Disruptive Proactivity

There was some talk on twitter about the gulf between the different people who work on “open government” type projects. I’ve linked to Dom as the prompt for this post was the interchange with him and Lou (excellent post here), but I could have linked to others – the names change, the argument only varies by it’s politeness/clarity.

While some of that is legitimate and accurate; some of it is also a fundamental misunderstanding (generally not from Dom/Lou, but often from others). There’s also a wide variety of reasons why “developers” will hack for nothing; and while I can’t cover all of those, I can cover mine: why I go, why I helped run several, and what I wont do. If you go to hack days, maybe you should write about why – it’s not all the same.

I don’t rely on freelance coding as my job; and I don’t work on this stuff for a day job. Primarily, I come to this as an activist – looking to disturb the present in service of the future. And that disturbance isn’t always welcomed, and sometimes, I’ll take any entrance to the building we can get.

---

This place tends to be mostly geekery around tech, democracy, data; but those who follow me actively on twitter know that I spend a bit of time doing other things; often with some relationship to climate.

What I work on has changed a fair bit over the last 3 years; as various understandings have changed, focus has moved, and as the community has expanded. This is a good thing, but it’s important to note, that what we talked about 3 years ago is not what we talked about a year ago; and even what we talked about a year ago is not what we’re talking about now.

If you’re using the same justifications or arguments for/against something related to open data, transparency, that you were 18 months ago, the world may have shifted dramatically under your feet. Many people have changed opinions, and it’s good that most of them have moved towards what we said then; but that doesn’t mean that we don’t need to look at what we are saying as well.

---

Last week, when talking about Civil Servants, David Mitchell made an analogy to those working on TV shows. The rooms are different, but the same applies here. That I, as someone who has never worked a day in Government in his life, may not know the details of what you do, or quite why you need that many meetings, I know that you know, and what you do in them matters; especially if you’re putting the cart back on the horse to correct the fallout from a skipped meeting. That interface and communications is needed.

And now for the Gross and Vulgar Stereotype Game, where there are no gray areas, and everyone fits in to nice little boxes. You know, like in Fiction.

Little (from anyone) is designed to denigrate, disrespect or minimise the contributions of people who work on such areas. Project Management is important, Process is important, Production is important, and Ideas are important. For now, I’ll consider them as two things: Production (stuff with the programmers – design, code, presentation, ideas), and Process (everything else). Some of the most talented people I have had the privilege of working with (eg the indefatigable Hadley at LinkedGov) have little time available for full Production as they spend all their time in Process meetings making sure that everything else keeps working and everyone else can keep focussing on what they want to do.

I wonder how many data users are currently publicly opposing the census – that collects the data that underlies the process that they think is wonderful. There are many grey areas, and this isn’t simple, but to talk about it, I need to ignore large chunks (where that includes you, I’m sorry, and I’m sure you can write a long blog post about it .

Process is very different to that of Production, and is almost always required to be funded (or at least, the time paid for some other way). It requires people going to meetings, and those meetings tend to be in specific places during office hours. It’s here that the culture clash is most stark between those who are production first, and those who are process first. I can hack something over night or in a weekend, for free, and I (for now) have a full time job to pay the bills during the week. The people who go to those meetings need their job to be part of that (or similarly) – they need to be paid. And they can, legitimately sometimes (but also sometimes illegitimately) get a little upset when some people produce an 80% demo in a weekend, without consideration of the other 20% that takes most of the time, and the difference between a service and a demo. And Process have to exist.

The need, now, for that broader work and consideration is probably best exemplified by the asborometer – a technical hack that has probably had more negative impact than good over the last year; but it’s the people who go to meetings who have to deal with it, to convince those who have data we’d like to use that we should be able to use it. At times, they have a very hard job. People talented at Process can take something impossible and make it easy; and most of the time, no one notices. When we do, #weloveBaskers trends.

Where it doesn’t, what you have is at best a pretty visualisation that no one sees or uses for anything other than “oooh, that’s pretty”. And that’s not generally a good use of anyone’s time.

2 years ago, Production was all there was. Government wasn’t really listening, so those additional routes didn’t exist, and weren’t feasible – hence they didn’t get considered. You could probably fit everyone with time dedicated to Process round this table (on a virgin train – so not that many people).

When the stories of why the Camp for Climate Action had the significant success it did are written, their Process Group will probably be thanked by too few, and ignored by too many. They get criticised; but the work goes on. Some activists who were at the Climate Summits in both Copenhagen and Cancun saw the difference of what happens with, and without.

The better Process is, the less visible it is. And the very best process is invisible, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t have the option of transparency.

Accounting reasons

It’s not exploitative for some to be paid, and others, who are well informed and happy with the situation, not to be, by choice.

I also believe that it’s not exploitative for a commercial organisation to make money out of a hackday where developers are working for free; conditional on there being full disclosure on what money is going where. Process needs accountants, and accounting. And that shows how far as a culture we’ve come in very short time.

So, what do I work on?

While I’m in London next weekend, I’ll be at the March for the Alternative (or one of it’s feeders), rather than spending the day at Rewired State (that they’re both on the same day, with TUC being announced first, possibly shows the vast gulf that still exists between the different communities).

To the right of the first paragraph is the new summary of what I work on. If we define any form of activism, from Asborometer to Awesometer, GovSpark to LinkedGov to Making A Difference With Data, as work in service of the future, then we start to see an aim, an ethos, of how to move forwards.

Of course, there are also visualisations which are done to make something pretty, without deep consideration of anything beyond people saying how pretty it is; those get ignored here.

Charities, Government and Companies

They’re different, and have very different types of motivations.

Companies work to continue to exist – when they stop, the words we use for them are all negative.

Most charities would like themselves to no longer have to exist – because the injustice or failing they were set up to correct has gone away. One of the aims of HearFromYourMP was to persuade Parliament that they should run it, and to do so in a moderately clueful manner. Carl Malamud’s experience with the SEC data in the mid-90s shows clear leadership here.

Government is, in some respects, like a charity that can’t go away. But it’s also very different. Government sits in the middle; many people see it as their job; many companies see it as a profit centre to make money off; but the charity types also see it as the potential force for good in certain areas. Especially it is an actor at massive scale in many aspects of the country where the it would likely be a good thing for the present to be disturbed in service of the future. It’s complicated.

Many of the things I do, I’d like to turn off because they’re not relevant any more. And some hackday tools are like that – one offs, or services that you demo and hand over to the Government to run. TellUsOnce being such an example – a two day hack/proof of concept got more done than a 3 year DWP project and many millions of pounds.

But there are some companies for whom the status quo is a good thing – they get the money to do what they’ve always done, and they will lose money/staff/prestige if it changes – so of course it’s natural for them to complain when better ways are shown. It’s natural, and from some point of view, rational; even if not a good thing. Their Process is designed to stop ours; and tellig hte difference, from outside, can sometimes be a large bump.

And now for some gross and vulgar stereotypes

The first type of hackday – an “open hackday” – producing something that is fundamentally short term, but might get taken over and make an existing process much better. The evolution (and rewrite) of GovSpark being a clear example of crossing that boundary, from something that was designed to show. Process for that was far from easy, as was Service Production. But a dramatic benefit came out of the blue – and that was the core of Issy’s idea – building on others, but with the emphasis on building.

But there are starting to be other types of hackdays coming along – we’ll call them prescribed hackdays. Those where the aim is “build something, and if we like it, we’ll talk about taking it further”. They’re generally much more attractive to commercial organisations (or the more commercial side of large organisations) – they’re far easier to get funding for, they’re slightly easier to run. But I’m in generally not interested in those – certainly not in helping run them.

Disturbing the present in a small play pool, away from things that matter to me, in a pen where there’s little of interest to me doesn’t seem like a good use of my time.

At the prescribed hackdays, Production get told by Process what data is available, not asked what data they would like to get. Ideas are limited to certain boundaries. The fiercely critical reaction to the announcement of the Guardian SXSW hackday shows how well that can go down. Production are doing a day’s intense work – in the GSXSW case, in the small hope of a prize – for a commercial company. The GSXSW prize was nice, but I wonder how many people attending were remotely in with a chance of winning it (I suspect it may have been around 5).

For prescribed hackdays, where you want to get a load of people to work for free on your API, or to build something for you, and you’re a commercial company or are looking to make money off what is built, then no one don’t expect Production (or Process) to work for free. In the same way you wouldn’t expect a plumber to for your company, but charities can sometimes get that.

But prescribed hackdays are not what, at least until semi-recently, most Production people meant by hackday. But the distinction is much less clear for Process. The open hackday is a Process Geek’s worst nightmare – you get odd questions, generating potentially lots of work, which may or may not get used, and it’s possible that, at the end of it, someone will have put something together that gets your boss yelled at by Number 10, and possibly your Process friend’s team fired.

In Government arena, especially with this Government, especially with open hackdays (but also with prescribed ones), disturbing the present can have a price. Production may replace some of Process’ colleagues and friends with a rather simple shell script – often without realising that they’ve done it.

It’s not quite as simple as that

But more widely, there’s some concern that developers are getting taken advantage of by the big grey area between the two. In general, I’m not sure this is often true; and in general, I’m reasonably sure that it’s not generally true. But there are undoubtably instances that are public, and instances gagged by commercial confidentiality clauses. I think the approach taken by LinkedGov is fundamentally right here. They’ve learnt from the lessons of others evolution. It may be worth creating a set of “guidelines for hackdays” which are expected to be silently met, or explicitly opted out of.

I will happily work on data projects that I want to work forward on, for free, even if a commercial organisation is making money out of that event, but only if what I get out of that event is the best way to move forward on an aim.

Some of the commercial arrangements behinds events are probably less pure than idealists would like, and there may be a case for some form of “guidelines” for those running hack days – expectations that both sides meet (or state in advance that they wont).

But even if all the sponsorship for an event is required to go into the pockets of the commercial host, that is not necessarily a reason for me to not engage with an event that moves forward things, if it was transparent. Although I can see why others have very strong objections to which I have significant sympathy.

Disturbing the Present in Service of the Future

I work on stuff for free – be it data, transparency, climate, or anything else, because I would like the world to be slightly better afterwards than before. That movement forward, that activism, that engagement, is that it achieves something. That there’s someone who can take a functional or demonstrative hack, and present it to The Minister’s Office, is a good way of getting a service about which you care improved dramatically. Process makes that far more plausible and practical in short amounts of time – if you consider the carbon savings from GovSpark, I suspect that is far more than most other efforts. Process made that happen.

It used to be that one person, one group, one event, could cover all of Government data – in the same was it was once possible to read all of usenet over breakfast. That anyone can claim to have a good understanding of what everyone is doing, is now, I suspect, fundamentally flawed. Although some high level Process people may have a strong command of everything in their area (but only if they look for it).

The present is plenty disturbed right now, it’s the service of the future part that we need to work on; and that means Process and Production being highly aware of each other, possibly working in different ways, at different times, in different amounts; but together can achieve things either can not alone.

Which, I think, was a large part of Dom’s point, but for somewhat different reasons.