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Creating Surveys

News   December 7, 2009 at 10:57 am Chris Kissel

Thurston1

1. Commute Seattle, a joint project of the Downtown Seattle Association, King County, and the City of Seattle, is holding three “Bike Chat” forums for bicyclists this week, the first of which is tonight.

The organization (whose Web site features this sweet bus tracker) is encouraging cyclists to come with any issues, complaints, or thoughts on bike commuting downtown. They’re also giving out free bike lights.

Today from noon til one, Wednesday at 5 pm, or Friday at noon. At 600 Stewart St, in the 2nd floor conference room. To RSVP email info@commuteseattle.com.

2. William Langewiesche, Vanity Fair‘s international correspondent and formerly an Atlantic Monthly staffer (where he wrote pieces on the World Trade Center cleanup and the space shuttle Columbia disaster) will be at Town Hall tonight to read from and talk about his new book, Fly By Wire, about that airplane that surprise-landed in the Hudson River in January.

Langewiesche says the real hero in the January incident wasn’t the pilot, but a French-designed electrical “fly-by-wire” system that takes over for pilots during potential disasters. And Langewiesche strongly praises Airbus, the airplane manufacturer that built the Hudson River plane and that implements the fly-by-wire system.

Tonight at Town Hall, at 7:30 pm. Tickets are $5.

3. The Hidmo Community Empowerment Project is holding a meeting tonight called “SOS: Safety on Our Streets.” The meeting will consist of a five-member panel discussion , a small-group session, and a community town hall discussion.

Tonight at the Garfield Community Center, 2323 East Cherry Street. 6 pm to 8 pm. Childcare and refreshments are provided.

4. The City Council’s Committee on Open Government is holding a public hearing tonight to discuss the Draft Public Engagement Plan, a three-point document that outlines the committee’s plan to involve the public in the legislative process.

The committee, chaired by Richard Conlin—which includes Bruce Harrell, Sally Clark, and Nick Licata—was created in February and has met about once a month since then.

They’re looking at creating surveys, conducting interviews with citizens re: city government, holding more council meetings outside of City Hall, and using the City Council’s Twitter account to solicit feedback on their Web site.

The meeting starts at 5:30 pm, at City Hall, second floor.




  • Trevor

    All this stuff about soliciting citizen input and government 2.0 is so much bs when it doesn’t make it any easier for citizens to access government documents.

    The City’s Open Government committee, and Richard Conlin in particular, know very well what they could do to improve transparency at City Hall (and it won’t be through twitter).

    Conlin solicited feedback from various civic groups earlier this year and rejected almost all of it. It seems he needs a new City Attorney to help guide him and Central staff through the process.

    In the meantime, here’s a cheat sheet for those paying keeping score at home:

    -Harmonize rules between different departments. Right now 3 dozen city agencies develop their own rules for processing public disclosure requests, in loose coordination with the City Clerk’s office.

    -One click requests: a single web site for the submission of public disclosure requests. Right now the City makes you submit PDRs to individual departments. If you submit to the wrong one, your request will be rejected, and you might be told where to resubmit it to. The city should channel those requests to the proper agency for you. Absurdly, right after it rejected this way of doing things, the City Council had a speaker from Bellevue government come tell Seattle how it does this.

    -Fair appeals process: right now, if a city agency rejects your PDR, the appeal simply goes to the head of that agency, who doesn’t have time to review it, and kicks it back down to the very people who rejected your request in the first place. Obviously, appeals should go to a separate agency, ideally the City Clerk and/ or City Attorney.

    -Frequently requested or high-interest docs already released via PDR (for instance about the WTO protests) should be available online.

    Until I see stuff like this on the Open Government committee’s agenda, I’ll consider to think of it as a profound waste of time.

  • Trevor

    All this stuff about soliciting citizen input and government 2.0 is so much bs when it doesn’t make it any easier for citizens to access government documents.

    The City’s Open Government committee, and Richard Conlin in particular, know very well what they could do to improve transparency at City Hall (and it won’t be through twitter).

    Conlin solicited feedback from various civic groups earlier this year and rejected almost all of it. It seems he needs a new City Attorney to help guide him and Central staff through the process.

    In the meantime, here’s a cheat sheet for those paying keeping score at home:

    -Harmonize rules between different departments. Right now 3 dozen city agencies develop their own rules for processing public disclosure requests, in loose coordination with the City Clerk’s office.

    -One click requests: a single web site for the submission of public disclosure requests. Right now the City makes you submit PDRs to individual departments. If you submit to the wrong one, your request will be rejected, and you might be told where to resubmit it to. The city should channel those requests to the proper agency for you. Absurdly, right after it rejected this way of doing things, the City Council had a speaker from Bellevue government come tell Seattle how it does this.

    -Fair appeals process: right now, if a city agency rejects your PDR, the appeal simply goes to the head of that agency, who doesn’t have time to review it, and kicks it back down to the very people who rejected your request in the first place. Obviously, appeals should go to a separate agency, ideally the City Clerk and/ or City Attorney.

    -Frequently requested or high-interest docs already released via PDR (for instance about the WTO protests) should be available online.

    Until I see stuff like this on the Open Government committee’s agenda, I’ll consider to think of it as a profound waste of time.