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.
Prije nekoliko godina pokrenula sam program kako bih pridobila vrhunske stručnjake iz područja tehnologije i dizajna da uzmu godinu dana slobodno i da rade u okruženju koje manje-više predstavlja sve ono što bi trebali mrziti; htjeli smo da rade u vladi. Program se zove „Kod za Ameriku” i pomalo je kao Mirovni korpus za štrebere. Odaberemo nekoliko kolega svake godine za rad s gradskim upravama. Umjesto da ih šaljemo u Treći svijet, šaljemo ih u divljinu gradske vijećnice. I ondje oni izrađuju sjajne aplikacije, rade s gradskim osobljem. Ali ono što zapravo rade jest da pokazuju što je sve moguće s današnjom tehnologijom.
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.
Upoznajte Ala. Al je vatrogasni hidrant u Bostonu. Ovdje izgleda pomalo kao da traži partnericu, ali zapravo traži samo nekoga tko će skinuti snijeg s njega kad ga zatrpa jer zna da nije baš dobar u gašenju požara kad je prekriven s četiri stope snijega. Kako je došao do tog da traži pomoć na ovako jedinstven način? Imali smo tim kolega u Bostonu prošle godine kroz program „Kod za Ameriku”. Bili su ondje u veljači, a u veljači prošle godine jako je snježilo. Primijetili su tada da grad nikada ne očisti hidrante. Jedan kolega, Erik Michaels-Ober, primijetio je još nešto, a to je da građani čiste pločnike od snijega upravo ispred tih hidranata. Stoga je učinio ono što bi svaki dobar programer učinio, napisao je aplikaciju.
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.
To je slatka mala aplikacija u kojoj možete posvojiti vatrogasni hidrant. Time ga prihvaćate iskopati svaki put kada sniježi. Ako to učinite, možete mu dati ime. Prvog je nazvao Al. A ako ga ne iskopate, netko će vam ga ukrasti. Ima slatke male dinamike igre u tom. To je skromna mala aplikacija. Vjerojatno najmanja od 21 koje su kolege osmislili prošle godine. Ali čini nešto što ne čini niti jedna vladina tehnologija. Širi se zarazno.
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.
Tu je i čovjek iz informatičkog odjela grada Honolulua koji je vidio ovu aplikaciju i shvatio da bi je mogao iskoristiti, ne za snijeg, već da potakne ljude da posvoje sirene za tsunami. Važno je da ove sirene rade, ali ljudi kradu baterije iz njih. Zato navodi građane da paze na njih. I onda je Seattle odlučio iskoristiti aplikaciju kako bi potaknuli građane da čiste začepljene otvore za odljev vode prilikom oluje. Chicago ju je upravo izbacio da navede ljude da čiste snijeg s pločnika kada sniježi. Tako sad znamo za devet gradova koji ju planiraju koristiti. To se širi glatko, organski, prirodno.
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.
Ako znate išta o vladinoj tehnologiji, onda znate da ovo nije kako to inače ide. Nabava softvera obično traje nekoliko godina. Mi smo imali tročlani tim koji je radio na projektu u Bostonu svega dva i pol mjeseca. Bio je to način na koji bi roditelji mogli shvatiti koje su prave javne škole za njihovu djecu. Kasnije nam je rečeno da bi to, da je to išlo normalnim kanalima, trajalo barem dvije godine i stajalo bi oko dva milijuna dolara. A to nije ništa. Ima jedan projekt u sudskom sustavu u Kaliforniji koji je dosad stajao porezne obveznike dvije milijarde dolara, a ne radi. Ovakvih projekata ima na svim razinama državne uprave.
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.
Aplikacija za koju je potrebno nekoliko dana da se napiše i onda viralno proširi, to je vrsta hica upozorenja instituciji vlade. Predlaže kako bi vlada mogla djelovati bolje – ne više kao privatna kompanija, kako mnogi ljudi misle da bi trebala. Ne ni kao tehnološka kompanija, nego više kao sam Internet. To znači – bez potrebe za dozvolom, otvoreno, generativno. I to je važno. Ali ono što je važnije jest da ova aplikacija predstavlja kako se nove generacije nose s problemima vlade – ne kao problem fosilizirane institucije, nego kao problem kolektivnog djelovanja. I to je sjajna vijest jer smo jako dobri u kolektivnom djelovanju u kojem se koristi digitalna tehnologija.
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."
Sada već postoji velika zajednica ljudi koji izrađuju alate kojim trebamo raditi zajednički djelotvorno. Ne samo kolege iz „Koda za Ameriku”. To su još stotine ljudi u cijeloj zemlji koji su ustali i pišu građanske aplikacije svaki dan u svojim zajednicama. Oni nisu digli ruke od vlade. Frustrirani su njome, ali se ne žale, nego popravljaju. Ti ljudi znaju nešto što smo mi izgubili iz vida, a to je da kad odagnamo sve osjećaje vezane za politiku i duge redove na blagajnama i ostale stvari zbog kojih smo ljuti, vlada je, u svojoj biti, riječima Tima O’Reillyja: „Ono što radimo zajedno jer ne možemo sami.”
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.
Mnogi su ljudi već digli ruke od vlade. Ako ste i vi jedan od tih, molila bih vas da razmislite još jednom o tome jer stvari se mijenjaju. Politika se ne mijenja; vlada se mijenja. I kako vlada naposljetku svoju moć dobiva od nas -- sjetite se: „Mi narod?” – kako razmišljamo o tom utjecat će na to kako će se ta promjena dogoditi.
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.
Nisam znala mnogo o vladi kad sam započela ovaj program. I kao mnogi ljudi, mislila sam da se u vladi radi u biti o tom kako izabrati ljude za državnu službu. Pa, nakon dvije godine, došla sam do zaključka da se, posebice u lokalnoj vladi, radi o oposumima.
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.
Ovo je pozivni centar za servisne i informacijske linije. To je ono što dobijete ako nazovete 988 u svome gradu. Ako ikada budete imali priliku zapošljavati ljude u pozivnom centru u vašem gradu, kao što je kolega Scott Silverman radio kao dio programa – zapravo, svi oni to rade – vidjet ćete da ljudi zovu vladine službe zbog širokog spektra problema, uključujući oposuma zaglavljenog u kući. Tako je Scott dobio ovaj poziv. Utipkao je „oposum” u službenu bazu i nije zapravo pronašao ništa. Započeo je s kontrolom životinja. I na kraju je rekao: „Čujte, možete li jednostavno otvoriti sva vrata kuće, puštati jako glasnu glazbu i vidjeti hoće li izaći?” I uspjelo je. Čestitke Scottu. Ali to nije bio kraj oposumima.
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."
Boston nema pozivni centar. Ima aplikaciju, Web i mobilnu aplikaciju koja se zove 'Citizens Connect'. Mi nismo napisali ovu aplikaciju, već je ona rad skupine pametnih ljudi u Uredu za novu urbanu mehanizaciju u Bostonu. Jednog dana – ovo je stvarni izvještaj – stiglo je ovo: „Oposum u mojoj kanti za smeće. Ne znam je li mrtav. Kako da ga uklonim?” Ono što se događa s Citizens Connectom je drukčije. Scott je osobno razgovarao s osobom. Ali kod Citizens Connecta sve je javno tako da svatko može vidjeti. U ovome slučaju, susjed je vidio. I sljedeći izvještaj koji smo dobili bio je: „Otišao sam do lokacije, pronašao kantu za smeće iza kuće. Oposum? Provjereno. Živ? Da. Okrenuo kantu na stranu. Otišao kući. Laku noć, slatki oposume.”
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
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.
Prilično jednostavno. To je odlično. Ovdje digitalno susreće fizičko. To je odličan primjer kako vlada ulazi u igru kontroliranja neodređene gomile. Također je izvrstan primjer vlade kao platforme. Pri tome ne mislim nužno na tehnološku definiciju platforme. Govorim o platformi za ljude za pomoć samima sebi i drugima. Jedan građanin pomaže drugom, ali vlada ovdje igra ključnu ulogu. Spojila je ovih dvoje ljudi. Mogla ih je spojiti s vladinom službom da je bilo potrebno, ali susjed je daleko bolja i jeftinija alternativa državnoj službi. Kada jedan susjed pomaže drugom, jačamo naše zajednice. Kada zovemo Kontrolu za životinje, to samo puno košta.
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.
Jedna od važnijih stvari o kojoj moramo kod vlade razmišljati jest da to nije isto što i politika. Mnogi ljudi to znaju, ali ipak misle da jedno ima utjecaja na drugo i da je naš utjecaj na sustav vlade glasanje. Koliko puta smo izabrali političkog vođu – a ponekad uložimo puno energije u to da se izabere novog političkog vođu – zatim samo zasjeli i očekivali od vlade da odražava naše vrednote i zadovoljava naše potrebe, a onda se malo toga promjeni? To je zato što je vlada kao nepregledno široki ocean, a politika je šest-inčni sloj na vrhu. Ono što je ispod nazivamo birokracijom. Tu riječ izgovaramo s tolikim prijezirom. Ali taj je prijezir ono što ovu stvar koju posjedujemo i plaćamo drži kao nešto što radi protiv nas, ta druga stvar, i onda sami sebe onemogućujemo.
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.
Ljudi misle da je politika seksi. Ako želimo da ta institucija radi za nas, morat ćemo učiniti i birokraciju seksi jer tamo se odvija pravi posao vlade. Moramo sudjelovati s mašinerijom vlade. To je ono što je OccupytheSEC pokret napravio. Jeste li vidjeli ove tipove? To je skupina zabrinutih građana koji su napisali vrlo detaljan izvještaj od 325 stranica koji je odgovor na SEC-ov zahtjev za komentarom na Zakon o financijskoj reformi. To ne znači biti politički aktivan, nego birokratski aktivan.
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.
Za one od nas koji su odustali od vlade, vrijeme je da se zapitamo o svijetu koji ostavljamo svojoj djeci. Morate vidjeti ogromne izazove s kojima će se morati suočavati. Zar zaista mislimo da ćemo stići kamo trebamo bez da popravimo jedinu instituciju koja može djelovati u ime svih nas? Ne možemo bez vlade, ali trebamo da bude učinkovitija. Dobra vijest jest da tehnologija čini mogućim da iz temelja reorganiziramo funkciju vlade na način na koji zaista može mjeriti jačanje civilnog društva. Tu je generacija koja je odrasla na Internetu i koja zna da nije teško raditi zajedno, samo treba izgraditi pravi sustav.
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.
Prosječna dob naših kolega je 28 godina i tako sam, nevoljko, gotovo generaciju starija od većine njih. To je generacija koja je odrasla uzimajući svoje glasove zdravo za gotovo. Oni se ne bore kao što se mi borimo za to tko može govoriti; oni svi govore. Mogu izraziti svoje mišljenje na bilo kojem kanalu u bilo koje vrijeme i to i rade. Zato, kad su suočeni s problemima vlade, ne mare puno za to da iskoriste glasove. Oni koriste svoje ruke. Koriste svoje ruke za pisanje aplikacija koje pomažu vladi da radi bolje.
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.
Te aplikacije nam omogućavaju da koristimo svoje ruke da bismo poboljšali svoje zajednice. To može biti otkopavanje hidranata, čupanje korova, okretanje kante za smeće s oposumom. I naravno, mogli smo otkopavati te hidrante sve ovo vrijeme, a mnogi to i čine. Ali ove aplikacije su kao mali digitalni podsjetnici na to da nismo samo potošači, da nismo samo potrošači vlade koji plaćaju poreze i zauzvrat dobivaju uslugu. Mi smo više od toga, mi smo građani. Nećemo popraviti vladu dok ne popravimo građanstvo.
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?
Pitanje koje imam za sve vas ovdje: Kada se radi o velikim, važnim stvarima koje trebamo raditi zajedno, svi zajedno, hoćemo li biti samo gomila glasova ili ćemo biti i gomila ruku?
Thank you.
Hvala vam.
(Applause)
(Pljesak)