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幾年前,我開始一個計劃,試著讓傑出的科技工作者及設計人員休假一年,到一個幾乎包含所有他們痛恨之物的環境中工作-我們讓他們在政府機關工作。這個計劃叫做Code for America,有點像是一群科技人組成的和平部隊,我們每年挑選幾個成員,讓他們與地方政府合作;並非將他們送到第三世界國家,而是將他們送入地方政府這個荒野中。他們在那裡開發很棒的應用程式,與政府人員合作,但他們真正目的是顯示現今科技可以做出什麼應用。
所以我們來認識一下Al。Al是波士頓市的消防栓,這些文字看起來像是它想找個約會對象,但它真正想找的是,當它被雪埋住時,可以為它鏟雪的人,因為它知道,當它被4英呎的積雪覆蓋時,無法善加發揮救火功能。現在,在這種特殊情況下,它要如何尋求幫助?去年我們透過Code for America計劃,派了一組人前往波士頓,他們抵達時正值二月,去年二月當地下了很多雪,他們注意到,這座城市的政府從未想過為這些消防栓剷雪。但其中有一位成員,一位名叫Erik Michaels-Ober的傢伙注意到某些其他情況,市民會為這些消防栓前方的人行道剷雪,於是,他做了任何優秀程式開發者都會做的事-他寫了一個應用程式。
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以下為系統擷取之英文原文
So a couple of years ago I started a program to try to get the rockstar tech and design people to take a year off and work in the one environment that represents pretty much everything they're supposed to hate; we have them work in government. The program is called Code for America, and it's a little bit like a Peace Corps for geeks. We select a few fellows every year and we have them work with city governments. Instead of sending them off into the Third World, we send them into the wilds of City Hall. And there they make great apps, they work with city staffers. But really what they're doing is they're showing what's possible with technology today.
So meet Al. Al is a fire hydrant in the city of Boston. Here it kind of looks like he's looking for a date, but what he's really looking for is for someone to shovel him out when he gets snowed in, because he knows he's not very good at fighting fires when he's covered in four feet of snow. Now how did he come to be looking for help in this very unique manner? We had a team of fellows in Boston last year through the Code for America program. They were there in February, and it snowed a lot in February last year. And they noticed that the city never gets to digging out these fire hydrants. But one fellow in particular, a guy named Erik Michaels-Ober, noticed something else, and that's that citizens are shoveling out sidewalks right in front of these things. So he did what any good developer would do, he wrote an app.
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這是一個有趣的小應用程式,你可以用它認養一個消防栓,所以你同意在下雪時為它鏟雪,如果你這麼做,就可以為它命名,它被稱為第一個Al;如果你不這麼做,別人可以偷走你的消防栓,因此其中有趣味的遊戲動態效果。這是一個簡單的小應用程式,或許是去年團隊成員所寫的21個應用程式中最小的一個,但它能做到某些政府技術無法做到的事,它很快地廣為流傳。
有一位檀香山市I.T.部門人員看到這個應用程式,意識到他可以使用它,但不是用於剷雪,而是讓市民認養海嘯警報器。使這些海嘯警報器正常運作非常重要,但人們會偷它們的電池,所以他讓市民們協助檢查。然後,西雅圖決定用它來讓市民協助清除堵塞的排水道。芝加哥不久前推出這個應用程式,讓市民認養為人行道剷雪的工作。所以我們知道,現在有九個城市計劃使用這個程式,它就這麼流暢、有組織、自然地流傳開來。
如果你知道任何與政府技術有關的情形,就知道這並非他們一般的做法。採購軟體通常需要花幾年時間。我們有一個團隊,去年曾在波士頓進行一項計劃,三個人只花了大約兩個半月即完成,這是一個讓家長為孩子找到適當公立學校的方法,我們後來得知,如果藉由正常管道,至少得花上兩年時間,大約得花上200萬美元。這還不算什麼,加州法院系統進行的一項計劃,到目前為止已花了納稅人20億美元,而且根本沒用,每一個政府層級中都會出現像這樣的計劃。
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It's a cute little app where you can adopt a fire hydrant. So you agree to dig it out when it snows. If you do, you get to name it, and he called the first one Al. And if you don't, someone can steal it from you. So it's got cute little game dynamics on it. This is a modest little app. It's probably the smallest of the 21 apps that the fellows wrote last year. But it's doing something that no other government technology does. It's spreading virally.
There's a guy in the I.T. department of the City of Honolulu who saw this app and realized that he could use it, not for snow, but to get citizens to adopt tsunami sirens. It's very important that these tsunami sirens work, but people steal the batteries out of them. So he's getting citizens to check on them. And then Seattle decided to use it to get citizens to clear out clogged storm drains. And Chicago just rolled it out to get people to sign up to shovel sidewalks when it snows. So we now know of nine cities that are planning to use this. And this has spread just frictionlessly, organically, naturally.
If you know anything about government technology, you know that this isn't how it normally goes. Procuring software usually takes a couple of years. We had a team that worked on a project in Boston last year that took three people about two and a half months. It was a way that parents could figure out which were the right public schools for their kids. We were told afterward that if that had gone through normal channels, it would have taken at least two years and it would have cost about two million dollars. And that's nothing. There is one project in the California court system right now that so far cost taxpayers two billion dollars, and it doesn't work. And there are projects like this at every level of government.
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因此,只花幾天時間所寫的一個應用程式能廣為流傳,對政府機構來說是個警訊,暗示政府可以運作得更好-不是像許多人認為的,應該使它更像一間私營公司,甚至也不是使它像一間科技公司,而是使它更像網路本身。這意味著不須經過許可,意味著開放,意味著生產力,這是很重要的。但更重要的是,這個應用程式代表新一代如何解決政府問題,並不是機構僵化之類的問題,而是集體行動的問題。這是個好消息,因為事實證明,我們很擅長利用數位科技進行集體行動。
現在有一大群人正在建設我們所需的工具,進行有效率的合作,不只是Code for America成員,全國各地有數百人,每天都在自己的社群裡撰寫公民應用程式。他們尚未放棄對政府的期望,他們確實對此感到沮喪,但他們並未埋怨,而是試著修正它。這些人知道某些我們忽略的問題,這是指當你從對政治和DMV(車輛管理局)限制等所有感覺中,及所有其他讓我們相當生氣的事跳脫出來時,政府的本質是-套一句Tim O'Reilly的話,「我們單獨做不到的事,就一起做。」
現在很多人已放棄對政府的期待,如果你是那些人當中的一個,我想請你重新考慮,因為情況正發生變化。政治不會改變,但政府正在改變,因為政府最終的力量來自於我們。記得憲法中所說的「我們人民」嗎?我們對這句話的認知將會影響改變的發生。
當我開始這項計劃時,對政府並不是很瞭解,跟許多人一樣,我認為基本上政府就是選舉人們擔任公職。然而,兩年後,我得出的結論是,特別是地方政府-這件事跟負鼠有關。
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So an app that takes a couple of days to write and then spreads virally, that's sort of a shot across the bow to the institution of government. It suggests how government could work better -- not more like a private company, as many people think it should. And not even like a tech company, but more like the Internet itself. And that means permissionless, it means open, it means generative. And that's important. But what's more important about this app is that it represents how a new generation is tackling the problem of government -- not as the problem of an ossified institution, but as a problem of collective action. And that's great news, because, it turns out, we're very good at collective action with digital technology.
Now there's a very large community of people that are building the tools that we need to do things together effectively. It's not just Code for America fellows, there are hundreds of people all over the country that are standing and writing civic apps every day in their own communities. They haven't given up on government. They are frustrated as hell with it, but they're not complaining about it, they're fixing it. And these folks know something that we've lost sight of. And that's that when you strip away all your feelings about politics and the line at the DMV and all those other things that we're really mad about, government is, at its core, in the words of Tim O'Reilly, "What we do together that we can't do alone."
Now a lot of people have given up on government. And if you're one of those people, I would ask that you reconsider, because things are changing. Politics is not changing; government is changing. And because government ultimately derives its power from us -- remember "We the people?" -- how we think about it is going to effect how that change happens.
Now I didn't know very much about government when I started this program. And like a lot of people, I thought government was basically about getting people elected to office. Well after two years, I've come to the conclusion that, especially local government, is about opossums.
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這是提供服務和資訊的市民服務中心,一般來說,如果你在所屬的城市中打311就會連到這裡。如果你有機會擔任所屬城市中市民服務中心的職員,就像我們的成員Scott Silverman在這個計劃中所做的一樣,事實上他們都是這麼做的。你會發現,人們打電話向政府求助的問題非常廣泛,包括有一隻負鼠賴在你家不走。因此,Scott接到這通電話,他在官方資料庫中鍵入「負鼠」,他從動物管制機構開始著手,並沒有得到任何解決方法。最後,他說,「聽著,你是否能將所有通往屋外的門打開,然後大聲播放音樂,看看牠是否會離開?」結果奏效了,所以,為Scott歡呼一下。但這並不是負鼠故事的結局。
波士頓不只有一個市民服務中心,它有一個叫Citizens Connect的網站和行動裝置應用程式,這個應用程式不是我們寫的,這是波士頓新都市機制辦公室中一些相當聰明的人的作品。所以某天-這是一個真實的報告,寫著,「我的垃圾桶裡有一隻負鼠,看不出牠死了沒,我要怎麼把它弄走?」但Citizens Connect的運作方式是不同的;所以Scott是進行一對一的諮詢服務,但在Citizens Connect上,一切都是公開的,所以每個人都可以看到這個訊息。在這個案例中,一位鄰居看見了,我們得到的下一個報告寫著,「我前往這個地點,找到屋子後方的垃圾桶。有負鼠嗎?是的。活著嗎?沒錯。讓垃圾桶倒向一側。走回家。晚安,負鼠甜心。」
非常簡單。所以這相當棒,這是數位與實務的結合,也是政府採用群眾資源的好例子,但這也是以政府本身為平台的好例子。我所說的並不一定是指科技定義上的平台,我所說的是一個讓大眾用來自助及助人的平台。所以一位民眾幫助另一位民眾,但政府在這裡扮演一個關鍵角色;它使這兩個人產生連繫,可以藉由政府服務使民眾在需要時彼此產生連繫。但鄰居是一個更好、更便宜的政府服務替代品。當一位鄰居幫助其他鄰居時,也因此加強了我們社區的力量,我們尋求動物管制機構的幫助,只會花費很多錢。
現在重要的是,我們必須考慮到政府與政治並非相同的東西。大多數人瞭解這一點,但他們認為其中一個會介入另一個,我們介入政府系統的方式是投票。我們曾多少次選出一位政治領導者-有時我們花費大量精力選出一位新政治領袖,然後在一旁觀望,期待政府能反映我們的價值觀,滿足我們的需求,卻看不到太大的改變?這是因為政府就像一片大海,政治是上層6英吋的部份,在這之下的就是我們所謂的官僚主義。我們總是以輕蔑的態度說出這個字眼,但正是這種輕蔑,使這個我們擁有及為它付費的東西,成了某種與我們對立的東西,於是我們自行剝奪了本身的權利。
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This is the call center for the services and information line. It's generally where you will get if you call 311 in your city. If you should ever have the chance to staff your city's call center, as our fellow Scott Silverman did as part of the program -- in fact, they all do that -- you will find that people call government with a very wide range of issues, including having an opossum stuck in your house. So Scott gets this call. He types "Opossum" into this official knowledge base. He doesn't really come up with anything. He starts with animal control. And finally, he says, "Look, can you just open all the doors to your house and play music really loud and see if the thing leaves?" So that worked. So booya for Scott. But that wasn't the end of the opossums.
Boston doesn't just have a call center. It has an app, a Web and mobile app, called Citizens Connect. Now we didn't write this app. This is the work of the very smart people at the Office of New Urban Mechanics in Boston. So one day -- this is an actual report -- this came in: "Opossum in my trashcan. Can't tell if it's dead. How do I get this removed?" But what happens with Citizens Connect is different. So Scott was speaking person-to-person. But on Citizens Connect everything is public, so everybody can see this. And in this case, a neighbor saw it. And the next report we got said, "I walked over to this location, found the trashcan behind the house. Opossum? Check. Living? Yep. Turned trashcan on its side. Walked home. Goodnight sweet opossum."
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Pretty simple. So this is great. This is the digital meeting the physical. And it's also a great example of government getting in on the crowd-sourcing game. But it's also a great example of government as a platform. And I don't mean necessarily a technological definition of platform here. I'm just talking about a platform for people to help themselves and to help others. So one citizen helped another citizen, but government played a key role here. It connected those two people. And it could have connected them with government services if they'd been needed, but a neighbor is a far better and cheaper alternative to government services. When one neighbor helps another, we strengthen our communities. We call animal control, it just costs a lot of money.
Now one of the important things we need to think about government is that it's not the same thing as politics. And most people get that, but they think that one is the input to the other. That our input to the system of government is voting. Now how many times have we elected a political leader -- and sometimes we spend a lot of energy getting a new political leader elected -- and then we sit back and we expect government to reflect our values and meet our needs, and then not that much changes? That's because government is like a vast ocean and politics is the six-inch layer on top. And what's under that is what we call bureaucracy. And we say that word with such contempt. But it's that contempt that keeps this thing that we own and we pay for as something that's working against us, this other thing, and then we're disempowering ourselves.
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人們似乎認為政治很性感,如果我們希望這個制度對我們有所幫助,就得設法使官僚主義變得性感,因為這就是政府真正運作的方式。我們必須參與政府機構的運作,所以這就是OccupytheSEC運動所做的。你們見過這些傢伙嗎?這是一群憂心的民眾,鉅細靡遺地寫了325頁報告,回應證券交易委員會對金融改革法案的評論。這不是政治上的活躍,而是官僚上的活躍。
現在,對那些對政府已不抱期待的人來說,這正是我們該自問的時候。關於這個我們希望留給孩子的世界,你必須看見這些他們將面臨的巨大挑戰,我們真的認為,在不修正這個代表我們所有人的機構的情況下,我們能抵達我們必須前往的地方嗎?沒有政府,我們無法辦到,但我們確實需要它更有效率。好消息是,科技使從根本上重新建構政府的功能成為可能,藉由加強公民社會的方式,確實能擴展它的功能。這一代是在網路上成長的世代,他們知道共同進行一件事並非那麼困難,只要以正確的方式建構這些系統。
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People seem to think politics is sexy. If we want this institution to work for us, we're going to have to make bureaucracy sexy. Because that's where the real work of government happens. We have to engage with the machinery of government. So that's OccupytheSEC movement has done. Have you seen these guys? It's a group of concerned citizens that have written a very detailed 325-page report that's a response to the SEC's request for comment on the Financial Reform Bill. That's not being politically active, that's being bureaucratically active.
Now for those of us who've given up on government, it's time that we asked ourselves about the world that we want to leave for our children. You have to see the enormous challenges that they're going to face. Do we really think we're going to get where we need to go without fixing the one institution that can act on behalf of all of us? We can't do without government, but we do need it to be more effective. The good news is that technology is making it possible to fundamentally reframe the function of government in a way that can actually scale by strengthening civil society. And there's a generation out there that's grown up on the Internet, and they know that it's not that hard to do things together, you just have to architect the systems the right way.
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現在我們成員的平均年齡是28歲,所以我,很不情願地說,幾乎比其中大多數人年長一代。這個世代成長於將表達意見視為理所當然的環境中,他們不像我們必須為了爭取發言權而戰鬥。他們都能表達自己的意見,他們任何時候都可以透過任何管道表達意見,他們也確實這麼做。因此,當他們面對政府問題時,並不那麼在乎是否能用聲音表達,他們用的是手。他們用他們的手撰寫應用程式,使政府運作得更好。
這些應用程式讓我們得以藉由我們的雙手,使我們的社區變得更好;或許是將消防栓從雪中剷出、清除雜草、翻倒一個裡面有負鼠的垃圾桶。當然,或許我們一直以來都曾替這些消防栓剷雪,很多人會這麼做,但這些應用程式就像小小的數位提醒者。我們不僅是消費者,我們不僅是政府的消費者-繳交稅款,然後取得服務。我們可以做得更多。我們是公民,當我們修正了公民職責後,才有辦法修正政府。
所以我希望大家思考一個問題:當涉及重大事件時,我們必須共同合作,所有人民一起參與;我們只想成為一群發聲者,或者我們也願意成為一群貢獻者?
謝謝。
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Now the average age of our fellows is 28, so I am, begrudgingly, almost a generation older than most of them. This is a generation that's grown up taking their voices pretty much for granted. They're not fighting that battle that we're all fighting about who gets to speak; they all get to speak. They can express their opinion on any channel at any time, and they do. So when they're faced with the problem of government, they don't care as much about using their voices. They're using their hands. They're using their hands to write applications that make government work better.
And those applications let us use our hands to make our communities better. That could be shoveling out a hydrant, pulling a weed, turning over a garbage can with an opossum in it. And certainly, we could have been shoveling out those fire hydrants all along, and many people do. But these apps are like little digital reminders that we're not just consumers, and we're not just consumers of government, putting in our taxes and getting back services. We're more than that, we're citizens. And we're not going to fix government until we fix citizenship.
So the question I have for all of you here: When it comes to the big, important things that we need to do together, all of us together, are we just going to be a crowd of voices, or are we also going to be a crowd of hands?
Thank you.