We launched the Google Public Sector & Elections Blog back in June of 2009 with the intention of providing you with the latest digital learnings, insights, tools, case studies and tips from the public sector, open government and elections industries. Over the past two years, we’ve shared our research, examples, product news, trends and much more on a wide variety of governmental and political topics.
With the 2012 US election cycle kicking into high gear, the frequency of high profile elections across the globe and as more Googlers across the globe working to build tools to connect voters to the electoral process, we figured it was time to give our elections and politics project a proper blog home and an opportunity to expand in terms of coverage. That’s why we’re excited to provide even more focus on politics and elections — from across the globe — on our new Google Politics & Elections Blog.
This new Google Politics & Elections Blog will continue to be operated by our Politics & Elections team and our aim is to deliver more trends, news and tools for voters, campaigns, developers and journalists.
Last night the nine leading Republican Presidential candidates spent two hours answering your questions in the Fox News / Google debate. Throughout the debate we polled viewers online and featured their responses live on national television. Today, we’ll drill deeper into viewers’ reactions by analyzing Google search trends throughout the debate.
Gary Johnson Arrives on the Stage
This debate was marked by a rare appearance on stage from former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson, and the search trends show that viewers wanted to learn more about the newcomer. Gov. Johnson's introduction at 9:01 PM, and his four responses throughout the debate, all sent searches for his name through the roof. Searches for the low-polling “Gary Johnson” spiked well above those for presumed frontrunners Rick Perry and Mitt Romney, as well as all other candidates, as this graph shows.
However, Johnson’s most buzzworthy answer - a quip about President Obama’s inability to create jobs at 10:49PM - actually garnered the fewest searches of the night for the New Mexico Governor, a sign that by the end of the debate the audience knew him better. That said, one term did spike particularly high at that time: ‘Johnson’s neighbor’s dogs.’
"9-9-9? Is that like the Domino’s 5-5-5 deal?"
Godfather’s Pizza mogul Herman Cain repeatedly promoted his "9-9-9 Plan” for tax reform, and search trends show that Cain’s repetition prompted viewers to learn more. Every time Cain mentioned the plan - at 9:15, 10:39, and then Huntsman referred to it at 10:54 - there was a major spike in Google searches.
Read my book! No, read my book!
Gov. Rick Perry and former Gov. Mitt Romney sparred throughout the debate over the contents of their respective books. Our records show that many more viewers were interested in Romney's No Apology than Perry's Fed Up.
What would you cut?
About half way through the debate Megyn Kelly asked YouTube user Lee Doren’s question about government cuts: If you had to cut one department of the Federal government, what would you cut?
While Herman Cain said he would eliminate the EPA on TV, online viewers answered the same question on the YouTube.com/FoxNews channel, and they overwhelmingly favored eliminating the Department of Education.
Interestingly this data contradicts search data from the past twelve months: more Google users search for the Department of Education than any of the other departments listed.
The Fox News/Google Debate isn't over, though. Head over to YouTube.com/FoxNews now to watch individual clips of each question-and-answer exchange and vote on how you think each candidate fared under the pressure of your questions. Watch out for more trends and data from the debate coming soon, and stay tuned for our next scheduled debate with PBS on January 12th in Des Moines, Iowa.
Posted by Eric Hysen, Google Politics & Elections Team, and Will Houghteling, YouTube News & Politics Team.
With our Fox News GOP Presidential debate less than 48 hours away, we thought it would be useful to once again look at Google search trends to see which candidates users are searching for.
We last looked at search trends and the GOP presidential race in early August just ahead of the Iowa Straw Poll. From former candidates (Tim Pawlenty) to new candidates (Texas Governor Rick Perry), the dynamics of this race have changed dramatically in the past 4 weeks. This time around, we found:
1. Since joining the field in August, Rick Perry has jumped out to be the most searched front-running candidate nationally.
2. Congresswoman Michele Bachmann is still very much in the search race - contrary to media reports, our data shows this may not a two-person contest between Rick Perry and Mitt Romney!
3. Past debates generated interest among Google users on hot-button issues like HPV and Social Security.
4. Which state searches most for Ron Paul? Montana. (I didn’t predict that either!).
5. Search queries mirrored the results in the NY-9 Special Election recently.
Rick Perry takes the lead
[Rick Perry] has taken the lead in searches on Google. As more and more Americans hear, read, and talk about him, they’re looking to the web to discover more about the issues, his positions, and his background. Since joining the race, he’s held the lead among the front-running candidates in terms of overall search numbers.
Bachmann hanging tough Back in early August, we learned that Michele Bachmann was the most searched candidate both in Iowa and across the country. Heading into the Iowa Straw Poll, we showed her with a commanding lead in search volume and when all the votes were tallied, she won. A peek at our search trends shows that, despite some recent claims, the GOP race is not a two-person race. Rather, it might still be a three-person race. Although Bachmann has dropped behind searches for [Rick Perry] across the country, she is still more searched than [Mitt Romney].
Debates Drives Interest in Issues
Tomorrow at our debate with Fox News, we’ll be looking to user-submitted questions and search data to help frame the debate and prompts given to the candidates. The issues that Americans care most about will take center stage. In a blog post yesterday, we showed that the top-ranking categories are Government Spending & Debt and Jobs & Economy. These issues will dominate the evening. However, if past debates are any measure, there could be a breakout issue that isn’t on anyone’s radar ahead of the program. Resulting from recent debates in Florida and New Hampshire, two hot-button issues emerged and voters turned to the web to discover more on the topics. With the perceived-frontrunner Governor Perry being pressed on his positions, his opponents shed light on his stances. As a result, in the days after the debates, searches for [Social Security Ponzi Scheme] and searches [HPV Rick Perry] and [HPV] vaccines - saw major increases as voters turned to the web to discover more and get to the truth of the matters.
Montana is Ron Paul country
Some of you may be wondering where Congressman Ron Paul is in all of this search activity. Having accurately predicted his second place finish in the Iowa Straw Poll - based on search trends - we’ve noticed that over the summer, the state with the highest interest in Ron Paul is Montana. Surprised me, too! Other top states include early states like Iowa, New Hampshire, and Florida, so perhaps this data bodes well for some key primaries.
NY-9 Results
Finally, we thought it would be useful to walk through some of the ways that our search data has served as a good proxy for offline behavior - and in this case - elections. We’ve already showed you above how search data in Iowa showed a Bachmann - Paul finish in the Iowa Straw Poll in August, but more recently we saw parallels in search data and election results in the special election for 9th Congressional District which pitted Republican [Bob Turner] against Democrat [David Weprin]. The search trends show Turner pulling away to a lead in the days leading up to election day. He went on to win.
Like most of you, all of us on the Google Politics and Elections team will continue to be keeping a close eye on the race and tomorrow night’s debate promises to be a great moment in the campaign. Stay tuned here for more search trends as the race heats up.
Posted by: Jake Parrillo, Politics and Elections Project Communications Team
Open government is an important, timely topic -- rarely go through a day without interacting with public data or government services, whether it’s checking the weather or taking public transit. Today, we’re joining 46 governments from all corners of the world to launch the Open Government Partnership and establish openness as an essential pillar of 21st century governance.
As part of today’s conversation, we’ll be talking about three elements of openness. The first is the power of people. We fundamentally believe in the capacity of people to innovate and create change, and the people around the world leading open government efforts are shining examples of how reform can happen.
The second is the power of trust. In our global economy, trust is an invaluable currency -- consider it a killer app in the digital age. Trust is critical to the relationship between the institution and the individual. And the establishment of trust starts with transparency. The more open governments are with their citizens, entrepreneurs and partners -- the better opportunities they create, and the more successful societies they build.
The third is the power of open systems and technology. We fundamentally believe that open systems win, as our colleague Jonathan Rosenberg has talked about before. Open systems lead to more innovation, resources, and freedoms for citizens -- and a vibrant, competitive ecosystem to create jobs and grow our economies.
Open systems - which include a myriad of policies and practices along with open standards, open source technology and open information - have already shown the potential to spawn industries and bring increased creativity, better commerce and more effective decision-making across our respective sectors and communities. They establish meritocracies that harness the intellect of the people and spur sectors to compete, innovate, and win based on the real value of their ideas, products and services.
We believe that open systems are the way for us to have the broadest impact for the most people, in their power to deliver information, and in the power of information to do good -- to inspire enthusiastic innovators who will seize on opportunities and create inventions that will benefit people in ways we can’t yet fathom.
We applaud the efforts of all people, countries and organizations working on transparency -- and we hope today’s launch reaffirms the power of openness.
Posted by Ginny Hunt, Google's Public Sector Program Manager
With three days to go before the Fox News/Google Debate, we’ve seen more than 16,000 questions from all 50 states submitted to the Fox News YouTube channel. During Thursday’s live event in Orlando, you’ll see a selection of these questions posed to the GOP candidates live on stage. As we count down to tomorrow’s midnight ET submission deadline, here’s a look at the questions you want answered by the candidates bidding for the 2012 Republican nomination.
The top issues on your minds? The Government Spending & Debt and Jobs & Economy categories rank highest in question volume—not surprising with unemployment above 9 percent and a summer spent debating the debt ceiling. Health care, which dominated political chatter for the first year of Obama’s presidency, now trails all other issues.
* NOTE: This chart excludes the “Other” category, which has received 26% of all questions, ranging from education to State’s rights.
You also want to hear from specific candidates in the GOP field. Ten percent of the total questions received referenced a specific candidate, and of those, newcomer Gov. Rick Perry leads the pack. Outweighing all of the GOP candidates in mentions? President Obama. Questioners referenced the current president over 1,000 times, nearly twice as many times as Gov. Perry, and ten times as much as the previous president, George W. Bush.
Interest in the race spans the country and the globe, with questions submitted from Indiana to Israel, South Dakota to South Korea. In the US, the cities leading question submissions are: Houston Miami New York San Diego Austin
It’s not too late to submit your own question, or vote on the ones you like, at www.youtube.com/foxnews. Then, on Thursday, watch the live debate unfold there at 9pm ET, and see how the candidates respond.
Posted by: Will Houghteling, YouTube News and Politics, recently watched “Flying over planet Earth.”
If you’ve been watching the 2012 Republican presidential race from the sidelines, now is your chance to get involved: Google and FOX News will present a GOP primary debate in Orlando, Florida on September 22, and you can drive the conversation by submitting and voting on questions for the candidates. The Fox News/Google Debate will combine the questions you submit on YouTube with maps, facts and information to enrich and guide the discussion. You can vote thumbs up or down on the questions using Google Moderator, and many of the top-voted will be put straight to the candidates to answer. The result—an informative dialogue about the future of our country centered on the issues you care most about.
You can submit your questions starting today, in video or in text, at www.youtube.com/foxnews. The debate will be live streamed on YouTube as well as broadcast on the FOX News Channel at 9pm ET on Thursday, September 22. Throughout the evening, we’ll use Google’s public data and search trends on air to give greater context to the questions, and help you make a more informed decision at the polls come November 2012. We hope you’ll join us—submit your question now and let your voice be heard.
Posted by Steve Grove, Head of YouTube News and Politics
In just two days, Iowa voters will cast the first votes in the 2012 campaign at their traditional straw poll. The Iowa Straw Poll – so named because the results are non-binding and thus “as sturdy as straw” - is the first major event of the campaign. The nation’s political focus turns to Iowa starting tonight as eight of the announced candidates take the stage for the Fox News Ames Debate.
Iowans are rightfully proud of the role they play in presidential politics and take their responsibility seriously. They research the candidates. They investigate the issues. They’re engaged in the political process. That’s why the state makes for an interesting window to view the candidacies and issues through Google’s own data. As the country looks to Iowa, we thought it would be useful to examine what people in that state and across the country are searching for related to the 2012 Republican nomination.
Here’s what we found:
Michele Bachmann is the most searched announced candidate in Iowa right now, and nationally by a large margin.
Add in the names Sarah Palin and Rick Perry, and Bachmann still has the edge in Iowa.
But nationally, Perry becomes the current leader of search.
The most searched for issue in Iowa and across the country is jobs - by large margin.
And finally, the State of Iowa leads by a HUGE margin the number of searches for [butter cow]
Heading into the weekend, [Michelle Bachmann] is the most searched-for announced candidate in Iowa. She’s taken off and now far surpasses any other declared candidate, especially those that are attending the Straw Poll. If you look at the pack together, Congressman [Ron Paul] trails Bachmann in the number two spot, as do searches for Governor [Tim Pawlenty], Senator [Rick Santorum] and businessman [Herman Cain].
Nationally, the same trend stands up, even when those candidates who are skipping the Straw Poll are added to the mix. Across the country, more people are searching for [Michelle Bachmann] that are searching for Congressman [Ron Paul], Governor [Mitt Romney], Speaker [Newt Gingrich] and Ambassador [Jon Huntsman].
However, the search landscape changes dramatically when we include two much-discussed potential candidates: [Rick Perry] and [Sarah Palin]. In Iowa, where she has focused her campaign, [Michelle Bachmann] retains her search lead, but across the country she drops to the number two spot behind the currently surging [Rick Perry]. Without even entering the race, Governor Perry finds himself leading in search today. Perry has some strong search momentum as more voters across the country turn to Google to find out more information about his potential candidacy.
So that covers the candidates, what about the issues? In Iowa, the candidates are talking about health care reform, the national debt and ethanol among others. But, the top concern - and most searched issue in Iowa and across the country - this year is [jobs] - by a HUGE margin.
Republican Party officials are expecting more than 10,000 voters to cast their vote on Saturday in Ames. But, that’s not the only big event taking place over the weekend. Celebrating more than 150 years, the Iowa State Fair includes highlights such as the the “fry everything” food booths to the famous butter cow. Don’t know what a butter cow is? It is a life-size bovine crafted entirely of butter and it is a huge part of the tradition at the Iowa State Fair. Iowa leads the country - by a huge margin - in the number of searches for [butter cow].
Here at Google, we are serious about our role in helping voters find information that is useful in the political process, and that’s why we’re heading to Ames to participate in the Straw Poll with our Soapbox. We’ll also be here from now until the General Election to help bring you a front-row seat to the race through a regular look at what’s happening online.
This Saturday, thousands of Iowans will flock to the center of the state to cast a vote for their preferred Republican Presidential candidate at the Ames Straw Poll. The Ames Straw Poll is held ahead of the first-in-the-nation Iowa Caucuses and serves as an important indicator of strength of the candidates in the critical early state. Although many other states and organizations have adopted straw polls, the Ames Straw Poll in Iowa has become one of the most important during the election cycle. This decades-old campaign trail tradition keeps politics local and personal -- and this time, we’re making it digital.
The Iowa Republican - a news site dedicated to producing original political commentary by and for Republicans - is kicking off the Iowa Republican Soapbox to bring the voices of local Iowans to the world. The Soapbox will let elected officials, candidates, and engaged Iowa Republicans speak out and have their say on issues and the direction of our country through The Iowa Republican’s YouTube Channel.
If you are planning on being in Ames on Saturday, August 13th, swing by our tent. We’ll have cold drinks, a roster of candidates stopping by and a spot for you on the Soapbox.
You’ve already made campaigns a more open political conversation using social media platforms like YouTube and Blogger, and now Google+. In the 2012 campaign, The Soapbox is our latest effort to help shift the balance back towards the voters. Everyday citizens across the globe are rolling up their sleeves, saying what they believe, and being heard.
As the country starts down the path to select our next President, we’re working to give you information and tools to be a larger part of the process from the beginning. We recently announced our participation in the Des Moines Register Debate to have candidates answer your questions in the final debate before the 2012 Iowa Republican Caucus. And we’re just getting started. We hope that a more open and local political conversation is useful to you, candidates, news organizations, and our democracy.
Posted by Ginny Hunt, Google Elections Product Manager
What do you get when you mix a city government that is prioritizing its digital presence with a homegrown, budding tech community? Reinvent nyc.gov, the City of New York’s first ever hackathon - an event where engineers meet to do collaborative programming. Held this past weekend at the entrepreneur campus General Assembly, the top prize at the hackathon was not money, but something even better: breakfast with Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
To call redesigning nyc.gov a challenging task would be an understatement: Since its launch in 1996, nyc.gov has expanded from around 1,000 pages to over 500,000, covering every city agency and task force. The number of yearly visitors to City-run web pages (33 million, or 24 million for nyc.gov) is approaching that of visitors to Central Park (37 million), according to New York City’s Chief Digital Officer Rachel Sterne. Of course, over the course of 2 days, the goal was to generate ideas and prototypes for the redesign.
The event kicked off with welcomes from city officials who framed the event and gave a glimpse of the city’s digital future. Deputy Mayor for Operations for New York Steve Goldsmith said, “we want to be transparent in a usable way, and encourage collaborative decision making.”
As a tech partner, Google demoed developer tools for Maps, YouTube, and Android, and held office hours for the over 60 participants from New York to Kansas to California. As teams formed, a few of us also participated as designers and developers.
The Google team (from left to right): Ginny Hunt (Public Sector & Elections), Jeffrey Posnick (YouTube), Jenny Ye (Public Sector & Elections), Adam Koch (Android), Hilary Worden (google.org), Arnaud Sahuguet (google.org)
Less than 36 hours later, submissions were in, and the demos began. By and large, teams presented UIs that were search-centric, user-focused, and social. Some envisioned the new nyc.gov as not only making it easier to find information but also making it easier to connect with city officials and other New Yorkers. Participants also voiced their hopes for more machine-readable data and more APIs. After the judges deliberated, awards were presented in the categories of Best Use of Local, Best Use of Social, Best User Interface, Most Innovative, and Judge’s Choice. Moving forward, we hope that the New York City moves quickly in its redesign of nyc.gov and uses some of the new ideas produced this weekend.
Participants and judges gather for demos and awards (photo from NYC Digital)
Hackathons organized by cities are not a new phenomenon - earlier this month, Google Chicago hosted an Apps for Metro hackathon with the City of Chicago - but there’s much more that can be done. Rachel Sterne, who worked to put together Reinvent nyc.gov, wrote about the advantages of city-led hackathon efforts. Perhaps NYC Digital’s slogan - “technology in the public service” - sums it up bests: by opening up access to more interesting, real-time data and and making the public sector more participatory, governments will be able to tap into engineering resources of its citizens and build a sustainable community of civic hackers.
Posted by Arnaud Sahuguet, Product Manager, google.org and Jenny Ye, Public Sector & Elections Intern
Posted by: Alon Halevy, Senior Staff Research Scientist, Google Research
One of the things I most enjoy about working on data management is the ability to work on a variety of problems, both in the private sector and in government. I recently had the privilege of serving on a working group of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) studying the challenges of conserving the nation’s ecosystems. The report, titled “Sustaining Environmental Capital: Protecting Society and the Economy” was presented to President Obama on July 18th, 2011. The full report is now available to the public.
The press release announcing the report summarizes its recommendations:
The Federal Government should launch a series of efforts to assess thoroughly the condition of U.S. ecosystems and the social and economic value of the services those ecosystems provide, according to a new report by the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), an independent council of the Nation’s leading scientists and engineers. The report also recommends that the Nation apply modern informatics technologies to the vast stores of biodiversity data already collected by various Federal agencies in order to increase the usefulness of those data for decision- and policy-making. One of the key challenges we face in assessing the condition of ecosystems is that a lot of the data pertaining to these systems is locked up in individual databases. Even though this data is often collected using government funds, it is not always available to the public and in other cases available but not in usable formats. This is a classical example of a data integration problem that occurs in many other domains.
The report calls for creating an ecosystem, EcoINFORMA, around data. The crucial piece of this ecosystem is to make the relevant data publicly available in a timely manner and, most importantly, in a machine readable form. Publishing data embedded in a PDF file is a classical example of what does not count as being machine readable. For example, if you are publishing a tabular data set, then a computer program should be able to directly access the meta-data (e.g., column names, date collected) and the data rows without having to heuristically extract it from surrounding text.
Once the data is published, it can be discovered by search engines. Data from multiple sources can be combined to provide additional insight, and the data can be visualized and analyzed by sophisticated tools. The main point is that innovation should be pursued by many parties (academics, commercial, government), each applying their own expertise and passions.
There is a subtle point about how much meta-data should be provided before publishing the data. Unfortunately, requiring too much meta-data (e.g., standard schemas) often stymies publication. When meta-data exists, that’s great, but when it’s not there or is not complete, we should still publish the data in a timely manner. If the data is valuable and discoverable, there will be someone in the ecosystem who will enhance the data in an appropriate fashion.
We look forward to seeing this ecosystem evolve and excited that Google Fusion Tables, our own cloud-based service for visualizing, sharing and integrating structured data, can contribute to its development.
[From time to time we invite guests to blog about initiatives of interest, and are very pleased to haveDominic Campbell, founder of FutureGov join us here. – Ed.]
Note: This is an edited version of a post that first appeared on Simpl's blog
On Friday and Saturday 17-18 June, a diverse bunch of energetic people came together in London for Interactivism Accessibility Hack Weekend (the first of its kind).
Some of those present - the student developers, Google developers and social innovators - were regular attendees at hack weekends, but it was those who had never even heard of a hack weekend - the members of the Gransnet website - that turned Interactivism into a hack weekend to remember.
Kicking things off, Andrew Eland (Google) and Dominic Campbell (FutureGov / Simpl) outlined the challenge that lay ahead of the teams, working together and using their creative, design and coding skills to turn their ideas into working prototypes by the end of the two days.
Before the hacking commences, two inspirational speakers to stepped up to the mic. Mike Bradley shared his experience of all things accessible through his current job as Senior Lecturer in Product Design and Engineering at Middlesex University and previous job as Accessibility Engineer at Ford. In short, listen to what people need and do that. Simple right?
Then came the star of the show, Peter Oakley, otherwise known by his renowned YouTube name: "Geriatric 1927". Peter spoke about his inspiration for joining YouTube, his love of all things web related, encouraged others to just give it a go as "you can't break it" and then demoed his YouTube skills.
And then it was time to get down to business. The people behind the ideas pitched to the room to get people motivated and moving into teams to start to get those ideas developed. Most of the teams gelled really quickly and stereotypes were quickly dispelled. Gransnet members later commented how impressed they were that the student developers really took time to listen to their ideas and everyone remarked on what good fun and great value the Gransnetters were.
Despite some healthy competitiveness, designers, developers and Gransnet members were bartered between teams, helping with sought after skills like logo design, understanding a complicated piece of coding or posing for a photograph or two to jazz up their final presentations.
So those final projects presented to the judging panel:
1. Our Town: a location based site with user generated content about local volunteering opportunities and ideas for projects
3. Gene Pool: an easy to use and fun genealogy game (a bit like Foursquare Family History)
4. Timetag: using the web to show patients if their hospital appointment is going to be delayed because of an overrunning clinic
5. TV Mate: an easy to use remote control made from a computer tablet that can be personalised with photographs and sounds
6. EZPZ: a simplified web browser that removes all the clutter and makes internet browsing clear and straightforward for the inexperienced user
7. Echoing: helping people in care homes connect and add value to the outside world by recording memories specific to local places that can be accessed by people visiting those locations
8. Spotted: an app for sharing likes and dislikes related to accessibility through photographs and individual profiles, for example a photograph of something that impedes good accessibility (a combination of Accessify Places and On the Go)
9. Milly and Jake: an interactive story that can be read by grandparents and grandchildren regardless of their location, for example by using Skype.
After tough deliberation, the expert panel of judges awarded EZPZ as the Interactivism - Accessibility Hack Weekend winners. The students from this team received a sought after Google Interactivism Award. Our Gransnetters were also invited to form their own judging panel and voted for Spotted as their favourite idea.
Last week, the Google Earth Outreach and Google.org teams, in collaboration with the Global Canopy Programme, hosted partners from non-governmental organizations (NGOs) for the first gathering of the Community Forest Monitoring Working Group. The goals of the working group are to provide a platform for groups engaged in community forest monitoring activities - across continents - to share knowledge and experience. Equally important is for these groups to provide recommendations for the development of tools, methodologies, and common protocols. For example, the Surui tribe in the Brazilian Amazon is using modern technology to implement their community’s Surui Carbon Project.
This effort isn't isolated, as many NGOs and stakeholders support community-based approaches to forest monitoring for their efficiency, cultural relevance, and reliability. Community Forest Monitoring will play a role in the United Nations’ Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) effort which aims to incentivize developing countries to adopt a low-emission path to development. In thinking about best methods for data collection, this working group is tackling a host of data collection issues including usability, security, accountability, cultural relevance, and scalability.
These are all concerns that the team at Open Data Kit (ODK), an open source suite of data collection tools, have fleshed out and iterated upon. ODK was born in 2008 as a Google sabbatical project of University of Washington computer science professor Gaetano Borriello. Borriello wanted to take advantage of Google’s data collection tools: maps, visualization, databases and has said that his team saw a gap in mobile data collection. Thus, Borriello’s team developed ODK Build, ODK Collect, and ODK Aggregate, mobile tools that have attracted thousands of users and dozens of active developers.
As ODK iterates and evolves, the Public Sector Engineering team is learning about the challenges and opportunities in mobile data collection and exploring how we can contribute to this space. ODK already gives users the option to visualize data in Google Earth and Google Fusion Tables, and we are exploring how to take advantage of some of Google’s other tools (what if photos collected on the ground could be easily posted to Picasa, or videos to YouTube?) It’s our goal to make sure that all meaningful data is effectively organized and made discoverable, accessible and usable.
Ultimately, community forest monitoring represents just one slice of the potential that effective data collection tools create. ODK was initially motivated by the needs of community health workers and has proven flexible enough to be used to track everything from human rights violations in the Central African Republic to water quality in Ghana. As the nature of scientific research diversifies and the volume of data collected increases, reliable, flexible, and lightweight tools will become more and more crucial.
What’s next? As the engineering teams continue to work on improving mobile data collection tools, this working group will convene policymakers at the next workshop to discuss standards and best practices. “The greatest barrier isn’t a technological one, but the challenge of leveraging this data so that communities can help ensure better governance for their forests,” says Niki Mardas, Head of Strategy and Communications for the Global Canopy Programme and theredddesk.org. As with many other public data collection efforts, it will become the job of advocates and analysts to shape meaningful narratives and press for the change the world needs. We're proud to be playing a part in this effort and we're committed to working with our partners to transform data collection from a passive, closed process into an active and empowering one.
Posted by Tanya Keen, Google Earth Outreach and Jenny Ye, Public Sector Engineering Intern
This past Sunday Turkish citizens went to the polls to cast their vote at a critical juncture in their country's history. After the polls closed, voters across the country turned to Google first to understand the results and the impact of the election. Providing access to useful information like results for elections are closely aligned to Google’s mission and help improve democracies across the globe. In Turkey, the team at Google helped visualize and explore the latest election results as they became available. Using Fusion Tables and the Google Maps API, our elections team built a gadget that displayed province and district-level results in real-time “directly from the ballot box.” To facilitate this, we partnered with Cihan News who recruited 50,000 volunteers to provide real-time election data and received praise from voters and other media outlets for their quick and accessible reporting of election results.
By making it easy for multiple collaborators to integrate data, create visualizations and work with a variety of data types, Fusion Tables allowed us to quickly build a prototype. We created tables with static content such as district shapes and names and separate tables with dynamic content such as the number of votes received and counted ballot boxes. We wrote a simple program to periodically parse Cihan’s XML feed of results and populate the dynamic content tables. We then were able to merge both the static and dynamic tables and visualize them directly in Fusion Tables without writing a single line of new code. As soon as Cihan uploaded the data, we were ready to visualize. The result was a quick and easy mashup that we could check for accuracy.
The gadget was built using PolyGonzo, an open source library for the Google Maps JavaScript API. PolyGonzo provides fast rendering and highly interactive polygons in most modern browsers using the HTML5 canvas element and GeoJSON shape data. From Fusion Tables, we exported the static content for Turkey’s 957 districts to KML and we then converted the shapes into simplified GeoJSON. Using the Fusion Tables JavaScript API, the gadget also periodically read from the same dynamic content tables we used to build our prototype. The end result was an engaging gadget whose static and dynamic content could be traced back to Fusion Tables.
We hosted the gadget off of Google Project Hosting. By 7:30 in the evening local time we were seeing over 500 queries per second to load the gadget’s static content from Project Hosting and over 1000 queries per second to load the gadget’s dynamic content from Fusion Tables - both astounding figures. As evidenced by the volume of updates on Twitter and elsewhere on election night, Turkish voters were indeed eager to share the details of the election outcome courtesy of this custom mapping platform.
Projects like this help people around the world view and explore information and also allow people to collaborate and merge different data sources. For instance, a tech savvy reporter could incorporate publicly available socioeconomic or past election data to the Fusion Table and use the Google Maps API to overlay the data directly onto the existing map. The web holds much promise to continue to transform politics and elections from a passive process to an active, participatory one. The elections team here at Google will continue to seek solutions and build tools and platforms to help inform and connect voters and candidates across the globe.
As evidenced by this latest project, Google is committed to partnering with and helping news organizations succeed online and off. The Turkish election results gadget is the first of many election visualizations we hope to create in the future. Soon, we’re creating an election results specification so any news organization can provide the public data and can work with us to provide visualized and - importantly - searchable results on election day. We can’t wait to see what tools and products we can cook up together for elections around the world!
Posted by Chetan Sabnis, Software Engineer, Public Sector Engineering
Speaker Boehner and Majority Leader Cantor took another strong step towards an open and accountable Congress, calling for better access to House legislative data in a letter to the Clerk of the House:
“...Openness, once a proud tradition of the House, is again the new standard. At the start of the 112th Congress, the House adopted a Rules Package that identified electronic documents as a priority for the institution. Towards that end, we are asking all House stakeholders to work together on publicly releasing the House’s legislative data in machine-readable formats...Ultimately, legislative data is the property of the American public. It is our hope that these reforms will continue to rebuild the trust between Congress and the people we serve.”
Open, standard data formats are fundamental to helping engineers, entrepreneurs and citizens access and use legislative information. We applaud Speaker Boehner and Majority Leader Cantor for their continued leadership on transparency.
Across industries, we’ve seen how well organized information can improve operations and reduce spending. In the same way that barcodes made merchandise easier to track and supply chains more efficient, using standardized machine-readable formats will be a large step in improving transparency around lawmaking.
And one day, it will be as simple for citizens to understand and track a bill as School House Rock makes it look:
Every March, politicos from across the country meet for the “Pollie Awards,” an event hosted by the American Association of Political Consultants. Often referred to as the “Oscars of Political Advertising,” the awards recognize the most outstanding political ads and campaigns from the past election cycle.
Shortly after Election Day in November, we highlighted some major trends for politics online. Right now though, following the 20th annual Pollie Awards, it is time to dig a little deeper into what we learned in 2010 and share examples of the innovative tactics campaigns and issue groups used to deliver their message. Here are some key lessons we gleaned from research and case studies rooted in the last year’s election.
1. Even the Dean of the U.S. House or Representatives can learn some new tricks. When push came to shove in a tough election year Congressman John Dingell, the longest serving member of Congress, turned to an aggressive online advertising campaign to help weather the electoral storm. Google produced a video case study featuring Congressman Dingell himself.
2. The power of the late online surges.George Gorton, a California-based political pollster, and Republican strategist Steven Moore, partnered withCampaignGrid to study the efficacy and impact of Campaign Grid’s online ad strategy for the Mike Prendergast campaign in the 11th congressional district in Florida. The Prendergast campaign targeted Republican men with a unique negative message not used in any other paid communications. Within that target audience, message recall jumped from 4% to 22% over the course of the eight-day display ad campaign. Additionally, Gorton and Moore tracked polls during the campaign to gauge the point at which the message really started to “sink in” to the target audience. The polling showed that 9.3 million targeted impressions over six days produced a seven percentage point increase (from 4% to 11%) among Republican men who could recall the message; it took an additional 5.3 million impressions over two days to double that number from 11% to 22%. You can read more about the study here.
3. Online advertising can sway statewide elections.Chong + Koster/ and SEA Polling and Strategic Design collaborated on a study measuring the effectiveness of the online advertising campaign for the “No on Amendment 8” campaign in Florida, a ballot measure which would change rules about classroom size. The “No on 8” campaign ran a very sophisticated online advertising blitz, driving their message with social ads, instream ads and a heavy display buy. Their online ads targeted just two large counties, Broward and Dade, which provided the winning margin. In fact, the margin between the two sides was 19 points higher for the region where the “No on 8” online campaign was targeted as compared to the rest of the state.You can read more about the study here.
4. Looking forward to 2012? There’s no bigger buzz phrase in presidential politics than “Swing State” and Ohio is as “swing” as they come. Google produced a video case study called “Battleground Ohio” which highlights all sides of the Ohio Governor’s race featuring senior advisers to Governor Kasich, and Former Governor Strickland. The cutting edge tactics employed online in Ohio last year, including new online video techniques and innovative communicating at scale tactics, give us a glimpse of what’s to come in key battleground states in 2012.
Conclusion. Between the increase in campaign activity online and the innovative tactics executed on the ground in the space this past cycle, there is a lot to look forward to for political new media. Online is no longer an experiment, but something with proven results that win elections. Google as well as the 2010 Pollie Awards celebrate the best of political campaign strategy.
Posted by Andrew Roos and Luke Rodehorst, Google Political Ads Strategists
It’s an exciting time to be talking about technology and politics. This week Google’s Elections and Issue Advocacy Team met with a sampling of representatives of some of the best run campaigns and political digital agencies to recap the 2010 election. We all agreed that this election cycle was a breakthrough year for political online advertising. According to Jupiter/Forrester, Americans now spend the same amount of time on the Internet as they do on radio, newspapers and magazines combined, and this past election cycle, we saw politicians take full advantage of this trend.
Online advertising burst onto the political scene in 2008, but in 2010 we saw seismic shifts in the industry. In fact, almost 80% of governor and senatorial candidates were spending online with Google. This is up 900% since 2008. Furthermore, 20 of the top 25 independent expenditure or issue advocacy groups invested in online advertising with Google this cycle. We saw politicians innovate and find new ways to engage voters this election cycle. It’s more important to understand what campaigns were doing differently online in this election rather than merely where they are putting their ad dollars. So in that spirit here are five major trends we saw this year:
#1 - Online as a Persuasion Tool
Politicians and issue groups learned how to brand online. Campaigns are turning from using the internet purely as a “direct response” mechanism and now employ it as a persuasion medium as well. It’s not news that campaigns know how to raise money online, but increasingly we have seen campaigns and issue groups utilize online ads to drive message and mobilize voters. Consider the growth in Display advertising: in 2010 almost 600 campaigns and issue groups used Display advertising and the Google Display Network targeting key demographics with relevant messages.
#2 - Adoption of Online Up and Down the Ballot
Close to 200 local candidates and ballot initiatives were spending online with Google. In addition, out the 100 most highly visible and competitive congressional races around the country over 85% of those districts were being targeted by online ad campaigns – compared to just a handful one Election cycle before. We even created a Campaign Builder tool so smaller campaigns could get online within minutes.
#3 - Online Video Grows Up, Fast
Campaigns have understood the power of television since the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon Debate, and in 2010 we have taken the same leap forward by tapping into the power of online video. Candidates and issue groups used YouTube to help extend the lives of their TV campaigns, and started integrating online video into the core strategies. Instream ads which are pre-, mid-, or post-roll ads showing on YouTube partner content was the hottest thing we saw in online political advertising. This ad format wasn’t even available yet on election day 2008, and by election day this year hundreds of campaigns and issue groups were using the medium. Another great story is BIPAC (Business and Industry Political Action Committee) who even took over the YouTube Homepage on Election Day.
#4 - Mobile Advertising Grows Exponentially
We saw over 550 campaigns and issue groups experiment with mobile advertising this election cycle. Every week, tens of millions of people search on Google from their mobile phones and generate hundreds of millions of searches, so it makes sense that campaigns and issue groups want to place ads, where their voters are spending time. And we saw cutting-edge uses of mobile’s powerful geo-targeting capabilities, like Rep. Michele Bachmann targeting Minnesota State Fair-goers with a tailored message about taxes.
#5 - The Network Blast Goes Mainstream
Perhaps the stage was set with Scott Brown’s victory in January and his campaign’s expert use of the Google Network Blast, but one lesson we learned throughout the rest of the cycle was that “The Blast” has gone mainstream. A “Network Blast” is a short-lived ad campaign used for gaining maximum exposure across the web at crucial moments. In the days leading up to the election, there were dozens of blasts-- saturating voters with the right closing message. We saw network blasts in races from as small as state senate to as large as entire battleground states. These campaigns made sure they were top of mind as voters headed to the polls.
The trend-lines are clear and we expect campaigns to be even more aggressive in courting the “Digital American” in 2012.
Posted by Andrew Roos, Account Executive, Google Political Ads
* NOTE: This chart excludes the “Other” category, which has received 26% of all questions, ranging from education to State’s rights.
Interest in the race spans the country and the globe, with questions submitted from Indiana to Israel, South Dakota to South Korea. In the US, the cities leading question submissions are:
This Saturday, thousands of Iowans will flock to the center of the state to cast a vote for their preferred Republican Presidential candidate at the 
