Steve Spiker

Many Americans will never know the indignity and frustration of having to navigate several government agencies to get the support they need in a time of crisis, like a job loss, loss of health insurance or lack of food for their family. This is a good thing; however, this privilege most of us have also comes with a cost: the inability to empathize with those having to navigate our government…

You don’t always have to be a racist.

I want to tell you a story about a pot, or a vase. It’s a beautiful vase, a gorgeous dark wood with unique texture that evokes mystery and intrigue, what could produce such an object? This story is about the vase, or rather its origin species, and also about the way human beings can change. It’s about learning empathy in small steps, very small, but still, learning.

I just finished…

Small victories are a key part of many healthy organization’s culture, the act of celebrating or at the very least recognizing when something minute happens. As a leader tasked with building out a whole new practice in an established nonprofit, I’m already thinking about the small wins we can get on the board to show we’re moving, changing, acting, but then, is this a distraction, or good…

Building a data practice at Alluma.

This is my work right now. Through a stroke of fate aka unexpected layoff’s of remote staff at my last organization, I found myself looking for something challenging that would pair data with impact, and via an old relationship with a former board member, and currently the CEO, I found myself jumping aboard as the Chief Data Officer at Alluma (we were Social Interest Solutions until last week!).…

Transparency at 0.5. My first half-year working on criminal justice transparency in California #opendata #cjreform

This month I hit my 6 month mark in my new role as Data Evangelist with Measure for Justice.  If you’ve never heard of us, we’re a criminal justice transparency organization, on track to push robust performance measures on each stage of the justice system in every county in the USA.  I wanted to share a little about the process of adjustment in a new role, as well as a bit about what I’m seeing…

You read that right. After eleven and a half years, I’m moving on from the Council. Ever since I immigrated to the USA twelve years ago, I’ve been blessed with this job, my one and only paid job in this country.  I’m leaving with a heart full of sorrow and plenty of strange emotions, feelings of guilt, betrayal, selfishness in me making this decision and leaving an organization that has given me…

Woman, Shame, Perfection. Processing oppression and joy. #itsnotok

This has been a big few weeks for the idea of feminism, respect, and equality for women and amid the horror and furor of events, I confess one thing just shook me.  If I’m honest, it’s stuck with me like very little else in life has. One piece of writing featured on a bold podcast on sexism in the church in America has done me in, I find myself broken again each day over this, more tears than…

Can nonprofits do User Experience testing? #UX #nptech #oakland h/t @futuristparent

Most government and nonprofit websites get built by describing the specifications and design, getting someone to build it and then after internal review, launch! That can work, but it often produces sites (and apps) that don’t really meet the specific needs of your audience, your users, your stakeholders.  Despite this being how we do things in this sector, there are better practices out there;…

Going 3:0. On maternity leave, fatherhood and avoiding feminism

Five weeks ago I became the father to a baby girl named Madeline. She’s my third daughter. My third kid under 4. My life is a bit of a beautiful mess right now with three in diapers. But I’m a dad again and that is something fricking amazing, something beyond anything I had ever known as a non-kid having person. Joy. Till kids I hadn’t really known what joy meant.  And now there’s four females in…

Bridging the CitiStat Gap

Excellent points from Mark, all things we need to really ramp up for Oakland!

Today I spent my day sitting in senate and assembly hearing rooms in our (rather beautiful) state capitol to testify in favor of two new bills that would make open data more impacting in California.

It’s a bit of a departure from my normal tech scene, but for the first time there are a slew of bills hitting the state and these are really important to the future of our state.

The first up was SB 272 from Senator Hertzberg, a piece of legislation that requires local governments to conduct and publish an inventory of their data systems and contents.  This one is big. I’m calling it the “Show us your data bill”.

Open data has been used by civic hackers to build countless new apps and to explain data in new ways, from apps that help inform people if they live in earthquake safe homes, to making city budgets understandable for the first time through to tools that help families find early childhood education and services easily, from the convenience of their phone.

SB272 is an important piece of our state infrastructure- while may cities do have open data policies, these take some time to implement and residents are left in the dark about what data their local government actually has, and how it’s collected.  This is important from a perspective of trust building for sure- knowing what data our police department collects is vitally important to understanding how that department works.  We’ve had impassioned fights in Oakland over data privacy yet most of this debate is happening without really know just how much and what kind of data our city really has. 

Data inventories will empower residents and will lead to better quality public records requests- right now, if you don’t know what is collected, you are forced to make vague, uncertain requests, never sure if the data exist.  With public data inventories, our communities will be able to make informed requests. This builds trust and improves efficiency.

SB 272 is also important as there is too much opacity in local government contracting; making visible the exact systems and software used in managing these data will provide valuable intelligence to the business community.

Lastly, it is also critical that we develop these inventories as technologists build ever more powerful and useful apps, we run into the issues of these apps stopping at your city border because the data don’t exist or aren’t obviously available in the next city over.  Knowing which data exist, and where, is a huge step forward in encouraging future innovation and making modern tools work for all of our residents.

Next up was AB169 from Assemblymember Mainschein, a small piece of legislation that helps define what “open” means and helps to firm up the standards in which data are published, when published.  Let’s call this one the “Kill All PDFs” Bill. It requires data or records to be published in machine readable, digital formats in ways that can be searched and indexed- this is good, but unfortunately a PDF can be searched by Google, so maybe this bill isn’t perfect from a geek’s perspective, but it does make data publishing standards much clear and more helpful for those of us using public data.  Perhaps as important, this bill requires data to be published in the original structure where possible- putting pressure on government staff to not refactor or redact data files unless legally necessary.

Both bills went through with unanimous support, off to the next stage of political machination.  I’m hopeful they will see sunlight in the end, they are important pieces of our future.  As this day wraps up, I’m left dwelling on this one thing- every issue heard today had a slew of hired lobbyists to represent the various interests- electric cars, solar systems, government contractors and more; I’ve been frustrated by the lack of movement and leadership at a state level in California regarding open data and now I realize something-