In this article found in today’s New York Times, author Steve Lohr comments on government innovation.  He refers to the Institute for Large Scale Innovation, started by former Harvard professor John Kao a few months ago to “support development and coordination of worldwide innovation capability.”

It points to the newly created UK Department of Business Innovation and Skills, an innovation panel in Australia, and discusses the link between India’s National Innovation Foundation and the $2,000 car - the Nano.

Lohr notes that free market capitalists may not agree with “government meddling in decisions best left to the marketplace.” While it is true that government attempts to spur or direct innovation in a particular direction, instead of letting the marketplace decide, can have questionable results,  surely these government actions are better than no action at all.

As the health care debate heats up, here is a spin with a theme common to many posts on this site: Incentives.

The title of the article in the Atlantic doesn’t mince words: Fat Smokers with High Blood Pressure Beware. It discusses the plan for health care reform held by Steven Burd, CEO of Safeway.

Mr. Burd recently wrote an Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal titled How Safeway is Cutting Health-Care Costs, but of interest to a larger audience is the subtitle - Market Based Solutions can Reduce National Health-Care Costs by 40%.  The key, Burd says, is to reward healthy behavior.  That is exactly how Safeway has been able to keep their  costs flat over the last four years while the costs at most American companies have gone up 38%.

Basically, if you are healthy, you pay less for insurance.  While that may seem discriminatory at first, consider these statistics used in his piece:

• 70% of all health-care costs are the direct result of behavior.
• 74% of all costs are confined to four chronic conditions (cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes and obesity).
• 80% of cardiovascular disease and diabetes is preventable.
• 60% of cancers are preventable.
• 90% of obesity is preventable.

Mr. Hurd claims that had the nation begun the same incentive-based program in 2005, the country’s 47 million uninsured could have been covered with the savings ($550 billion) nearly four separate times.

The scratchy image above is the page 35 of British MP Jim Murphy’s Additional Costs Allowance from 2007/2008. Item 5 on the list is a shave mirror for £17. Whether that is a legitimate expense to pass along to the taxpayers or not, the Guardian newspaper wants you to help them investigate it. It has posted this expense page here, as well as 457,152 others in a feature they are calling Investigate Your MP’s Expenses.

In government volunteer watchdog meets web 2.0, anybody can join the review process of expenses submitted over the last four years. You are encouraged to classify the page as either a receipt or expense form, and then mark whether it is interesting, not interesting, or so interesting it warrants investigation.

This is the latest use of technology to make government more transparent.

The Stimulus Bill, formally known as American Investment and Recovery Act of 2009, is 1,1000 pages long. It was made available in its final form on February 12 at 10:45pm.  About 13 hours later, the report was brought up for consideration. At one point, House Minority Leader John Boehner dropped all 1,100 pages on the floor loudly and said,

“..I don’t know how you could read 1,100 pages between midnight and now. Not one Member has read this.”

Soon after, the House voted to approve the largest piece of spending legislation in history.

Yesterday, House Resolution 554 was introduced by Reps. Baird and Culberson. It would require that all non-emergency legislation be posted online, in its final form, 72 hours before consideration.  Seems reasonable.

The Sunlight Foundation has been promoting this bill for several months on their site readthebill.org.  The Citizen Century Institute runs the site whycongresscantread.com, also promoting it.

An estimated 1200 municipalities and institutions around the world use a participatory budget process, yet none in the United States.  The 49th Ward in Chicago plans to be the first.

An initiative led by a Brown Sociology Professor Gianpaolo Baiocchi is leading the initiative with the cooperation of the Ward Alderman, Joe Moore.  Several initial workshops have been held, and throughout the next year, public assemblies will take place in which citizens will be able to voice their opinions toward how their ward’s money is spent.  Watch this site for updates.

We have posted previously about the excitement drawn from following a state legislator while voting on the house floor during a weekend session as deadlines loomed. Since then, we’ve been made aware of this section of SourceWatch - Your guide to the names behind the news that collects links and information about government tweeting. From there we’ve found the Capital Tweets widget by the Sunlight Foundation that funnels tweets to your website from all 80ish Congressmen who tweet. The site govtwit.com lets you search for your local and state politicians who are tweeting.

… two articles published recently at the Atlantic.com. The first chronicles the fall of the newsweekly including the likes of US News and World Report, Time, and Newsweek (The Economist, however, seems to be thriving). This sentence seems especially poignant:

Newsweeklies were intended to be counterprogramming to newspapers…Now, in response to accelerating news cycles, the newspapers have effectively become newsweekly-style digests themselves, resorting to muddy “news analysis” now that the actual news has hit us on multiple platforms before we even open our front door in the morning.

In effect, eyewitness spreading of news via text messages, Facebook, Twitter, and similar technologies have replaced the actual reporting of the news. A story is not covered completely in 140 characters, and it certainly is not un-biased, but stories are definitely broken.

This is particularly true in the other article of note which analyzes the riots in Iran over results of the government elections and allegations of voter fraud. The 24-hour news networks didn’t cover the story well over the weekend, yet live coverage via Twitter was, and continues to be, constant and real-time. The author ponders this question:

Are we approaching a point where political information is processed so fast that an event happens, information elites weigh in to shape the discourse surrounding it, the conventional wisdom is communicated to Congress, and elected leaders formulate reactions based on public opinion… all before most of even the formerly plugged in members of the public ever learn what on earth is going on, or have a chance to form an opinion?

Beginning days after President Obama took office, calls for government transparency are everywhere (I realize Mr. Obama did not invent transparency and that there were watchdog groups and transparency advocates before, but things surely have intensified in the last six months.)  Something is announced somewhere every day. Two of the newest transparency sightings in Chicago:

The Chicago Tribune, in as much financial trouble as the next newspaper, has re-branded itself recently. Adjusting to reduced staff and to the new demands of an engaged public, the paper has titled itself the “Watchdog - On Guard for Chicago“. Their new section online - Your Government In Secret (government watchdog staff pictured), focuses on FOIA findings, and their new Sunshine Online blog tracks daily stories, ideas, or discussions of transparency.

Across town, The Sun-Times published a story today about the Chicago Transportation Authority and their seemingly-ironic use of company cars for their employees. While many of the employees with cars seem to be justified, the issue is being looked into by CTA president Richard Rodriguez.

Even if only one or two cars of the 68 are found to be unnecessary and revoked, that is still $30,000 - $50,000 that the city may be able to recoup, in addition to insurance, maintenance and gas expenses. With daily announcements of budget shortfalls and layoffs around the country, the nation’s growing appetite for transparency is one thing in our corner.

Washington D.C. was ranked best municipal website recently, according to the Public Technology Institute. City websites were surveyed jointly by the E-Governance Institute, School of Public Affairs and Administration at Rutgers University-Newark, and the Department of Public Administration at San Francisco State University.

The sites were ranked in the areas of privacy, usability, content, service and citizen participation, and the D.C site won handily over the others in the top 10:

Top 10 Cities in Digital Governance Nationwide - 2008

In Chicago, intersections that have been equipped with red-light cameras have seen traffic accident occurrences decrease by 20%.  In addition, they have generated revenue for the city to the tune of $122 million, valuable at a time when city budgets across the country are coming up short due to lower than expected tax revenues.  However, they are extremely controversial.

An intersection with a new red-light camera starts by issuing many tickets to violators.  Intersections with the most violations have reached almost 3,000 in a month initially.  Once drivers become conscious of the cameras, they change their driving habits, and the number of violations come down dramatically by about 75% over 5 years.

The success in Chicago has not been seen everywhere.  In Houston, it appears the number of accidents may have increased at monitored intersections because of a rise in rear-end collisions and drivers slam on their brakes to avoid a violation (though other studies show that this can be avoided by increasing the length of yellow light).  In Dallas, some of the monitored intersections have been turned off because they were not generating enough revenue. In L.A., it appears the 80% of the tickets issued by red-light cameras were for rolling right turns; still an illegal activity, but a much less dangerous one, and so a frustrating observation if the main claim of the camera installation is to improve safety.

If the numbers do not show that the cameras are having the desired effect, camera opponents have a valid argument.  However, in places like Chicago where they are being proven to work, more cameras should be installed.

A previous post discussed the idea that city revenue sources like property taxes and income taxes and sales taxes are burdens on citizens for doing positive or neutral things, like owning a home, earning an income, or buying a fishing pole.  Revenue generated from red-light blowers places the burden on someone whose actions are having a negative impact on society, in several ways:

• Blowing a red light is against the law.
• The action endangers everyone on the road, causing about 8,000 deaths in the US per year.
• The action causes as many as 4,000,000 non-fatal accidents per year.
• These accidents cause insurance rates to go up
• The accidents cause injuries, which bring financial hardship.

We don’t like the idea of bigger government, but if the choice is between increasing the sales tax on everyone or charging higher fees for violations, the answer seems obvious.

What if cameras were on every signalized intersection in Chicago.
The city is currently monitoring 143 of the worst (based on number of traffic accidents) intersections with cameras from Redflex Traffic Systems.  There are over 2900 intersections in Chicago with traffic signals.  The fine is currently $100 per violation, and with the deal in place for the 143 cameras and monitoring service, the intersection must generate 39 violations per month to be cost effective for the city.

If a camera was placed on every intersection in the city that has a traffic signal, and each camera captured 2 violations per day (60/month), it would generate $73 million per year - not bad. However, of the 143 monitored sites now, the fewest tickets generated per month is 85.  Leaving out the first 39/month as break-even money, the city would be looking at $160 million per year.  Friday the City of Chicago announced a $300 million budget deficit  along with the layoff of 1500 city workers. Could red-light cameras have saved half of those jobs?

How many fewer accidents would occur?
The city is reporting that accidents have dropped by 20% at the intersections monitored by cameras.  There are currently about 140,000 traffic accidents per year in Chicago. Between 20% and 40% occur at intersections. We will use 30% in our calculation and say 8,4000 accidents could be avoided each year in Chicago with cameras at each signaled intersection.

Miscellaneous Costs
8,400 accidents avoided translated to a compounding savings rate.  Each driver involved in the accident would see his/her auto insurance rates increase by 20% - 40%.  There may be additional repair costs that are not covered by insurance.  There may be missed wages to arrange the repairs, or because a car is not operable.  And of course a most serious implication of the accident is that there will be injuries, and possibly death.

A camera on every traffic signal may be extreme, and may not be financially prudent.  However the general concept of taxing violators and those whose actions have a negative impact on society should be considered a viable revenue option.