city council are actually negotiating on producing a bill. And for those of you in the legislative process, no, that's actually a really good thing, otherwise your bill is pending forever. So the fact of the matter is, it would standardize all public data sets and one central repository would make them available in an open format so that you as researchers and developers can edit them. And of course, open data would be available for any office, administration, department, division, bureau, board, commission, authority, corporation, advisory committee, or any other government entity that is in the city of New York. And of course, you spend a lot of time thinking out what the definition would be, but in this case, a public data set would mean that any data set that is maintained by an agency, and under this bill, if it were to pass, it must be accessible for inspection by the public in accordance with any provision of law or that an agency shall decide to make accessible, excluding data, of course, which an agency feels is private. Security issues, and I always am concerned about women's health issues in particular. So right now as we speak, Duwit, which is our technology office in city government, would under the bill prepare a technical standard manual for the public data of city agencies, and where applicable make it standard, non-proprietary and compatible with voluntary consensus standards, such as W3C for web publishing and e-government. Also enable data for viewing by web browsers and where practical mobile devices provide data sets in their raw or unprocessed form, which is really important to me, and I'm sure to you. Enable for external search capabilities. Also update data frequently. I think some of the apps, and you know much more about them than I do, are not always updated. Design a public data web portal using web syndication technology to notify the public of all updates by data set and agency. Also make data available without any registration, inspection, license requirement or restrictions on use. And finally use a web application programming interface so that the external applications can request public data sets directly from the web portal. And we know to date Duwit has released about 170 sets of data, and is using NYC data mine as a temporary source of data sets for the mayor's big app competition, which you know started June 2009, and there's another one as you may know coming out at the end of this year, and people will be notified on early 2011 whether or not that app is gonna be used. I could say that at the Personal Democracy Forum, what some of you may have gone to, which Andrew Wichet runs every year, Commissioner Carol Post, who's the new commissioner Duwit, said she's committed to releasing more data. Of course I jumped right then and said you have to pass her bill. And she's firmly believed that this is in fact public data, but there is always the issue that agencies worry about that they will have to work hard to overcome resource and policy constraints. But this particular bill requires that all city agencies will file a compliance plan with Duwit, because one of the issues in any government is how do you make sure that you pass the bill and it actually takes place and it actually needs some kind of monitoring. And obviously we'd always be concerned about privacy concerns. And some of the agencies, as we know well, from 311 data, our legacy, some of the bigger ones, unfortunately, and those are the ones that are most, sometimes interesting to the public, but certainly more challenging in terms of the data set. So we hope that this will all take place. As we know the timing is not clear yet. Obviously we would have some retroactive data that would be available. And in terms of legacy issues, any public data set that due to its size of complexity or due to technology constraints cannot be available on the internet pursuant to the section of the law that would make it available, then we would figure out some new compliance issues into the future. And as I said, we had one here in 2009 and we had another one June 26, 2010 on the new bill. This is very exciting. Obviously it's something that I think will make a huge difference in the city of New York. The MTA has done quite a bit in this area and I think you all know that. We actually started the discussion before Chairman Walder. The MTA right now has got horrible cutbacks if you're on the subway or all of my older constituents are on the buses and call me every day because they're so slow and they have changed the routes and they make it very hard for seniors to get around. That's a whole other issue. But one thing that he has done is to think of ways to make data more available. Of course the people on the buses couldn't care less about that. They just want the buses to show up. But for those of us who also care about data, I have to give them credit. So actually we wrote to the MTA before Chair Walder came in in September 2009 and we asked the MTA to make data on transit operations public. Beyond my belief that government data should be publicly available, the MTA transit data of course represents a powerful opportunity for web developers and technology entrepreneurs to create innovative applications for mobile and computing devices. And at that time the MTA wanted to have an exclusive data sharing contract with a single private entity, Google, in order to better control the usage and republishing of their data. Additionally, delivery of transit data to other private developers, often smaller and more local than Google, was viewed as cumbersome. That was because at the time the MTA was still publishing its transit data in CD-ROM and they were hesitant about being held responsible for adjusting train schedules due to changes in track maintenance and so on. Just last night on 96th Street in my area, the train tracks were being improved supposedly and the bus line to get on that bus to go uptown was miles down the street. People were very upset. Now not everybody like you had a device so they could figure out what was going on. So I was thinking to myself, what an opportunity for real data to be live and everybody to be able to access it, which is another problem. But when Chair Walder came in, the MTA has begun to place their transit data on the web, offering updates of schedules in close to real time and reflecting track maintenance, holiday schedules and unexpected changes in service. Now, when I look at the web yesterday, these buses were not even listed. I think that this data is one of the most promising opportunities to show government and the public the potential of open source data and to unfetter programmers to create products beyond the imagination or interest of government agencies and to do these things in a free marketplace. One of the issues too with the MTA, which you probably know, is that you have an issue with the data. You can actually call somebody who will respond. That is not true necessarily with the apps and the issues that some of those who are using apps have brought to my attention. So the issue for the public is not only having the data, been able to use it, been able to talk to somebody when there's a problem. So I've talked a little bit about the MTA. I wanna talk now a little bit about some of the things we've done on broadband. This is an area that I have put a great deal of time in and I can't tell you that I've had a lot of success. I would say December 09, we passed a bill that I had worked on for a very long time to Big City. Got a lot of members in order to get a bill passed from my colleagues off the record, don't know what in health name we're talking about half the time, in terms of technology. So you have to do extra work to get things moving. But this particular bill stated after trying to get broader broadband and bandwidth in the schools and for senior centers and low income housing and the parks, I was very frustrated. So we ended up putting together a bill that passed that said the mayor and the city council will appoint a broadband commission that will go to all the different boroughs and listen to people about what their concerns are, which is what we did in 2008, 2009. What was interesting about it was this was a real commission, the people who were on it had to be screened and vetted and had to have the usual very extensive background checks which any commission appointed officially has to go through. And there were people on there from the community, the technology community, as well as from the incumbents, as well as from city agencies. And of course we all know that this issue was in the FCC's mind with a report that they just put out, no surprise to you, estimating that at least 80 million Americans don't have high-speed internet access at home. And of course that's defined at least as far as I know, as downloads fees of at least four megabytes and upload of one. And the commission has an upcoming report comparing these fees very unfavorably to those for home access in all the countries, some of the countries that you come from. We also talk about sole career, we always mention that. Now when we always say in sole, we understand you can get a refrigerator and a sole and a connection. We never get that in New York. And particularly in affordable housing. So high-speed access is unavailable to at least 14 million Americans. And we are the FCC estimate that about a thousand out of 3,000 counties in the US and in the territories are unserved by broadband which is about 24 million Americans living in 8.9 million households. Particularly for Americans in low-end communities and rural communities and tribal lands, even basic connectivity isn't possible. But we learned a lot when we went to the different boroughs. Here we have a city that's quite connected. At the same time we were doing the commission, the Economic Development Corporation which is the city's arm for doing economic development commissioned the Diamond study. Diamond is headed up by a guy named Crystal Bryant. Some of you may know him. He was the chief information officer in the city of Chicago under Mayor Daly. Mayor Daly number two. And he was excellent in trying to find out where is the connectivity in New York City, how fast is it, et cetera. Not an easy project. The incumbents, and if there are people here from the incumbents I apologize, never like to share anything that they know. And so even if you're coming from a city contract it's very, very hard to get information. But we did learn something. You hear about rural areas and low-income areas. But in New York, Sunset Park, parts of the industrial Bronx there was absolutely no connectivity, nothing. Because cable connects only where there are residents, people living there. And so I was literally going around and you're gonna laugh looking for curtains or something that indicated there was one person living in some of these industrial areas legally or illegally because then I figured I could mandate that cable had to go in there and we'd have some connectivity. But I couldn't find any curtains. And so, but it's interesting that here two years ago not more than that, these areas were used as satellites were very, very expensive other connections because lots of times the copper that Verizon had when it rained it was underwater and it wasn't usable for their businesses. And some of the younger entrepreneurs running factories had come in, they wanted connectivity. But what was interesting, the fathers and mothers who were running some of the older factories didn't want it at all. So there wasn't that kind of demand that you might have thought would exist. While not minimizing the coverage of American service providers, the FTC is clear that much more needs to happen. You know that. The commission says what most Americans already know. Given the ever growing importance of broadband to our society, we are unable to conclude that broadband is being deployed in a reasonable and timely way to all Americans. I'll tell you one other story that we had during this broadband fight. We went to all five boroughs. We had hearings at the city council. We had focus groups. We had hearings just based on the committee work itself. And one of them was about parks. Now here we are. We have Central Park, Manhattan, Van Cortland Park in the Bronx, some wonderful flushing park. That helped me if I forget. Prospect Park and anybody from Staten Island, we have parks in Staten Island too. Don't let me, my colleagues will kill me. So we had the fact, we noticed that there was no connectivity in any park in the city of New York. That was absolutely true, not more than three years ago or maybe four. And you heard about all the other cities. You heard about all the other countries. So we brought in the commissioner of parks. He's a friend of mine. And I swear to God, we talked about hot spots and he thought it was something else. So that was the level on which we were operating. So we bugged them and bugged them. And finally we got this RFP out. This is all true stories. I am not making these things up. We got all of the agencies. We had a front page time story, New York time story that always changes policy immediately, stating that there was no connectivity in the city of New York in parks. I needed, not just for the big parks, but for the smaller parks, where people don't have necessarily access at home. I'll talk about that in a minute. But anyway, so the parks department decided they were gonna make money off of this, which is the stupidest thing I ever heard. And they were going to put out a request for proposal, which is like a bid, we called it RFP. And they would find somebody to make the park live, five big ones, got the bid, we should leave out that now. So all five boroughs would have live coverage in the park, but only one, the big ones. So out goes the RFP, the four companies that bid, I think it was the only one that survived in the end. And they had to pay the parks department something every year. They ended up partnering with a larger company. But of course, after some time, they couldn't even pay the $30,000 that they were mandated to pay because there's no money to be made. The banners didn't work. It's not the kind of thing that you do and make money off as a city agency. We said that over and over and over again. So today, just to give an example, we love New York City, but we are not the most progressive in this area. There isn't much coverage except intermittently. NYC Wireless, some of you know that absolutely wonderful nonprofit has worked in some of the smaller parks in the city to put up in a little antenna with a nonprofit and provide coverage. Or sometimes a college like Borough of Manhattan Community College provides coverage in the park right next to the university. But it is very haphazard. And of course, my goal is always to try to find ways to get into the smaller parks in low income areas so that families who might have a computer but not connectivity at home who get free access and be able to get a job, look for prescriptions, deal with the kids, et cetera, et cetera. So I just mentioned this because it was a funny moment, but it's not so funny. And that's the story of the park. So in order to get, as I said, this particular broad band commission going, we went to the five boroughs. And I was determined that New York's quest for achieving digital quality, I know that it's rooted in the understanding of the complex underlying barriers to access. Only if we can accomplish getting over that challenge will we be able to really help nonprofit organizations, small businesses, and of course families. One of the issues that came up, unfortunately, is paying for internet services in the home is often too expensive for thousands of New Yorkers. We heard from a mom who's got three kids who had to go to the library and I can talk endlessly about library services. We have three great library services in the five boroughs but they're not open but five days a week, sometimes six days a week, and there's always, always a line for that laptop or that PC. Even if it's a wireless environment which the newer libraries that have been renovated are, you still have to wait in order to get a laptop. And no surprise to you, the cost of connectivity is too much for many, many families. In fact, students testified that they're usually on the computers only two hours a day at school and of course the schools are another whole issue. The federal government, if you are a low-income school, meaning that a certain percentage of students are eligible for free lunch, then you get federal E-rate money. But it is only in the classroom. God forbid it should be in the cafeteria. God forbid it should be in the teacher's lounge. God forbid it should be in the auditorium. It can only be in the classroom. So that means that all the other places, in any, like in a university or a college, where you see terminals are not possible unless you have extra money going into that school. So the fact of the matter is the schools need more support in addition to what we talked about. So the kids need at home in addition to what is in the school. So, but you know, it's not all discouraging news. The hearing support to light excellent programs in city government and nonprofit communities that provide a more equitable digital society. And of course, we all believe we need policies and provide tools for nonprofits working in this area. They can empower individuals and increase access through skills development and job training. And working with the Broadband Commission, I've seen the resources the city already offers such as computer training centers, libraries and schools, although with these limitations, providing the necessary outreach. Let me talk a little bit about schools and digital divide. We saw as a result of these five borough hearings and meetings and hearings that this school to work divide, school to home divide is huge. Kids go to school. Right now, parents need to know what the report card is, communicate with teacher. My brother lives in Brookline, Massachusetts. He's got four kids, just like everybody else in Brookline, they move there for one reason and one reason only to go to school. And every single day, he gets online information about those four kids, et cetera, and he can email to the teacher. That does not exist in the homeless school system in New York City, except in intermittent cases where there's one of you teaching and you do it on your own. That is the only time it takes place. Now that's changing with new opportunities that the Department of Education is rolling out, but it is not universal yet. So, to the credit of the Department of Education with Bruce Lye, who was my chief of staff and is now working technology, Department of Education, the Department of Education applied for stimulus money, broadband known as BTOP, Technology Opportunity Program, the stimulus money, and they were awarded just last year 22 million, the largest BTOP grant to work in the middle schools in the city of New York, which is the problem anybody who is in education area for students. And so now, about 30% or 40%, again, this is a big project, not happening immediately, but it is being rolled out, working with nonprofits like mouse and computers for youth and teaching matters with the Department of Education, 30 to 40% of all middle school students and teachers will have training, which is a big issue for teachers and students will be able to bring a computer home. And that sounds to me like, if you're from the state of Maine, no problem, everybody has it, but believe me in the city of New York, unless you're in a school that has very middle-class parents, you don't have that. So that's a huge big step in the right direction and just rolling all of that out to be able to teach the parents how to use that laptop as well as the student is a big step in the right direction. But that's where we are in terms of some of the challenges in the schools and I could go on and on about the schools. At the same time that we were having all of these discussions about the BTOP, as I said, we had some other discussions. We were certainly concerned about getting more money from Washington and last year in July, about this time, we had a big meeting with all 150 people showed up, showing the diversity of the technology community and the need to get more information about flying for money in order to accomplish some of these goals. And the good news is that there are three pending federal grants that the city of New York is likely. You'll never know until you get them. And if you're from other cities, I'm sorry, but we want the money. To be able to do a couple of things, the hearing showed that many, many families do not have the money to have an at-home computer. Even though everybody in this room does and I think it's just normal. And so we need to have what we call computer training centers around the city. We did those, some of you may know, in the Clinton years, the Congress Department sent out tons of computers to the New York City Housing Authority, another public housing around the country, and I swear to God, they all disappeared or they're still in boxes. Because nobody thought about the sustainability. I actually saw a box with one of those computers not recently, so I know that that's true. Nobody thought about the sustainability. So one of the proposals that is before the feds is how do we have libraries and sustainable nonprofits working in this area for a lot of families? So that's something we're looking at. Secondly, the seniors. The fastest growing users are seniors. And I don't need to tell you that the city's getting older. If you look at projections as to our five boroughs, we have a huge senior population that it's growing and it's only gonna get larger. People are coming back after retiring, they're retiring in the city, et cetera, et cetera. And so there's a group called OAT, headed up by a guy named Tom Camber. They two were applying, and lastly to get to make absolute around the city opportunities in the centers and what we call naturally retiring communities, senior communities, and I won't go into all the details, but these are some of the ways that we're trying to get underneath the challenges that present them unless somebody looks deeper to what we're trying to do. So that's another aspect of what these broadband hearings brought out, and of course we're working on the report that would bring this all together. Webcasting, that seems to be like something that's very normal, why don't we do it? The state of New York does it, Aspen, Colorado does it, every country you're from does it, the Charter Revision Commission does it, am I frustrated? Yes, I cannot understand how you engage citizen, which is part of the discussion that we're having here today without having webcasting. And I can't understand why, because it's not that expensive to do. We do have a lot of different commissions and advisory boards and hearings in the city of New York with this huge budget, but we could start somewhere. So I just mentioned that because since 2008 I've been working on an amendment to legislation that I had introduced earlier requiring New York City agencies to webcast and catalog all public hearings and meetings. One of the issues is that in City Hall, which is being renovated, we didn't have room, don't ask with two cameras, and we didn't have room for this, that, and I think some of the plugs might even be DC10, I don't know. But the fact of the matter is when the City Hall is renovated, which is going on right now, I'm hoping to at least have all City Council meetings and hearings webcasts, and I think that should spread to the City Planning Commission, the Taxi and Limiting Commission, and every other commission of the City of New York House. We have done in our committee, we're the only committee out of 40 committees who have done so in the City Council. We've always done webcasting and streaming and Twitter, but that's because I have an energetic staff and they're willing to put the own personal time into it. I see Tom is here. I want to talk about the dot NYC, because otherwise he would kill me. One of the issues that Tom Lohr brought to our attention is what about the economic advantages as one might have a dot Berlin, or a dot Paris, or a dot London, what about the pizza guy in the corner been able to have dot NYC, and that's something that we're working very, very hard to try to implement. And if you want more, we can discuss that. 311 is the mayor's legacy. It is true if you call for the pothole, et cetera. It does get fixed, I'm not saying immediately, but it does get fixed. We passed a bill that said you gotta put the data out. It's another example, there's rich, rich data in 311 that you would love to have more of. All that's there now is divided, I think, by community board and council district, but it doesn't get underneath some of those numbers. So the whole issue of 311 is something that I think we need to look at more carefully. And at the same time, 311 has always dealt with traffic, potholes, key complaints. But one of the issues that it didn't deal with is human services. That's a very complicated area, foster care, abuse, et cetera. And so HHS Connect, which is human health and human services, around the country it's 211. But because we already have a robust 311, it was folded in. And I mention that because now if you call 311, supposedly you will be with a human service issue, you will actually be sent to a non-profit and not to a city agency which is only open nine to five and wouldn't necessarily give you the kind of time that you need in order to help your problem. So it's supported by AccessNYC, which is an online resource that promotes self-sufficiency by giving access to the users to many more human services. I just wanna conclude by going through quickly some of the other outstanding issues that are taking place. The public advocate is a guy named Bill de Blasio and he has under his charter managed to control the commission on public information and communication. It's like from dated from 1989, but it is part of what we're talking about because it is opposed to oversee the foil request and oversee how the public gets involved with government, how communication takes place. I talked a little bit about 311. I also wanna mention that recently, Deputy Mayor Goldsmith, he's from Indiana. Somebody joked the other day and said, if you're gonna be involved in New York, you have to be from Indiana, but anyway, he has arrived and he is looking to see how current social networks, Facebook, Twitter and others, can in fact be used with government support as opposed to creating new databases. And we can talk more about that, but he has been going all around the city asking that. The whole small business area, I hope would be enhanced with obviously open data, with more faster technology in terms of bandwidth and broadband. And I know that there's some small startups taking place that NYU and Polytech are working on at 160 Barak, and if we haven't gone there, you really should. I talked about the seniors and also how the education hopefully will be improved with all of the work that's going on on the federal level. So I think, I mean, I've tried to give you kind of an overview about some of the issues that the city council is looking at. Obviously the mayor's office and do it and the mayor's office of operations have all 303,000 city employees to be connected to think about how to use technology, not to, if I may say, eliminate workers, but to make working more productive and also to make it a better environment for the workers who are there, be it in the field or in the office. That's another whole topic that is, see how I think some of these things we're talking about would have a profound effect on the lives not only of us as citizens, but also on government employees. So without further ado, I'd love to take questions and I look forward to working with you to make New York a leading digital city and a better New York by committing to a digital future. And thank you very much for all your hard work. Thank you. Can people hear me here? Okay, we have one microphone. We will hopefully have two. Thank you very much for all of your work. In Sao Paulo, the person who runs the subway system in Sao Paulo found out that by using open office instead of using Microsoft office, they were able to save enough money to hire 350 new subway cleaners. I would encourage you to do the same thing. If I could, I would. I mean, it's such a huge city as Sao Paulo is. I am not in charge. But the issue of open sourcing comes up a lot and we all need to push it. I totally agree with you. And the other thing is that in keeping openness of documents, you should be mandating the use of an open format like ODF instead of OOXML. Okay, yeah. Hi, I wanted to thank you for your work in making sure that government data stays open in New York City. I live in Brooklyn myself. And I wanna just strongly encourage you to not try to put New York City services on commercial and proprietary services like Facebook and Twitter. As users of Facebook and Twitter, we don't have any accountability from them as corporate providers. And I understand the need to not wanna do, not invented here, create something totally new. But if you make it so that access to civic services are reliant on corporate gatekeepers, I think we're all gonna be in big trouble. What came up the other day, and I should be clear, I just didn't wanna talk anymore, is that there are meetups as an example all over the city. And there are groups, I'm a parent, so there are a lot of parent groups all over the city. And the idea would be to figure out ways of solving problems, not from us always having to call 311 or an agency or me. I'm like the walking 311, because everybody calls me. But to be able to solve problems on our own, in other words, an example would be, somebody has an after school problem, how can it be solved without having to get the Department of Education to get involved? This is an example. So the question would be to use not necessary proprietary, but existing resources. In other words, maybe you're another parent. Best practices on the Bronx is that this is how the after school programs work. So we're trying to think of ways that government, but this is a really top down city. If you want to get information, it's such a big city. Like you probably, how many times have you been to the Bronx or Staten Island? Yeah, that's what I thought. So what I'm saying, so what I'm saying, what I'm saying is there may be a great best practices that you're interested in in Staten Island, but we don't have the capacity now to tell you about it. And so the question would be, how can government not use the proprietary, but make information available electronically, so you can get an answer to your question. So government would be involved, but not always top down. And I don't know the answer to that, but that's one of the things that we're struggling with. And obviously open data would help. You'd know how many after school programs are on the Bronx. You'd know how many had snacks. You'd know how old the kids are. And that would help you develop a better one where you live, et cetera. Hey, I also want to express the same appreciation for you coming to talk and for all of your work. I'm also a New York resident and I'm curious about what sort of difficulties you're having in trying to provide open access to data. Are you finding a lot of resistance in the city council or within the New York city government and what is the nature of it? Why are people, I assume there are people who are resistant to it and because I've seen it in other areas and I'm curious what the argument is so that we can better. Well, it's very interesting in developing a constituency and there are some people in this room I will thank you for being a constituency for the technology committee. One of the issues is very interesting. You might think there's a big constituency for open data but I have never seen any of you at city hall screaming and yelling about it. I have seen parents. I have seen tenants. I have seen small business people and I have seen workers, low wage workers. I'm just making up some numbers. The issue with the technology world is that we live online. We're not physically there which is another reason why we have to get more best practices, open data, et cetera online because people can take advantage of it but the answer to your question broadly is the constituency is hard to find. In the technology committee we really develop so people we sometimes have 100, 150 people at meetings just regular hearings and I remember some of my colleagues come who the hell are all these people because they're not used to knowing that anybody cares about technology. So I would say the constituency issue for open data is a challenge. If you move to school you got 500 parents screaming but if you are talking about open data nobody, you can't find anybody. You have to pull them out. And then the second issue is you know there are the police department has a heart attack and so you have to obviously be at stop and frisk or whatever the topic is you wanna get as much data out there that does not compromise security and so figuring out where that line is is the other issue. Third issue is the legacy some of you are more aware of this than I am but I think it's at least the building department believe it or not there are some really big agencies where we want the data and they have systems that are very hard to call it. So those are the three reasons. Now of course I think under this new commissioner Carol Post who came from operations and understands that data can make the agencies less siloed. You can't imagine if you work in one agency will all do respect like human resources administrations to get them to talk to the department of homeless services even though it's the same director the mayor it's not easy. So I think that she sees this as an operations person and getting the agencies to work together and God knows that's what we want. So I think those are the ages but some of them anyway. So I think I had the next thanks again for coming really appreciated. I used to live in New York I don't today unfortunately. Oh no. Sorry. I live in DC now but one of the issues that I run into and my father-in-law is actually one of the fire marshals down there in Virginia and at least an issue that I run into is been access to building codes. Those are put out by commercial entities who copyrighted and license it and blah, blah, blah and yet it's codified in law as you shall follow these building codes these building standards but you can't get access to them without going and paying thousands of dollars to the company. We're foil. Well right but for you to come back well it's a commercial company I can't control their data. So FOIA doesn't really help there. So what I'm getting at is can we look at looking at those laws that reference external entities and say okay look if we're gonna codify this in law we need to make that available to the public and I don't mean going to the library and being able to look at it on paper. You know that's not a way you can run a business and then the other thing kind of related and going back to the housing thing is building plans. Building plans would be really nice to have available online. Yeah I mean the department of buildings is slowly doing that here. I mean you can go to the department of buildings now and oops it's not in the file and you wonder if it's cynical like me you wonder what happened to it. But the fact of the matter is they are doing it it's very slow but yes that's happening but I do think your other issue of the building plans that are private because they've been contracted out to a private entity that's something I just I'll make a note thank you. I have a question as well and thank you again for a really rich talk. One of the things I'm interested in and I am following this in kind of other areas is not simply access to data but making it so that it's usable and readable. So usability visualization. So I'm interested in how you've approached this some of the challenges and whether you've also worked for or with nonprofits who are thinking about this such as the open planning project. I certainly know the open planning project very well. Sam Wong is responsible for much of the work that we have in our office. I would say that that is a central theme. I didn't go into all the specifics of intro 29 of 2010 which is the issue of open data that is accessible so that groups that don't have the sophistication that many in the room do can use it. It is incredibly important. So one of the answer the gentleman's question in the back one of the delays might be making sure that it's in a format that is usable because as I understand it and you know better than I some of the apps that have already some of the 170 databases that have already been made available A they're not real time. They're not updated and B they're not necessarily in the format that a nonprofit in the human service world can utilize. So that bill will be extra will be there'll be more work put into it trying to accomplish just what you said. How far we'll get. I don't know but it's a key goal of mine. Absolutely. Great. Any other questions? Thank you very much for coming to talk to us. I work for Stanford University and in terms of finding a constituency that's interested in open data. I can tell you that our faculty and graduate students doing research open data from government institutions is just a gold mine and is really heavily used in economics and sociology and similar sorts of disciplines. And the other it has a corresponding advantage also for the governments and the governments that have their data available in open format online are the data are the governments and the problems therefore that get studied. And so with the long term feedback loop there where if you put the data available you know academia takes some time but you end up discovering that there's like studies about your specific problems as opposed to the problems of some other city that didn't put their data online. I'm gonna mention that, thank you. I'm gonna say the professor at Stanford University said this. I'm not a professor but. And I appreciate that, that's a good, I like that line. I think that's a great line, thank you. Any other questions? Hi. Hi, how are you? Okay, let me thank you for coming. Thank you. He's at all our meetings. Let me thank you. It's my opinion as a teacher sometimes and interacting with a lot of people that having their computer experience be with Microsoft Windows is detrimental to the learning computers. That is someone who has no exposure to computers is in a better situation to learn computers than someone who has had that experience. But my main point is the computer training you mentioned, the computer facilities you mentioned, most of these, as far as I can tell, are training people to use Microsoft products rather than to use computers. And even if one knew how to use computers, what do you do when you sit down at a machine in the library that's running a captive operating system and nothing you know about how a computer works or how to program. You have no access to the computer itself. You only have the software that's on these machines. I don't disagree with you. I think what I'm trying to do is just take the baby steps. Now, I will tell you that do it, because the whole city of New York is heavily invested in the aspect of life that you are not supportive of. But I would say that there is, I mean, we could do Dan Goranek, who's a terrific colleague, is now head of the Committee on Technology. James indicated that I'm now heading up governmental operations, so we work together very well. And there's no reason, we've had a hearing in the past on this issue and we could certainly have more. It's like you can take baby steps and that would be a big step. So I'm with you. I understand exactly what you're coming from. Just today, I was at a meeting as an example in the New York City Housing Authority in a tenant basement. And they just got computers. I'm sure they've got all the things loaded there that you don't like. However, just to get somebody to be a source of support for the people in this particular development, there are 5,000 families there. Probably average income is around $9,000 or $10,000 a year. You know, it's a challenge. We're trying to put the money together to get somebody to help them. That's the level at which we are at in some of the lower income areas. So I understand what you're coming from and I know that's the general belief of everybody in this room. I'm just saying this, I can't do it alone. I will tell you that right now. Yes, another visitor to our committee. Hi, I'll have to wait. I'm just gonna repeat what Gail said. And you may write software. You may organize. But one of the most powerful things that you can do for free software and for responsible government is to actually just show up. Sun Choo and Woody Allen have emphasized that many battles are won because one side shows up and the other doesn't. And one person going to a meeting with a properly prepared thing with three or four shills. I mean, fellow supporters in the audience can make a real difference. And Gail Brewer is there and she's fighting and she's on the council. And if you show up at the meetings, it can be a big help. And I'm sorry I don't have a question, Gail. Thank you. That worked, Jay, thanks. If I may. I'm not from New York myself. Great. I'm not even from the United States. I'm actually from Belgium in Europe. You may know about the cliche that Europe is ahead too many things for open source software and stuff. I would just like to say that when I arrived in New York and I went to a hotel and I woke up and I put on the TV, I saw this hearing about exactly this open data thing and I was actually amazed. Channel 74. Yes, I think something like that, I'm not sure. But I was, in fact, I was in fact amazed because not so long before I left for New York there was a story on the Belgian blogosphere about a guy who had made a website based on scraping the data from the national railway company to make it available in a different format, more useful format for users and he got a cease and desist letter from the railway company because they didn't want him to do that. I think you're actually ahead in this kind of thing over us and I would really like to congratulate you. But the fact that you watch Channel 74. Yeah. Hello, I'm not from New York City but I'd like to thank you for sharing the details of what you're doing here. My question's more about, I didn't hear much about health in your talk. Is that something like a taboo area for you? No, no, it's just, I was looking at my watch. So many areas. I mean, we are newly involved with the electronic health records which I actually did pass legislation mandating that the city of New York, again, with some caveats, embark. We have, just that alone is a huge challenge. Do we have community health centers? We obviously have private practices. We have hospitals, et cetera. And it's been slow. Some of the doctors, they don't want to sign off on things, et cetera. But I would say that that's one area where technology is making a big deal. We don't have the rural issue. I know I have a lot of friends in North Dakota for those of you who don't know that's out west and there's nobody who lives there, but there's a state. The same size of Staten Island population, just so you know. But they use technology, obviously, to connect with a Minneapolis hospital, that kind of thing. I would say that there is also a big federal push through the stimulus money for the electronic health record and the city of New York has been awarded a lot of money on that front. Another area where we're putting a lot of time on the technology front is redundancy. I didn't talk about redundancy for the police department and first responders, and then redundancy for health facilities. God forbid, the hospital or a community health center. So all of that technology has been used extensively on the whole redundancy issue. And those of you in the health field know even more the technology being used in the hospitals themselves. But from my perspective, it's the electronic health record and the redundancy is huge. I mean, I didn't talk about the other issue which New York now has is something called nice wind. New York City, I don't know what the hell wind stands for, but it is a system all around the city now and tennis. Grumman put it together, north of Grumman. And you are able to use them obviously only for public safety, police, fire, and first responders. And the water meter. Every single building now in New York is getting this little gray box. And it's a water meter and basically wirelessly sitting in Queens because that's where the Department of Environmental Protection is. You'll know your water bill and whether you're taking a shower or your boyfriend's taking a little, little much more information than you might want sometimes. But you will know, you will know exactly by looking online or on paper if you're a senior and don't understand the technology, you will be able to use that system for the issue of meeting, meter reading. Now, healthcare is not yet there, but there are probably ways that they can also certainly for first responders be able to use it. So I mean, health, there's much more to discuss. Let me just tell you one funny story about the funeral, okay? So you go down, you can go down to 125 Worf Street, that's in downtown Manhattan. All night long, 24 seven, you die. Somebody's got to register you with the city. You don't just like die and nothing. You have to register with the city. So there was always a long line. This is not really health, but kind of. So you have to go down there. And there were runners from all of the funeral parlors. There are big funeral parlors and then there are tiny, tiny little ones I can store from. All had runners. I went there one night. I couldn't believe it. The line, first of all, it has a park. That's a problem. And there were these runners. Like the line was all the way out the door every single night. A lot of people, you know, were big city, they died. So I figured this should be done electronically. So we actually passed the bill. The funeral parlors had a fit because the runners, you know, they like to have the paper and so on. But now you can electronically send in the information about who died and what the specifics are. But the problem was, just to go back to the electronic health records for a minute, interestingly, the doctors, the runners often went out to East Hampton to find the doctor to sign off on the death certificate. Where else would you go in the summer to find the doctor? East Hampton. That's out in Long Island for those of you, you know, out on the beach. So anyway, that has been curtailed. The runners are gone. It's done electronically. The same thing with electronic health records. Very slow to get everybody on board and the platforms. We have state, federal, city, different platforms. And then you have all the different hospitals and then community centers. So it's been a challenge just to make everybody able to be in sync. So that's a little bit on the health issue. Well, we're out of time. And actually before we thank you one final time, I would maybe, do you know, do you still need people to find curtains in the Bronx? Perhaps we can send some Debbie developers. I think we're okay. We're okay. Yeah, we're getting there. But thank you. Well, please join me in thanking Dale for that wonderful talk. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much.