Institute For The Future

Democratized data for a renewed California

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Flicking through the Economist’s World in 2011 special this week, I came across Arianna Huffington’s prediction that this will be the year Americans come to realize that “our system is too broken to be fixed by politicians operating from within it—and that real change will come only when enough people outside Washington demand it.”

 

 

Huffington’s thought resonates strongly with the transformation scenario we identified in our project exploring of the future of California. It is a scenario that sees citizens leveraging innovative technology tools to participate in a more distributed, decentralized governance.

 

 

 

HealthyCity.org is just one example of a tool that might help trigger just this kind of empowerment*. What began as data initiative focused on LA county 7 years ago was this year expanded to include over 2500 data sets for the whole of California.

 

The result is a really user-friendly interface for people to conduct their own research about their communities. In less than 5 minutes, I can create a map that overlays concentrations of low-income families in Oakland with information about the location of basic need services such as food banks. This helps to identify gaps quickly and Healthy City hopes that by arming citizens with this data, they will be able to make a compelling case for better service provision in their communities.

 

Data is just one powerful tool that can help people advocate for the change they want to see around them. What other tools will Californians need to have at their disposal in order to transform their state?

There are just 3 weeks left to tell about your vision for the future of California. Visit the California Dreams contest site to have a chance to win the $3,000 Roy Amara Prize for Participatory Foresight.

 

*Thanks to Miriam for highlighting this great signal.