City of Austin and OpenAustin A strategic alliance between the city of Austin and a citizen cooperative to implement great internet technology for Austin citizens January 2010
Statement of Purpose OpenAustin was formed by citizens interested in City of Austin web strategy and approach. Through a series of conversations, common ground was developed between the City and OpenAustin to work together in a formal and recurring way. The goal is to develop new capacities for the City of Austin website while reducing or eliminating costs. This charter represents the expectations and the basis for the working relationship. In order to advance this alliance, the City and OpenAustin will partner, innovate and improve. 1 Specifically: Partner City of Austin Commitments
Identify OpenAustin as a priority partner in collecting and analyzing crowdsourced input and assessing crowdsourcing opportunities and initiatives. Provide an appropriate staff liaison/contact for the purposes of advancing the work of the alliance. Provide appropriate technology channels and access to appropriate systems, data, and analytics for the purpose of advancing the work. Any access to systems will not include access to information that is identified as confidential under the Public Information Act or other laws. Incorporate an appropriate role for OpenAustin in long range planning for the city web infrastructure, whether developed by staff or consultants engaged by the city. Work collaboratively with OpenAustin on press opportunities for items that are related to the City of Austin ‐ OpenAustin effort and the application of crowdsourcing. Support efforts to appropriately recognize individuals or sponsoring companies that make a significant contribution to city priorities through this initiative.
OpenAustin Commitments
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Provide a recurring base of expertise and qualify potential participants to ensure quality assistance is provided. Maintain a defined leadership structure for the purposes of interaction with city representatives and establishing project goals. Provide results of crowdsourcing efforts in enough detail and with sufficient supporting information and methodology description in a consistent format. Maintain quality control so that the sources of the information are known and the reliability can be determined
The terms and language contained in this strategic alliance document are not intended to be legally binding between the City of Austin and OpenAustin or any of its individual members.
Work with vendors engaged by the city to understand the structure and approach they plan to deploy, and make appropriate adjustments to work products to accelerate results. Work collaboratively with the City of Austin on press opportunities for items that are related to the City of Austin ‐ OpenAustin effort and the application of crowdsourcing. Work with the city prior to giving impression to individuals or sponsoring companies that recognition will occur.
Innovate Key Initiatives Assess the validity and usability of the city e‐service inventory. Compare city service inventory with other peer cities to assist in gap analysis Work with the city to determine what data streams are currently available and those that should be made available publically in machine readable form, and what technical approaches to use in publishing them to a city data portal. Test social media strategies and tools for applicability to the city’s web needs. Assess options to incorporate crowdsourcing as an appropriate development approach for components of the city’s web, mobile and e‐service capacity. Support usability testing efforts for the current and future iterations of the city web presence. Develop a functional workplan that identifies resources and prioritizes work in order to implement the innovation initiatives. Add work projects to the workplan based on initial assessments that are appropriate for crowdsourcing and coordinate their delivery.
Improve Key Tasks Make Austin a national model for how to establish crowdsourcing partnerships and volunteer opportunities that advance city priorities. Incorporate OpenAustin initiatives into the CPIO goals and objectives on an annual basis. The City of Austin is not legally obligated to implement any particular initiative. Identify successes and opportunities from the program on a biannual basis