Strategic Product Proposal - HenrikBechmann/CivicTechTO-TorontoBudget GitHub Wiki

Sept 20, 2015, by Henrik Bechmann

This is a proposal, built on what has gone before, to invite active debate on the outlines of a development project for the year. The idea would be to implement the components based on priorities to be established, possibly over a number of years. This would naturally identify priorities for the current year.

Contents

Background

Much planning work has been done to develop context for selection of a product development project. See the links below, and the wiki in general, for details.

The problem is generally that users who wish to influence the Toronto budget find that it is difficult to obtain clear facts related to any issue that they want to put forward. Furthermore receipt of timely information on intervention points and new topical information would be helpful, but is generally unavailable, or difficult to obtain.

Our project is based on the assumption that a group of innovative people with the appropriate background and implementation can solve these problems.

For latest product decision matrix see the google spreadsheet. For other direct references see Strategic Planning Metrics, Project Focus Options, and Key abstraction: program budget item.

Strategic Partners

Several priority partners for our project have (in principle) been identified:

  • CSOs (Civil Society Organizations) including NGOs, trade unions, faith-based organizations, indigenous peoples movements, foundations and many others
  • Neighbourhood organizations
  • City frontline workers
  • Individual citizens

Of these, the CSO's would presumably have the greatest ability to provide specific feedback to the project, and the greatest leverage to use the resulting resources in their budget engagement efforts. Therefore CSO's would make the most effective partners for our project (through the user team) in the short run. However, CSO's may be too set in their ways to redirect resources to a shared development process.

Consider providing cso's and neighbourhood groups tools to engage their constituents

Examples of CSOs:

Website Portal

Mobile first.

  • Platform
  • Technology stack
  • Content Management System (CMS)
  • Custom software integration

Product Components

The CivicTech budget workgroup would produce a Toronto Budget portal with the following components (implemented over time).

Citizen's Mandate

The Citizen's Mandate section of the portal would advance legal, social, political, economic and moral arguments and references in favour of citizen involvement in the budget process.

Budget Explorer

The Budget Explorer section of the portal would be the most innovative section. The Strategic Planning process has determined that the most effective tools for understanding the Toronto budget are context and data visualization.

Context includes:

  • proportion (to related items)
  • timelines
  • drill-down
  • comparisons

The concept here would be to design a Standard Budget Unit object (centered on any arbitrary budget line item at any level), which would have the ability to present itself in context of its proportion to related items, its timelines, and with drill-down capability, taking full advantage of (standard) data visualization.

Arbitrary Standard Budget Units (2 or more) would be able to be dynamically placed side by side by the user, and automatically generate visualized comparisons. These comparisons would be able to be named and saved by registered users.

All Standard Budget Units would be dynamically updated by fresh data feeds from the Toronto Open Data portal.

In addition, the Explorer would support Standard Staffing Budget Units (FTE's), and Standard Costing Units (from Financial Statements, in particular Expenses by Object), in formats compatible with the Standard Budget Units.

Groupings should be based on natural, meaningful, taxonomies.

Budget Messenger

Subscription service to provide information requested by users, like a newsfeed.

Consider:

  • change.org petitions notifications type mechanism
  • quick action on information -- dynamic
  • twitter account hashtag builds topical mashups - haller, tabs toronto; user go to budget portal to find these links

Budget Connector

The Budget Connector section would provide organized access to social media resources, directed to tags that relate to the Toronto Budget.

Deputation Helper

The idea of the Deputation Helper is to provide resources and connections for people who want to prepare a deputation for City Council of one of its Committees. It would also provide support for the background research, and the background interactions with City officials before and after the deputations.

Budget Resources

Budget resources would provide organized access to government and non-government resources that support or explain Toronto budget items. These would include http://tabstoronto.com.

Argument Assembler

This section would be for registered users, and would provide a facility to save references to objects from the civictech Toronto Budget Portal, organized to support the development of the user's arguments on the budget. For example references to named Budget Explorer configurations could be stored here.

Budget Events

This section would provide organized access to information on the budget decision process, including council committee events, council events, special budget events, participatory budget events, etc. Organized by timeline and topic.

identify intervention points - such as meetings where interested groups can participate in budget decisions. Link topical intervention points to budget explorer objects.

Budget News

Budget News would provide moderated information and commentary about the budget process, and issues of particular interest such as Gardener East and Sheppard Subway.

Budget Sandbox

The Budget Sandbox would provide educational and experimental tools such as http://www.citizenbudget.com by http://www.opennorth.ca/

City Worker Portal

This portal would be a civictech.ca act of defiance (unless a collaborative arrangement could be worked out with the City), to provide a platform for frontline city workers (currently shut out of the budget process) to have a voice for their invaluable insights into the budget process.

Participatory Budgets

A well organized portal into the pilot Toronto Participatory Budgets

Public Asset Maps

This would likely be a separate collaborative project owing to its size and complexity. The idea would be to map city assets, and link those to specific budget (operating and capital) items. Possibly extend to include Provincial and Federal assets as well, to see the full extent of public assets available to the citizens of Toronto.

Product Priorities

[to be determined]