About the Author:  Sean Gorman founded FortiusOne in 2005 to bring location based analytics to the mass market. Sean brings over 10 years of experience at the forefront of the geospatial revolution as a researcher, practitioner, and entrepreneur at FortiusOne. Through both academic and entreprenurial efforts he has been working to make geographic data more accessible to the public since 1997 culminating in the creation of GeoCommons – a crowd-sourced repository of statistical data and social feeds that can be easily mapped, remixed and reused by non-technical users. Sean has been featured in media such as, Wired, Der Spiegel, ABC, Washington Post, Business 2.0, MSNBC, CBS and CNN. He also holds a PhD. From George Mason University in Public Policy where he was the Provost’s High Potential Scholar and was the recipient of the Fischer Prize. He has published dozens of articles on geographic data sharing and analysis, and authored the book Networks, Complexity and Security: The Role of Public Policy in Critical Infrastructure Protection. Read more from this author

In the process of helping out with CrisisCommons and various Haiti relief efforts I’ve noticed recurring challenges around getting resources to sustain all the great ideas and apps being created. As I looked around at all the app contests and volunteer efforts it struck me we are creating an app junkyard. This does not not mean the apps are junk. It means there is not institutional infrastructure to sustain the apps and innovations that are created. The apps are incredibly valuable but we have no mechanism in place to grow to seed into a tree.

Crises often act as crucibles to distill problems rapidly and Haiti in my mind did this in spades. While CrisisCommons gathered an immense talent pool and many brilliant quick spin applications were created, there was no vehicle to sustain and integrate the applications with those in need. There were government agencies and NGO’s that had need, and the community had useful solution, but it was incredibly challenging to connect the two together. A few of the issues I saw that created obstacles:

1. Communication – simply connecting technical solution with those in need, and knowing how to navigate the bureaucracy of the organizations with need. Fortunately great websites and wikis were built, media coverage was abundant and lots of volunteers were able to leverage their social networks to make connections.

2. Institutional competition – the problems that arise in crises are fairly well known. Not surprisingly many government agencies have spent money, often a lot, to solve these problems. For many innovations that come out of community efforts there is already an incumbent solution in place. Even if the community solution is better or complimentary, there will be institutional and vendor resistance. No one want to look like the schmuck whose multi-million multi-year project was just trumped by a group of hackers over a couple of weekends.

3. Contract vehicles – even if you get past the issues communication/awareness and institutional resistance there are funding problems. If there is not a mechanism to make funding available it becomes exceedingly challenging for an innovation to survive past the weekend volunteers and more importantly get adopted by the user community. This was seen at the most basic level with CrisisCommons during Haiti support efforts. A government agency saw a big need the community could address and wanted to get several of the Geo-Heroes on site to help. Just getting their travel and meals covered was a major feat of bureaucratic magic.

In order for volunteer tech efforts or app contests to succeed long term I think these problems need to be addressed. My half addled brain had a few ideas over the last couple of days. Communication is the easiest, but during a crisis it can be tough to quickly put these together. CrisisCommons went a long way in solving this and the result, I believe, was a far more useful response from the tech community that did make a difference on the ground. The phenomenal founders have some great ideas to institutionalize the efforts to make them repeatable and more efficient. On the app contest side where long range planning is an option there is less of an issue. Folks like iStrategyLabs and others have a well oiled machine playing that role for a variety of great efforts.

The bigger challenges comes from solving the problems of institutional competition and funding. To really capture the value of the innovation coming out of open data and community efforts there needs to be the ability integrate applications into the IT baseline of agencies and NGO’s. This is the only way, in my opinion, that the innovations will be sustainable over time. Otherwise we end up with a junk yard of brilliant apps that never received the support they needed to make a difference. We run the risk of creating a self-congratulatory cycle that does not actually deliver the needed capabilities.

Over time even the best and most popular apps have inevitable costs associated with them. Maintenance, hosting, bandwidth, just to start with. Even in an open source model a little bit of funding can make a huge difference in the success or failure of a project. I think we can all agree the cream of the crop apps resulting from these initiatives deserve funding, which brings us to the next problem – institutional competition. The best apps solve well known problems in novel ways. One of the toughest tasks getting these innovations into an IT baseline is removing or integrating with the existing solution to the problem. In any institution there are employees and vendors with a vested interest to keep the status quo.

The flip side of this is the same employees and vendors have the all important “contract vehicles” which are the barriers to making change happen. Some may say this is a conflict of interest but it is the reality. So, what is a possible solution to it all. In short make it a win-win as much as possible for all involved.

Government (Big G) first needs to recognize the new model that is emerging. Haiti was a poignant example but more proselytizing is needed. Open data, open platforms and communities can out perform the status quo by orders of magnitude. In recognition “Big G” needs to make money available to seed these initiatives to cover basic costs. The app contests are a great examples of small incentives creating great return. For crises we should create “seed” slush funds that can quickly be accessed to help with community volunteer costs – like travel etc. Have a simple process for “Big G” to allocate “seed” money to the best projects that solve the most immediate problem. Create a simple application and have the process in place with all the relevant organizations ahead of time.

This is the easy problem. The tougher problem is how do you sustain the successful projects long term. This applies to both app contests and volunteer efforts around crises. The solution here requires more effort. “Big G” needs to allocate larger pots of funding to get community app innovations integrated into the baseline. Perhaps more importantly “Big G” needs to provide support and guidance to innovators. Support in the form of contract vehicles, and guidance in the form of how to navigate the bureaucracy of government procurement. We should also not forget support for basic small business skills.

The purist in me says a custom (simple) contract vehicle should be built through GSA for the effort and the SBA should set up guidance and grant programs to foster the business development side. The reality is this would take a long time and you would still be challenged by institutional competition, especially from the vendors. The solution here I believe is co-opting the vendors. Have the vendors (i.e. system integrators, beltway bandits, what ever you prefer to label them) partner with “Big G” to provide contract vehicles and have them provide integration support. “Big G” can run their typical vendor bake off’s to select which firms become part of the program and allocate enough funding to make it interesting for them.

Some may consider this making a deal with the devil, but I think it is the compromise that gives the innovations and innovators the best shot at success and sustainability. Innovations by their nature are disruptive, and the more you can co-opt the status quo to embrace the disruption the higher the odds of the innovation surviving. Incentivizing the vendors to help incubate innovation coming out of the community is one of the most direct ways to combat institutional competition. It has to be a win-win for “Big G”, vendors and innovators. The good news, in all this, for the citizens is we can get a much more efficient return on investment for tax payers dollars. Not only does innovation occur more rapidly, it gets deployed in ways that can help solve problems at much lower cost. Last but not least we get another driver for small business generation. An aspect that has been largely lacking from the broader stimulus response. This is something we’ve discussed as a positive externality of open data as a public good, but now we could have the momentum to seize upon it.

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