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.
几年前,我启动了一个 让一些厉害的搞技术和设计的人员们 在一个应该代表 他们所憎恨的一切的环境 - 政府部门 - 内工作一年的项目。 这个项目叫做 “美国代码”, 有点像怪杰的和平队。 我们每年筛选几个人, 然后让他们为政府工作。 不将他们送入第三世界, 但将他们送入市政府厅。 在那里,他们创造很好的应用程序,并与市政府人员一起工作。 但他们真正的目的是展现今天科技 可以创造的可能性。
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.
这是Al。 Al是一个伯斯顿市内的消防栓。 这里看起来它似乎是在等它的约会, 但它真正等待的是一个可以将它被深埋在雪下的时候可以将它挖出来的人, 因为它知道当它被四英尺的雪埋入时, 它救火的能力就会下降。 它是如何用这样一种特殊的方式 来寻求帮助的呢? 去年我们“美国代码” 有个在伯斯顿工作的团队。 他们在的时候正值二月,而去年二月雪下得很多很大。 他们注意到这个城市的 消防栓很少会被挖出。 那个团队的其中一个人, 叫Erik Michaels-Ober, 留意到了另外一个现象: 市民们会将这些消防栓 前面的走道上的雪铲除。 所以他做了任何一个优秀的程序员都会做的事情, 他写了一个应用程序。
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.
这是一个可以让你领养一个消防栓的可爱简易的程序。 然后你同意会在下雪后将它挖出。 如果你这么做了,你可以为它取个名字; 他叫了这第一个Al。 但如果你不将它挖出,其他人可以将它从你那儿偷走。 所以它有一些小小的娱乐性质在里面。 这是一个相对来说比较小的程序, 它或许是那个团队那年 所写的二十一个程序中最小的一个。 但它做到了 任何其他政府科技无法做到的事情; 它像病毒一样传开了。
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.
一个在夏威夷檀香山市的IT部门上班的人 看到了这个程序,然后意识到 它不一定要用它来铲雪, 也可以用它让市民领养海啸警报器。 这些海啸警报器的功能很重要, 但往往有人会偷那里面的电池。 所以他让市民们主动去检查它们。 然后西雅图决定用它 让市民清理暴雨后杜塞的下水道口。 芝加哥才开始 用它让人们将走道上的雪铲除。 我们现在知道还有九个城市 计划使用它。 它就这样平稳地,有机地,自然地, 散布了开来。
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.
如果你对政府的科技有些了解, 你会知道这并不是普遍的结果。 开发完成一个软件往往需要几年。 去年我们在伯斯顿有一个 三个人的团队花了两个半月完成了一个项目。 它可以帮助家长决定 哪一个公立学校对他们的孩子最适合。 之后,我们被告知,如果这个项目通过正常的渠道, 它将需要至少两年的时间, 并会花费将近两百万美元左右。 而这只是一个小数字。 加利福尼亚的法院系统正有一个 至今花费了纳税人 二十亿美元的一个项目, 而它还并不能正常运作。 而在政府的每一个阶级 都有类似的种种项目。
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.
所以一个只需要几天来编程, 并像病毒般散布的程序, 对政府机构来说 是一个警钟。 它见证了政府可以变得更有效率 - 但不是更像私有公司, 像很多人觉得的那样。 甚至不像一个科技公司, 而更像网络本身。 这意味着无须批准, 公开,多产。 而这非常重要。 但这种程序所代表的,更重要的, 是新一代的人 将政府的问题 当作团体行动的问题来寻求解决方式, 而并不是一个死板的机构。 而这是很好的信息, 因为,事实表明,我们在对于数码技术 的团体运行非常擅长。
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."
现在已经有一个非常大的团体 在建造可以让我们做事 更加有效率的工具。 它不仅仅是“美国代码”的员工们, 全国有几百个人 每天在自己的社区中编写程序 并将其致用在他们自己的社区。 他们没有放弃政府。 虽然他们对此非常失望, 但他们并没有抱怨, 而在尝试着改善它。 这些人知道一些 我们已经失去的东西, 那就是,当你剥开一切 让我们愤怒的外壳, 比如我们对政治的感觉, 和在车辆管理局外的长队, 政府,在其中心, 用提姆·奥莱理的话说, “政府能帮我们达成我们一个人无法达成的事情。”
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.
现在有很多人都对政府完全灰了心。 如果你是他们其中的一个, 我希望你能重新考虑下, 因为很多事情都在改变。 政治没有改变, 但政府正在改变。 而因为政府的能量, 从最根本上 来自于我们人民, 我们如何看待它 将会影响到它的改变。
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.
当我开始这个项目的时候我对政府所知不多。 就像很多人, 我以为政府仅仅是选举人员进入部门工作。 两年后,我得到了一个结论。 政府,特别是地方政府, 是关于负鼠.
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.
这里是服务和信息的电话热线中心。 如果你在你的城市拨打311, 你将会被连接到这里。 如果你会有机会 在你的市热线中心工作, 像我们项目的同事Scott Silverman就做这个 - 事实上,他们都需要做这项服务 - 你就会发现人们为了非常不同的问题 打电话给政府咨询, 包括家中困入了一个负鼠。 Scott 接到了这通电话。 他将“负鼠”输入了官方的信息库。 什么都没有。他从动物控制中心开始。 而最后,他说:“这样吧,你可以将你家的门全部打开, 然后放起很大声的音乐, 然后看看这东西会不会离开?” 而这起了作用。 Scott,好样的。 但这并不是负鼠故事的结尾。
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."
波斯顿没有热线中心。 它有一个程序,一个网站和移动的程序, 叫做 “市民联通”。 我们没有编写这个程序。 它是一群在波斯顿的 新城市结构部门的很聪明的人编写的。 有一天 - 这是一个真实的报告 - 这个信息被贴了出来: “垃圾桶里有一个负鼠。看不出来它是否死了。 我怎样才能把它弄掉?” “市民联通”对这种问题有不同的处理方式。 Scott之前是人对人的交流。 但在“市民联通”上面一切都是公开的, 所以每个人都可以看见。 这一次,一个邻居看到了。 我们收到的下一份报告写着: “我路过了这个地点, 找到了房子后面的垃圾桶。 负鼠? 看到了。的确活着。 将垃圾桶放倒,走回家。 晚安,小负鼠。”
(Laughter)
(笑声)
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.
就这么简单。 所以这很好。这就是现实和数码世界的交汇。 这也是政府加入 众包游戏的一个很好的例子。 但这也是一个由政府来做交流平台的很好的例子。 而在这里我并不是 在说平台的技术层面的定义。 我只是想提到一个可以让 人们互相帮助的平台。 一个公民帮助另外一个公民, 而政府在其中扮演重要的角色。 它将两个人连系了起来。 它可以通过政府设施服务来帮助需要的人, 但一个邻居远比政府服务 简单和见效。 当一个邻居帮助另外一个的时候, 我们的社会联系也会加强。 我们打电话给动物控制中心的话,只会花很多的钱。
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.
一个我们需要思考的很重要的事情 便是政府并不同于政治。 很多人明白这点, 但他们仍然认为政治是政府的输入口。 我们对政府系统的输入口是 通过选票。 至今为止,我们选了多少政治领袖 - 而有些时候我们会花大量的精力 来支持一个新的政治领袖的选举 - 然后我们期望着政府做一些 反映我们价值观和我们的需要的事情, 但最后没有多少改变发生? 那是因为政府就像一片巨大的海洋, 而政治只是最顶上的一层。 下面的便是 我们所谓的官僚机构。 我们用如此鄙夷的语气谈论这个词。 但正是这种鄙夷 保持了这个我们拥有 并为其付钱维持的东西 一直与我们的愿望背道而驰, 而由此我们正失去我们自己的能量。
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.
人们似乎认为政治很性感。 如果我们希望这个部门来为我们服务, 我们必须要让官僚机构也变得性感。 因为政府的真正工作在那里发生。 我们必须参与政府的系统。 而这正是占领美国证券交易委员会(OccupytheSEC)运动做的。 你见过这些人吗? 他们是一群忧心忡忡的公民 他们写了一份非常详细的, 325页的报告 来回应美国证券交易委员会SEC 对于金融改革法案的要求。 这不是参与政治, 而是积极参与到官僚机构中。
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.
现在,对于我们之间的已经放弃了政府的人, 是时候问我们自己 我们希望留下怎样的世界给我们的孩子。 大家必须意识到他们需要 面对巨大的挑战。 在我们没有改善好这个可以 代表我们行动的机构之前, 我们真的认为我们可以达到我们想要达到的目标吗? 我们不能没有政府, 我们需要它 变得更有效率。 好的消息是,科技正使这变得可行 在本质上重新定义 政府的功能 而通过它我们可以 来加强我们的公民社会。 现在的一代正在网络中长大, 而他们知道 同时做一件事情并不难, 只需要将系统建构好。
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.
我们的工作人员的平均年龄是28岁, 所以我,很不甘的, 几乎比他们大部分老了一代。 这一代 在长大中已经习惯代言他们自身。 他们不再需要经历我们那一代关于 谁可以拥有言论自由的战斗; 他们都拥有言论自由。 他们可以通过任何渠道 在任何时间表达他们的意见, 他们也的确这么做。 所以当他们面对政府的瑕疵时, 他们不怎么关心 用他们的话语权来代言。 他们会使用他们的双手。 他们正在使用他们的双手 来编写可以让政府更好地运作的程序。
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.
而这些程序让我们用我们自己的双手 来完善我们的社会。 它可以是将消防栓从雪中挖出,将杂草拔除, 或将有负鼠的垃圾桶放倒。 当然,很多人早就开始将消防栓 从雪中挖出了。 但这些程序就如同小数字闹钟,可以提醒 我们不光是作为消费者。 我们也不仅仅是政府的消费对象, 缴税而换回服务。 我们不光是这些, 我们还是公民。 在改善政府之前, 我们必须承担我们作为公民的责任。
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?
所以在这里我留给大家一个问题: 当我们面对一些很大的,很重要的, 并需要我们齐心协力一起做 事情的时候, 我们会只是有话语权的一群人, 还是我们 也会是众手协力而成事的一群人?
Thank you.
谢谢。
(Applause)
(掌声)