Posts about Bureaucracy

Transit

Innovation resistance at Metro, part 3: Missing the forest for the trees

by David Alpert   •   September 30, 2009 1:53 pm

Unlike many other transit agencies, Metro has resisted encouraging third party applications that help riders, partly because they perceive technology from a top-down point of view, and from unrealistic expectations because Google is big and rich. But this obsession with control and getting revenue is causing Metro staff to lose sight of the bigger picture.

Greater Greater Father-In-Law told me a story about his days consulting for health care companies. One large nonprofit hospital with a budget around a billion dollars a year decided to make some forays into establishing a for-profit arm. They created a pharmacy where patients could buy medicines and supplies. This pharmacy did pretty well, and started turning a profit. Executives spent a very large percentage of their time reviewing the performance and exploring ways to improve it.

However, the pharmacy only netted about $60,000 a year. That was less than the cost of one employee. Yet this project was eating up much more of the executives' time than monitoring the operations of the actual hospital. If they could have found a way to serve the same patients with even one fewer staff member, they would have netted as much money for the hospital as the entire pharmacy project. That doesn't mean that it was a bad project, but context is more important.

There's nothing wrong with Metro looking into the possibility of getting some money. But they want to spend $500,000 to investigate this. And we have some strong evidence that $0 is the most they'll get. Even if that's not true, there's no way it's anywhere near $500,000. If Google had offered, say, $50,000 a year for 10 years, would Metro have jumped with joy? But they could make that much just by not spending $500,000 in the first place.

Government

Innovation resistance at Metro, part 1: The value of "bottom-up"

by David Alpert   •   September 29, 2009 12:58 pm

Yesterday, you saw the exchanges between Metro Directors Chris Zimmerman of Arlington and Gordon Linton of Maryland on open APIs and Google Transit. Linton wants to lock down all licensing issues before allowing new applications that use the bus position data (as NextBus does) or schedule data (like Google Transit), while Zimmerman advocated for "seeding" innovation and worrying about revenue later.

To recap, there are two issues here. First, should Metro release its data generally to developers? They've released schedule data but under an unnecessarily restrictive license, and haven't released the bus position data at all. Second, should Metro try harder to work out a deal with Google to include Washington area transit directions in Google Maps, as every other large U.S. transit agency has done?

The Zimmerman-Linton exchange very clearly illustrates the dichotomy between the "open-source" philosophy and one of centralized control, or a "bottom-up" verus "top-down" attitude toward innovation. Writer and computer scientist Tim Lee discusses this issue frequently on his blog, Bottom-up. He explains, "The last couple of decades have brought us the dominance of the open Internet, the increasing success of free software," largely in Silicon Valley, "a place with extremely low barriers to entry, a culture of liberal information sharing, and a respect for the power of individual entrepreneurs." Because anyone can just make a Web site, write software for Windows, or sell a neat electronic gizmo (unless you want to connect it to a mobile phone network), we've had enormous innovation in these areas. It's precisely the absence of a gatekeeper who approves everything ahead of time that has enabled innovation to flourish.

Bottom-up thinking upset the established order when it hit the software industry in the form of open source software, and it's even more revolutionary in an agency like Metro, which tends to approach issues from a top-down point of view. Need some new railcars? Bid out a contract. Want to create an online system to track bus locations? Bid out a contract. For railcar procurement, there's nothing wrong with this strategy. But for consumer information technology, where you don't need only one type of railcar, this approach fails to stimulate innovation.

Public Spaces

DDOT being narrow-minded and overcautious on Park(ing) Day

by David Alpert   •   September 14, 2009 12:43 pm

People and cars operate every day in relatively close proximity. People walk on sidewalks right next to moving traffic on streets without parking. People walk along crosswalks while cars wait to turn, and cars enter and exit parking garages or alleys across the sidewalk. Sometimes this proximity results in injuries or deaths, but we don't refuse to let pedestrians go in crosswalks. And as designers like Hans Monderman discovered, often the less governments try to enforce separation, the safer streets actually are.

But if DCRA DDOT were issuing permits for streets today, they'd never allow any of this. They'd require 22 foot gaps between people and cars, concrete jersey barriers along every block, and huge planters on every corner. Those resemble some of the restrictions they're trying to palce on the organizers of Park(ing) Day. Instead of saying, "great idea," DCRA DDOT officials keep telling Justin Young, Brandon Schmittling, and Chris Loos that it sounds awfully unsafe for people to sit on benches in a parking space, even buffered by cars on each side. And they're demanding ridiculous designs, including a 22-foot "buffer zone" on either end with no parked cars, concrete barriers, planters with flags, and more.

There's no need for these restrictions. Cars in a travel lane don't suddenly swerve to the right or left; if they did, they'd be jumping the curbs on many streets all the time. And, in fact, these buffer zones may make the impromptu parks less safe; with a large car on either side, if a car did veer out of its lane, it would probably hit the car in front.

The original Park(ing) Day in San Francisco, and many of its followers, didn't apply for permits at all. They just fed the meter, unrolled some turf, and put a bench down. In some cities, the laws don't specify what you can do with a parking space if you pay for it. Unfortunately, in DC, it says the spaces have to be for vehicles, unless you get a permit. That's why the organizers have asked for a permit. Instead of getting help from the government, DCRA DDOT officials responded by throwing up every roadblock — literally — that they could think of.

According to Young, they're meeting again this afternoon with DCRA DDOT to try to persuade them to allow a more sensible design, though one that still contains extra barriers for added safety:

If DCRA DDOT doesn't allow this, residents should consider just going ahead and setting up parks in spaces anyway. People take up public space without permits all the time. Sometimes, when regulators are just being far too narrow-minded, the only option is to push the envelope anyway.

Update: The officials responsible for the policy decisions are from DDOT, not DCRA. The organizers originally approached DDOT, who sent them to the DCRA permit center, which includes public space permits. However, DCRA only acts as a conduit to DDOT public space officials who actually make the policy.

Government

DC youth employment programs should focus on quality, not quantity

by Martha Ross   •   April 28, 2009 1:29 pm

Martha Ross is Deputy Director of Greater Washington Research at Brookings. She'll be starting to post about some important issues to our region and Brookings' policy analysis. Welcome Martha!

Summer's almost here and with it will come another DC summer youth jobs program. Youth employment programs can play a constructive role in young people's lives: connecting them to the world of work, teaching interpersonal and occupational skills, and serving as a springboard for the future.

But that is not the summer jobs program we have here. The District's Summer Youth Employment Program (SYEP) can charitably be called "uneven." Although some youth have positive experiences every summer, that's due to the individual initiative of host sites, not by design or oversight.

Last summer's program had well-publicized problems that led to a $30 million overrun and the firing of the agency's director. A few key decisions, like not putting a cap on enrollment and extending the length of the program from six weeks to 10 weeks, overwhelmed the Department of Employment Services (DOES). (See reports on last summer's experience here and here. Even before SYEP expanded in 2008 to over 21,000 youth, DOES did not administer a consistently high-quality program. Last summer was not the first time young people got paid to do nothing or had trouble getting paid the correct amount.

Now, Mayor Fenty is requesting an additional $20 million for this summer's youth employment program, bringing the total cost of the program to $45 million. Especially in a tough budget environment, this is a lot of money. It's one thing to make big investments in programs likely to generate good outcomes, but quite another to make big investments in programs with uncertain and sometimes poor outcomes. The overrun is entirely predictable, since the $23 million originally allocated for the 2009 SYEP assumed about 15,000 participants for six weeks, but the administration subsequently chose to open enrollment to all (an anticipated 21,000 youth) for ten weeks. Wages alone for 21,000 participants will cost $33 million. The city could probably stay within or close to its original budget by cutting the program from 10 weeks back to five or six weeks.

The FY 2010 budget allocates $43 million to SYEP and $9 million towards year-round youth employment programs. If the city is serious about helping youth, it should beef up its year-round programs. Youth don't only need guidance, support and skill-building in the summer months. Program slots for "disconnected youth" — young people aged 16-24 out of school and out of work — are in especially short supply and are in especially high demand. In 2007, the Department of Employment Services served 357 in-school youth and 290 out-of-school youth in year-round programs, for a grant total of 647. Meanwhile, Vinnie Schiraldi, the Director of the Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services, estimates there are almost 3,000 disconnected youth in the city.

The city is to be applauded for setting a bold goal to help youth with a robust summer program. But it needs to align its vision with budgetary realities and its administrative capacity. It is irresponsible to put $43 million toward SYEP given its track record. In budgeting for the 2010 effort, the agency should decide how many youth it can serve in a high-quality program — certainly far fewer than 21,000, and probably fewer than 15,000 participants. It can then focus on making the improvements needed to ensure a successful experience for participants, like engaging employers to develop quality placements, getting youth work-ready, and improving program administration.

Then, the city should direct the remainder of the funds towards year-round programs with a focus on disconnected youth. It should release a request for proposals for programs that serve youth and young adults with a combination of occupational skills training, basic skills education, work readiness services, and maybe stipends for participants.