Developer: Dean Jenkins

Bio: Dean holds an Executive MBA degree from the University of Washington. Prior to establishing PapayaHead, Inc. in 2006, Dean spent 14 years working as an Enterprise Software Program Manager at Intel Corporation. In addition to his work at PapayaHead, he serves on the Pastoral Staff at Mountain View Church in Tumwater, Washington.

App in Focus: PapayaHead

Federal Citizen App Program: Department of Agriculture’s “Apps for Healthy Kids”

Recognition: 2^nd Place

Description of the app: PapayaHead is a family meal planning website and app that allows family members to fill out a unique and individual profile of food preferences. Logging things such as likes and dislikes, as well as allergies and other nutritional requirements. From these profiles, a family can build meal plans for the day which display the nutritional value of their meals and its impact on their profiles. In addition, the plans, recipes and shopping lists may be printed.

Who is the app intended to serve: Families and individuals looking to coordinate and plan their meals.

Why was the app developed: The initial motivation was for a website application to meet his own meal planning needs for his family. He always had the desire to be an entrepreneur and start his own company. Dean saw this as a business opportunity to do something he cares about and start a successful business.

The application was not developed for the contest. It was already under development. A registered dietician on their team heard of the contest and recommended they participate since they met the challenge’s criteria.

Examination of other apps: The team looked at what was available like Jenny Craig, they found that nobody was doing what they were specifically proposing to do. Other programs were doing bits and pieces, but not exactly what they were trying to build.

How was the app developed: They spent 2 years planning (benchmarking and functionality), and came up with the functional requirements that answered what they would want to be able to do with it. The PapayaHead team worked with an offshore development firm to build the web app, but due to communication issues and other complications, the app turned out to be more of a prototype. However, through the process they learned about things they hadn’t considered before. In addition, to technical roadblocks, they also had to pause development a couple times to fund raise, primarily from friends and families.

He launched a beta version in 2009 to gathered user feedback and addressed necessary changes. The app did a full launch in 2010. This app was a web-based application. They do have a derivative product that uses the main engine on their web app which was recently launched.

Communication of app availability: They started out using word of mouth to share their product. They sent emails to ask others to look at PapayaHead, to provide feedback, and to share it with others. They did some small Facebook ads, but did not spend much on a major marketing push and relied on word of mouth.

Issues of privacy: The best way to ensure the privacy and security of users is to limit the data they collect. All large organizations have breaches of security, so there really is no system that’s 100% safe from a breach. They just limit the data they collect in order to better protect their users. They do have system protections in place like firewalls. Within the application, rather than ask for sensitive things directly such as, “Do you have any heart diseases?” they would ask, “Do you want a healthy heart?”.

Realization of original goals: They would like to see more users on their site. They were hoping the site would go viral on its own, but unfortunately this hasn’t been the case. They have more features they want to add, but it’s a slow and gradual process.

Overall Challenge experience: In sum, Dean noted it was enjoyable to go to DC, but it would have been better to see the First Lady Michelle Obama there since she sponsored it. They were hoping to be able to get a picture with her it would have enhanced their experience.

Advice for federal agencies:

• After looking at other challenges, these challenges aren’t something an entrepreneur is able to take too seriously because the prizes and amount of effort going into most of these isn’t significant. Right now it seems more directed towards hobbyists and enthusiasts. It’s hard for someone who is looking to turn this into a serious business to take these challenges seriously.
• Some winners may want to take things further and turn their thing into a company. It would be more beneficial for the challenges to have the goal of helping their winners build companies that continue to tackle these problems if they so choose. It would be better putting together a larger prize because the current prize offerings for most challenges aren’t something you can gain much from. Even better, would be to provide connections and mentoring to build a business. Something similar to GE’s challenge.
• The only feedback they received from the challenge was being informed that they had won 2^nd place in the challenge. People like Steve Wozniak and Mark Pincus were among the judges for the challenge, but they did not interact with them at all. It would have been extremely beneficial to receive feedback from them or, even better, have a chance to talk with them and others, such as venture capitalists.

In this paper, we investigate the evolution of the modern information and communication technologies (ICTs) and the associated changes in protest-related tactics employed by two main stakeholders in the contemporary contentious political processes—dissenters and incumbent political authorities. Through in-depth investigation of the cyberprotest cases in the former Soviet states of Belarus, Moldova, Russia and Ukraine that occurred during the last decade, a coherent outline is developed of the co-evolution of ICTs-enabled protest tactics of the main counterparts in the contemporary political struggle in these countries. Particularly, it was found that there are at least three highly distinguishable levels of development of modern ICTs and the associated types of protest-related tactics employed by the main stakeholders in these events. We find that as soon as the authorities were able to effectively counteract the previous ICTs-enabled tactics by the dissenters, new developments in modern ICTs always empowered the latter to devise new effective strategies to overcome previously successful counter-revolutionary measures of the political authorities.

Reference: Lysenko, V.V., and Desouza, K.C. “Charting the co-Evolution of Cyberprotest and Counteraction: The Case of Former Soviet Union States from 1997-2011,” Convergence, Forthcoming.

Community Intelligence Platforms: The Case of Open Government

The focus on collaborative and participatory governance has led to interest in studying how ‘intelligence’ in citizen communities can be leveraged towards creating robust solutions for complex social and policy problems. In this paper, we present four models that uncover the process of leveraging community intelligence. We analyze multiple case studies that capture the varying roles of citizens and public agencies in the problem-solving process. Employing Arnstein’s (1969) ladder of citizen participation as an analytical tool, we outline the strengths and weaknesses of each model, and suggest design recommendations for the development of participatory platforms for open government. 

• Brad Larson (creator of Molecules, Honorable Mention at the NIH/NLM “Show off your Apps” Competition)
• Curtis Chang (creator of Homeless-Santa Clara County, Second Prize and Best Design and Visualization at the FCC/Knight Foundation Apps for Communities Challenge)
• John Schimmel (creator of Access Together, Runner Up and Most Replicable at the FCC/Knight Foundation Apps for Communities Challenge)

This is an exciting project and we are learning a lot from our interviews. Our goal is to arrive at actionable knowledge that will increase the effectiveness of challenges run by federal agencies. In addition to publishing our findings in a report, we will be writing several smaller pieces for various outlets. If you are interested in receiving a copy of our report, please contact us at the Metropolitan Institute.

Please send me an email, if:

• you are App Developer and would like to be interviewed for this project (our highest priority is to interview developers who have contributed to various challenges sponsored by federal agencies)
• you use an app that was developed for a government challenge
• you have connections within the federal government that can connect us with agency personnel that designed (or managed) challenges

I have been humbled by the feedback that I have received on my book, Intrapreneurship: Managing Ideas within Your Organization. While all readers have provided me with interesting insights on how ideas are managed within their organization, a handful have gone further, asking me some (difficult) questions. I will tackle an easy question in this blog post – “Can you give me a few simple rules that I can use to get better at managing ideas?”  Variants of this question were posed by several readers who could relate to the frustrations employees face when it comes to leveraging their ideas. Little over a year back, I was invited to keynote a Center of Excellence for Biosensors, Instrumentation, and Process Control meeting held at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. My talk, Ten Rules of Leveraging Ideas for Innovation, will serve as the foundation for my five simple rules.
In this blog post, I will focus on the employee perspective; in a future post, I will share five elements that managers should pay attention to...
To read more, please click here - link

Technologies in Public Agencies and in Public Administration Research: Three Mini-Cases of Use-Inspired Research

Emerging technologies are transforming public agencies and the nature of governance. Public Agencies have long recognized the value of information technologies for achieving their missions, streamlining operations, and communicating with the public. Yet, the track record of public sector information systems (IS) projects - system acquisitions, design and deployment - has been sub-par. I contend that one possible reason is their dual personality. They are both (a) public sector projects and (b) IS projects. Contemporary research on public sector IS projects often emphasizes the former but not the latter, often relegating technology to a “black box.” I will argue that this posture is not only unacceptable but also dangerous. Public administration researchers cannot simply relegate the study of technologies to other disciplines. Today, several factors require us to change our stance on the role of technologies in public agencies and in public administration research, including the amount of taxpayer money that is spent on technologies, the democratizing of technology, and the rise of open data programs. Toward this end, in this presentation, I will briefly present three mini-cases of user-inspired research. The first case will highlight the use of sentiment analysis of secondary data on the IRS Business Systems Modernization. Extracting stakeholder Sentiments and Confidence from documents, with a view to exploring how such measures may offer early indications of project progress and assist managers to prevent undesirable future outcomes. The second case will highlight how innovative public managers are leading the way in deploying technology sophistically for superior citizen engagement. The US Census Bureau used technologies not only to complete the 2010 census under budget, but also deployed them innovatively to engage citizens through the design of viable participatory platforms. The Census Bureau also effectively managed risks associated with using emerging technologies. The 2010 Census campaign focused on increasing response rates and encouraging citizen participation through innovations in the communication process with citizens and the infusion of technology. The third case will describe an ongoing project that seeks to understand the motivations of government agencies, software developers, and the public on the creation and use of (mobile) apps for urban governance.

Abstract: Emerging technologies are transforming government agencies and the nature of governance. In this paper, we outline how under the leadership  of Steven J. Jost, Associate Director for Communications, the US Census Bureau leveraged emerging technologies during the 2010 census. The US Census Bureau used technologies not only to complete the 2010 census under budget, but also deployed them innovatively to engage citizens through the design of viable participatory platforms. The Census Bureau also managed risks associated with using emerging technologies effectively. The 2010 Census campaign focused on increasing response rates and encouraging citizen participation through innovations in the communication process with citizens and the infusion of technology.

Citation: Desouza, K.C. and Bhagwatwar, A. “Leveraging Technologies in Public Agencies: The Case of the US Census Bureau and the 2010 Census,” Public Administration Review, Forthcoming.

Abstract:

Tackling complex urban problems requires us to examine and leverage diverse sources of information. Today, cities of all kinds and sizes capture a large amount of information in real-time. Data is captured on transportation patterns, electricity and water consumption, citizen use of government services (e.g. parking meters), and even on weather events. Through open data initiatives, government agencies are making information available to citizens. In turn, citizens are building applications that exploit this information to solve local urban problems. Citizens are also building platforms where they can share information regarding government services. Information that was previously unavailable is now being used to gauge quality of services, choose services, and report illegal and unethical behaviors (e.g. requesting bribes). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper to examine the range of citizen applications (‘citizen apps’) targeted to solve urban issues and their ensuing impacts on planning, decision-making, problem solving, and urban governance. We examine citizen apps that address a wide range of urban issues from those that solve public transportation challenges to those advance management public utilities and services and even public safety.

Citation: Desouza, K.C., and Bhagwatwar, A. “Opening up Information for Tackling Complex Urban Problems:  A Study of Citizen Apps,” Journal of Urban Technology, Forthcoming.