The White House blog has a post about the Create an Infographic about Childhood Obesity Contest. (The deadline for the contest has already past, sorry to all the would-be designers.) I really like this contest for three reasons. First, there are some fantastic submissions listed at GOOD. I think that Jenn Cash’s submission deserves to win because it is informative, thought provoking and good looking. But, the submission from BetheCatalyst.org is my personal favorite:
BeTheCatalyst.org's Submission
While it may not be what we think of as an infographic, it definitely is the kind of message we need to right now to put national priorities on the right track. This is an example of how e-government initiatives can make government more democratic.
Collaboration
The second reason I really like it is the collaboration between First Lady Michelle Obama’s Lets Move! campaign and GOOD.is. GOOD is an online and print magazine where socially minded people and organizations share projects, news, ideas and so on. GOOD’s content focuses on information and design, which makes it well-suited for e-gov in the US. Sometime I peruse their projects and infographics section for great ideas and inspiration. (Aside: I doubt the way GOOD markets itself as “for people who give a damn” really grows it’s audience, it seems about as effective a PR slogan as Dawkin’s Bright’s movement.)
In most e-government strategy white papers, collaboration is part of the holy trinity of e-government buzz words, along with transparency and efficiency. However, the specifics of collaboration goals are usually vague. The US Open Government Initiative evaluation questionnaire, for example, has 5 out of 28 questions dedicated to collaboration, but no suggestions or examples of satisfactory projects can be found in the OGI paperwork. This project is that missing example. By teaming up with a forward thinking online magazine targeted at a creative audience, Lets Move! nailed it. I also love the way they use the White House blog, which I hope other people besides myself read, to spread the word to an audience that may not pay attention to children’s issues or design journals that often (fat-cats). Okay, fat-cats and their aides might not read the White House blog, but they are a hell of a lot more likely to see it there than at Lets Move!‘s website. This bring me to the third reason I like this contest:
Web 2.0
The third reason, this project does web 2.0 right. To start with, Lets Move! has a facebook account (27,000 likes) and multiple twitter accounts, and GOOD has an AddThis like widget for all it’s posts. In fact, as I looked around at Lets Move!‘s web 2.0 features, I realized I have to right a separate post to talk about them all.
More importantly, the contest takes web 2.0 to completion by not only utilizing the usual suspects Twitter and Facebook, but also creating a citizen-centered project. It gives users ownership by letting them create the content, which is the whole point of web 2.0.
Infographics role in Gov 2.0
Openness is one of those vague words often praised by politicians who pass e-government strategies. The US strategy for strategy for making openness measurable was forcing every agency to provide 3 new data sets to Data.gov, one of which had to be “high-value” (the US is one of the only governments to use qualitative methods in evaluation, which I think is a good idea). The problem is, data is only one part of openness. Take a look at this diagram of Data-Information-Knowledge-Wisodm (DIKW) Hierarchy I grabbed from Wikipedia:
DIKW Hierarchy
By itself, Data.gov is at the first circle. Openness requires that data become readable and understandable information. Infographics are one of the tools that let users create that new layer of meaning.