More on Austin Public Library’s design

David Walker from Austin’s co-working innovators at Conjuctured provided an interesting response in the comments to my post about the new main APL library.  I wanted to highlight his ideas as I think they are insightful about the direction of professional workplaces in Austin.  Here are David’s responses to a set of questions I posed him:

1. What’s the niche that APL should fill in terms of working and collaborative spaces that the market isn’t going to.

Access to resources. Big open spaces for LARGE meetings. Besides the space itself access to library resources would be very beneficial. Hoovers, Lexis Nexis, etc.

2. Should APL charge or is it free?

Must be free. It is a library after all. Donation based for events would be a good way to monetize. Maybe could charge for access to meeting rooms and conference rooms, though.

3. Should it be first-come-first serve or should reservations be possible?

Reservations for meeting rooms and conference rooms and event meeting space. But for the coworking itself, just first come first serve.

4. What pointers would you give APL and the Council about making public facilities useful for entrepreneurs, solo consultants, and people who need spaces to get things done but don’t work for businesses/orgs with lots of resources?

I would go the Barnes and Noble route. Making a library just like a book store would be amazing. There’s a natural synergy that happens in a book store because of access to resources + ability to talk openly without worrying about being quiet like in a standard library. Conjunctured gets requests all the time for busineses in town that want to host offsite team working days for 10-12 people. We can’t handle that many people in one room, so having rooms like that would be beneficial. The key is having a space that is not just a space, but a community. You would need to have a designated Community Manager, that helps people get to know each other, find opportunities, etc. People are not attracted to open spaces—they’re attracted to being a part of something. (At least the solo workers). Would be happy to talk to you or anyone in the city more in length about this in person. Kudos to you for getting the conversation going!

Learning from the Dallas Crime Stat Quality Crisis

Grits for Breakfast points out that Dallas is still in hot water over the accuracy of their crime stats. An editorial in the Dallas Morning News gets at the fundamental problem:

No doubt [Police Chief David] Kunkle had good intentions when he urged the department to alter its reporting procedures to make the city’s crime-reporting procedures more accurate. However, several criminal justice experts say the change appears to violate the FBI’s standardized, nationwide classification systems and may also have inflated the improvement in the overall crime rate.

Kunkle, who will retire next year, brought strong leadership to the Dallas Police Department and solid progress in fighting crime. The city’s crime trend is moving in the proper direction.

Nonetheless, doubt has been cast over the integrity of the crime stats, and an independent third-party review is the best way to clear up these questions. Citizens can then have confidence in the city’s crime-counting policy – or learn where reform is needed.

Police departments adopt the procedures by which the self-report crime stats to the FBI.  This is the case in Austin as well.  Police Chiefs want data to be reflective of actual underlying crime, both to avoid unnecessary fear and to optimally allocate policing resources.  Unfortunately, in an attempt to carve out noisiness, its possible for procedures that go too far and elimination actual signal, so to speak.  A lot of police departments are going to come under fire for their procedures as the Gov 2.o movement asks for more public safety data. Austin should be pro-active and tackle this problem by setting up continuous, detailed independent review.

Really Need to Consider a Shift to Deliberative Polling and Citizen Juries

Katherine Gregor writes another excellent and detailed profile of Austin’s comprehensive planning process.   This quote by one of the members of the plan’s citizen advisers stuck out:

The risk now is that the task force – rich in community activists but weak on the business community – will become mired in questions of public participation rather than tackling the central planning problems. “I think the challenge is to realize that, as worthwhile as public participation is, it’s a part of planning, but it isn’t in itself planning,” commented member Frederick Steiner, who is dean of the University of Texas School of Architecture and a nationally respected planner. “We need to move ahead to address some of the really important issues that the comprehensive plan can help address. For example, in all of the forums I’ve been involved in so far, transportation has come up as a major issue. That will require quite a bit of very careful analysis. We also have issues of clean air, clean water, and so much more. … If you direct growth in a certain area, what are the trade-offs? Congestion, where do the new people go, the issues of preservation of neighborhoods and density – those are the big issues for me.”

Steiner explicitly mentions trade-offs that need to be deliberated.  Sadly, the existing model of public outreach often is an uphill climb to get a representative sample that is an inch deep, not insight about true citizen preferences uncovered after deliberation on trad-offs.  As I argued in a recent post on the planning process, we need to mix up our use of conventional outreach and consider using deliberative polling and citizen juries.

Save to Win Austin?

Nudgeblog highlights the remarkably effective Save to Win! effort by community-focused financial service institutions in Michigan and makes a suggestion:

With banks acting like lotteries, maybe it’s time for lotteries to act like banks. For people who can’t give up the thrill of a scratch off game, state lotteries could sell a, say, $5 ticket where $4.50 would be sent to a bank account. Seven other Michigan credit unions have adopted the model. One manager explained that the lottery style bank account proved more successful than a short-term CD with a 10 percent interest rate!

Maybe local policy makers should start thinking about a local asset development agenda that leverages some of these insights…

Austin State of the City: Timid Retrenchment?

Image via Austin Leadership’s Flickr

The Austin Chronicle got a hold of Mayor Leffingwell’s State of the City speech.

My reaction: We’ve got a good Mayor, Council, and Manager.  The speech is a good set of policies and initiatives already in the works.  But the national tone of policy retrenchment crept in a bit too much.  I don’t want an Austin that settles for being “well-managed” and is content to avoid being an economic devastation zone.

The address basically has two major components. One is an argument backed up by data that Austin is getting through the national recession a lot better than other cities. A second is a laundry list of how municipal government is going to continue economic growth. In order of their appearance, here are those policies:

1. Growth through renewables, media, and medical technology and manufacturing and life sciences.

2. More hotel accomodations to increase tourism.

3.  Help small business through local programs.

4. Reliable water supply (plug for WTP4 and greater conservation).

5. Reliable, affordable energy that takes into consideration potential pricing of carbon and climate change.

6. Less traffic (support for Urban Rail).

7. Affirming diversity (ethnicity, sexuality, immigration) and compassion (social service spending).

This is a solid set of priorities. Even issues like WTP4 and rail – which engender controversy and substantive disagreements – are still about Austin policymakers trying to responsibly deal with growth. In general, the speech effuses a sense of competent policymakers earnestly trying to tackle key problems.

That said, given the potential economic upheaval the US will be facing in the coming decade, I was surprised that the speech and policy priorities were so basic, and frankly, a rehash of what is already in the works. What was missing was a sense of urgency of how Austin will compete globally and how it will be a beacon of progressive governance. The speech was a good example of the policy retrenchment that seems to be going on at all levels.

Key areas like our human capital and how AISD and ACC fit into that were not discussed. A vision of meaningful sustainability was not laid out. Affordability issues and issues around economic inequality were not really discussed, even though local governments can advance important solutions, especially around housing. Part of it is time constraints in delivering a speech. I get that.  Others might say that many worthwhile initiatives are taking place, but were not mentioned. True, but those initiatives are not on the scale needed to address the problems.  Universal day care, urban growth boundaries, more public art, new social enterprises to address big community problems like financial literacy…these are areas where Austin government could show people that well-developed, targeted policies can improve our community.  I was hoping to hear more new initiatives and a bit more boldness.

City Council checklist for Austin Public Library’s new central building

I am a huge fan of the Austin Public Library.  I am constantly surprised at the breadth of its collection and the reach of its branches.  A new central building is being designed amidst a time of great upheaval in the economy, the delivery of content, higher education, and public facilities.   There are anecdotes of library systems out there where DVDs are the main circulation item. So as the cliche goes, the new building represents APL’s efforts to take advantage of the opportunity instead of getting swallowed by the crisis.

The design of the new central building is coming before the City Council sometime in February.  The design will have implications for the program available, as well as clues to APL’s strategy going forward.  Here is APL’s latest strategic plan.  As the Council reviews the design, here are four issues they should make sure to cover.

1. ACC.  The community college is persistently growing, and if the US is indeed in for an era of skill upgrades, ACC is going to be at the heart of the region’s human capital strategy.  APL’s space, web tools, and its collection should aim to integrate with ACC’s needs (i.e. collaborative work space for students, a collection that shifts more towards the reference texts and online resources). I can assure you that if APL put these resources out for cash-strapped, nimble students, they would boost their circulation-per-dollar and per-capita massively.  If ACC shows up to support the design during the public testimony, we know that APL and the community college are working together to leverage each other’s resources.  If not, then there is potentially a missed opportunity.

2. Collaborative workspace.  The local market is creating co-working spaces, like Austin’s Conjuctured.  The stereotype of the professional workspace as some big office just simply isn’t the case, and it probably won’t be going forward whether because of the rise in price of carbon fuels, a brake up of big firms into smaller, flexible contracting niches, or a trend towards tele-commuting as employees push for work life balance.  Further, Austin is firmly committed to propelling small business and entrepreneurship.  The first thing many people need is a decent ad hoc space for planning, meeting, and working.  APL can help fill these needs.  The design has ample, wired, well-lit rooms that facilitate individual and team work sessions.

3. Digital divide.  For Austin’s most economically marginal residents, the library is the frontline of closing the digital divide.  If the design doesn’t have substantial space for public computers, then it’s not serious about playing its part in bridging the divide.

4. Little kids.  The library is a key amenity for parents.  Personally, I think this reflects our failure to appropriately invest in 0-5 year-old education, enrichment, and cultural amenities.  I’d prefer that APL be able to focus on its knowledge repository and workforce support tasks, but the scarcity of American investment in kid amenities means we cram this function into the local library.  Hopefully, the design will include teaching rooms and child-focused performance spaces.

High-speed-rail fail

Image via Wired Magazine.

From the Star-Telegram:

As federal officials doled out billions of stimulus dollars last week to jump-start the nation’s high-speed-rail network, Texas picked up just a small piece of the pie.  The $3.75 million that the Lone Star State will receive is a sliver of the more than $8 billion distributed, mostly to states that have plans and other funding ready to go.

Sometimes I get the impression that Texas faces a version of the resource curse.  And as a result, we leave opportunities, like a high-speed-rail corridor on the table because we perceive we are economically buoyed by our energy sector or our “low tax/low regulation” political economy.  The reality is more complicated, as the chart below demonstrates from this Dallas Fed report.  Clearly the existing levels of Texas unemployment are not creating urgency for change in our policymakers, so as long as the median voter is misinformed about our political economy, then collaboration across communities and bureaucracies on needed infrastructure will be sub-optimal in generating employment growth.

We all want incentives

From the Statesman:

It’s worth repeating that incentives that spend taxpayers’ dollars to attract companies to Austin are not always warranted or justified and should be granted or denied on a case-by-case basis. And whenever incentives are granted, there must be rigorous follow-up to ensure that the companies receiving public dollars are living up to their end of the bargain. That aside, both deals make sense for Austin, one council member said.

“In these difficult economic times, we must continue to recruit high-paying jobs to Austin that ultimately increase our tax base and put our people to work,” said Council Member Sheryl Cole.

With an unemployment rate at 6.9 percent and declining sales tax revenue, we believe the council is right to focus on bringing jobs to town. More jobs also means more spending on consumer goods and services.

If we are going to start granting incentives for relocation, there should be a strategy, standards, and an accountability mechanism.  Otherwise, we leave the amount of subsidy per job and the details of the agreements up to the whims at the moment.  The absence of a policy will potentially sow distrust and confusion between the policymakers and the citizenry because of the lack of uniformity in awards and enforcement of deals.

Moreover, an actual strategy is needed that explains why existing firms in Austin that are facing the pressure to cut back but are muddling through don’t deserve to be subsidized.  I can sort of see it for Hanger since its medical and we want to build up that, I guess.  But LegalZoom? We have tons of consumer-oriented software companies.  I empathize with the Council’s desire to create jobs.   Perhaps the Council has a well-developed strategy for what and how relocation will be subsidized that I have not detected.  But these deals strike of opportunistic companies being empowered by unemployment, not of policy that will set a strong foundation for sustained job growth in Austin.

How to improve Austin’s public outreach and consultation process

This table tells you why we need to change Austin’s public outreach model.  But first, some context.

Katherine Gregor of the Austin Chronicle delves into some of the dissatisfaction about the diversity of participants in the City’s comprehensive planning process.  Highly-educated, center-city types provided the bulk of the engagement so far.  In my experience, this is a typical dilemma and rarely is it the fault of the consulting firm or city staff or community leaders overseeing the planning process.  Rather, it is the result of a flawed voluntary outreach model that planning and other public sector outreach always seems to adopt.

Under a typical voluntary outreach process, a consulting firm or city staff plan a series of outreach sessions across the city at public or community facilities, often with the involvement of community NGOs such as neighborhood groups, community development organizations, churches, ethnic advocacy, and so on.  These groups generate some turn out through their memberships with varying success.  Obviously, some residents turn out regardless of group involvement due to their affinity for civic matters or their self-interest in the matter discussed.

Voluntary attendance makes it virtually impossible to get truly representative samples of the public .  Moreover, even if somehow a representative sample is gathered, often times the participants have limited information or outright mis-information with which to discuss the topics at hand.

How could Austin solve the dilemmas of un-representative samples and potentially misinformed participants? Austin should consider ditching voluntary outreach and instead adopt a mash-up of citizen juries and deliberative polling.

Under citizen juries, a representative sample of Austinites would be paid to attend a formal consultation process that would present varying options and trade-offs to the jury.  The jury could receive non-representative information gathered through a voluntary outreach process, but the voluntary process would no longer be the main use of resources or considered to have the most moral authority.    A few components should be incorporated from deliberative polling – specifically the emphasis on providing information to the citizen jury participants from experts and framing the process as a set of choices.  Often times the results of public outreach are fluffy and abstract “we want more public safety” instead of “we believe the optimal number of patrol officers per capita is X”.

Texas has seen a fair amount of deliberative polling and one example stood out to me given the ongoing Austin Energy renewable generation mix debate.  In that use of deliberative polling, several Texas electric utilities tried to determine their consumers’ attitudes on climate change, renewables, and conservation.   As the table at the top indicates, there was a substantial change in how the consumers prioritized different measures when presented with concrete information.  Under a voluntary outreach model, the original under-informed opinions would have been taken as the will of the people. Notice how paying extra for renewables and prioritization of conservation experienced substantial shifts once presented with information in a deliberative context.  Any Austinite looking at this information should realize that  flawed outreach process can lead to seriously sub-optimal interpretations of public preferences.

FYI: The table can be found at Stanford’s Center for Deliberative Democracy.

UPDATE:  You can read Imagine Austin’s outreach plan here. There might be a random survey.  Hopefully, all of the data will be opened up to the public to enable some analysis and perhaps application development. Read this open letter to understand why.

Provide Feedback on Austin Energy’s top job

The City of Austin’s recruitment consultants are putting on a public meeting and here’s the scoop from the Public Information Office:

With the announced retirement of Austin Energy’s General Manager Roger Duncan for later this spring, the City is seeking input now about what the public wants in his replacement.

The public can provide its thoughts about the position’s recruitment profile at a meeting from 5 to 8 p.m. Monday, Jan. 25, with City officials and the firm that will be conducting the nationwide search for candidates to fill the job.

The come-and-go session will be at Austin Energy’s Workforce Planning and Development Office, 811 Barton Springs Road, Suite 100 . Free parking will be available at Austin Energy’s Town Lake Center garage, 721 Barton Springs Road .

The search firm is Colorado-based Mycoff, Fry and Prouse, LLC, which specializes in electric utility recruitment. Representatives from the City’s Human Resources Department and Austin Energy will also be at the meeting.

If you are unable to attend this stakeholders meeting, you may contact Scott Fry of the search firm to provide input. Call 1-800-525-9082 or e-mail, sfry@mfpllc.us.

For more information about the Jan. 25 meeting, contact (512) 974-3210.

My initial thoughts of what we need:

1. Operational Excellence.  We want someone with a proven track record in utility management that can point to some innovations they created.

2. Understanding AE’s role as a social enterprise.  AE should be more than a city department or a municipal utility.  It is a special type of enterprise, one where capital owners are not the reason for being.  The new manager should have respect for the socially-minded mission of AE, and hopefully have some experience with being an evangelist for this special role and way of fulfilling the needs of Austin consumers.

3. Selling an Energy Vision.   The manager should understand that in the future, AE needs to develop a business model that goes beyond producing an operating surplus.  Energy conservation, renewables, and distributed generation, net metering…and so on.  The person should express a vision that fits with AE’s need to break even, but also with Austin’s environmental and democratic aspirations.

4. Open Government.   Austin’s public sector would benefit from a high profile manager that engaged blogging, open data, crowd-sourcing (to name a few) and understood those tools’ ability to generate value for AE’s operations.

5. Diversity.  Sure, it would be nice if the new person was a woman or a person of color, but the right skill set is more important.  That said, part of that skill set needs to be experience with diverse communities and empathy for the many plights in this city.