California Plastic Bag Ban
California is in the midst of considering a ban on single-use plastic bags and adding a small mandatory fee for recyclable paper bags. After passing the Senate Environmental committee on June 28th and winning an endorsement by the California Grocers Association it looks like Assembly Bill 1998 has legs.
My home turf, Washington DC, enacted a District-wide tax on plastic bags this past January. I and other Beltwayers now pay a 5 cent tax on plastic bags. A portion of the fee goes to the store and the rest goes to a fund to clean up the Anacostia River.
While I instinctively jumped to the conclusion that Washington DC’s method was preferable to the Californian ban, I’m now more skeptical. The economist in me immediately identifies the problem: clearly the cost of plastic bags (free) doesn’t reflect their public cost (for example, the $25 million California spends each year cleaning them up). A tax could address that problem. If bags are taxed sufficiently, then fewer people will use them and the cost of their clean-up will be part of the price.
However, the scale of this problem exceeds our measure of the cost. Less then half of a percent of plastic bags are recycled, yet they take over a thousand years to biodegrade. For those bags that aren’t thrown away and instead blow into the ocean, they contribute to the environmentalist nightmare known as The Great Pacific Garbage Patch. These problems are almost beyond redress because the exceed the human capacity for understanding. These are costs that involve an ethic of planetary stewardship that exceeds our generational expectations, though the same may not be said of future generations.
For now, we can celebrate the surprising position of the California Grocers Association (CGA), the industry association for grocery stores, which came out in support of the bag ban. Despite the potential impact on grocery store consumers unused to shopping with their own bags, the CGA prefers the ban as “a unified statewide standard.” They believe the alternative, a collage of city-by-city legislation, would be more disruptive to business.
It comes as no surprise that the paper and plastic industries oppose the ban. Big Paper will have to adopt better practices and produce paper bags with 40% recyclable material, and the plastic industry will be out of the business until they can develop biodegradable plastics.
I would encourage states to replicate either the District or Californian model as the first priority should be to address the profound environmental costs of a rather insidious object of convenience (read: “plastic bags”). Hopefully, academics will pursue comparative studies on this issue over the next couple of years. I’m particularly interested in the findings of behavioral economists or sociologists. I wonder if the environmental ethic of choosing to carry a bag leads to further environmental action or if it will be used as justification for buying an SUV.
Watch Gasland
So, I watched this movie last week for the second time, just to show it to my girlfriend. I highly recommend it. Most of my previously reading about alternative energy taught me far more about how wind power kill birds than about the consequences of hydraulic fracking (the process of injecting a chemical water mix into the earth while drilling for natural gas). This movie explores the dangers of this process, which carries major effects for the environment and the health and economic well-being of people across the United States.
Also, some great related news: the state of New York — the subject of much scrutiny in Gasland — is close to passing a bill that would take decisive action to place a temporary moratorium on fracking. Here’s hoping for a happy ending.
SFPark: Technology+Parking=Good
Today a great video come out of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Authority. It demonstrates how new technologies empower municipal government to adopt efficient pricing models. Also, really cool visualization; congratulations to whoever put this together.
SFpark Overview from SFpark on Vimeo.
E-Filing Tax Returns, Whoohoo!
Things are about to get really exciting: I’m going to talk about e-filing tax returns, perhaps the most nerve-racking and boring subject ever. However, there is good news. California has a program called ReadyReturn that fills out half the form for you with all the information the state has already collected. For those of us who aren’t Californians there is still hope. Obama pledged on the campaign trail to direct the IRS to
[g]ive taxpayers the option of a pre-filled tax form to verify, sign and return to the IRS or online. This will eliminate the need for Americans to hire expensive tax preparers and to gather information that the federal government already has on file. (Politifact)
Now what’s the bad news? Intuit, owner of Turbo Tax, is rightfully scared that if filing taxes becomes easy enough to do on your own, you won’t pay them to prepare your taxes. So, they’ve invested over $1.25 million on lobbyists and $2.12 million on campaign donations in the state since 2005 (LA Times). That’s a lot of money, and their only ask is to prevent this pilot program from going statewide. Now in addition to the glowing tax payer response to the quality of the program,
it [also] costs California $2.59 to process a paper return, and only 34 cents to process a ReadyReturn, the state says. For the coming fiscal year, it expects that the program will save about three times as much money as it costs to operate, and that’s assuming that only 160,000 of the two million eligible taxpayers use it. (NYT 01/24/2010)
Sadly, Intuit — rather then focusing on improving services like Mint, a Web 2.0 financial planning software — is asserting its role as a legacy industry. There is a reason the American people believe that government is innately less efficient then industry, but what many fail to realize is that industry often times actively prevents better governance. No where is this more clear then in the world of e-governance.
The RIAA Owes Me $22,500 Per Song
I was saddened by an article I first read on SlashDot that seemed to acquire little media attention. Recently, a high court determined that the government has the right to revert something in the public domain back to private ownership, reversing a ruling from a lower court. (A wonderful discussion of this issue was written up in TechDirt.)
My frustration lies with implication that the government can claim eminent domain and take private property as long as it serves a “public use”. Just today I read in the New York Times that the state of New York is taking several blocks in Harlem to resell to Columbia University. While eminent domain can certainly have beneficial outcomes, it evokes a rage in property holders, even though they’ve been compensated. Reflecting on this, I realize I have a right to be angry, too: I have not (yet) been compensated for the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
I want my money as a collective owner of the public domain. The black and white movies, classic books and photos that we collectively owned were stolen. If the government sees a “public use” in taking from the public domain, or ruling in favor of those who take from the public, I’m fine with that. I just want to be compensated.
In the lawsuit against “illegal music downloader” Joel Tenenbaum, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) claimed that each act of infringement, or song, was worth $22,500. Since the RIAA has already gone through all the trouble of determining the worth of a song, the rest is easy. Now, to exercise the totally legal right to remove private property from the public domain for “public use,” the RIAA follow the government’s model and compensate the American public for every work they remove from the public domain. Looking just at the music collection, that’s about $22,500 x 300 million (Americans), or $6,750,000,000,000.00 per song.
Now maybe instead of paying what you owe, the RIAA can let the 15% of Americans who admit to piracy (a felony) just put it on their tab. Seems like a fair deal to me.
Note: This is just a modest proposal. Of course copyright reform would also be acceptable…
Clay Shirky on LOLCats and Cognitive Surplus
Loved this TED Talk by the well-known new media adviser Clay Shirky. He discusses the importance of Generative Technology and how it leads to both LOLCats and Ushahidi.
The new economics of user generated content requires an understanding of both economic and social incentives. I’m currently reading Yochai Benkler’s The Wealth of Networks, a text that underscores the huge implications these sorts of new incentives bear for tech policy.
Liberating Transit Data
In the fight to liberate government data, Washington, DC is a leader. The current Chief Information Officer (CIO) of the US, Vivek Kundra, was recruited from his position as the CIO of DC for doing an awesome job. One of his more successful projects was starting Apps for Democracy. This national apps contest challenged the private and civic sectors to build applications and tools off of government data.
I bring up Apps for Democracy because last week at Digital Capital Week — the so called SXSW of the mid-atlantic — I listened to Bryan Sivak (who filled Kundra’s shoes as DC’s new CIO) speak about how the DC’s local government is opening up even more public data. Now you can access information on the municipal run Circulator buses. (The metro and other bus systems are run under the transportation authority WMATA.) Check out the Chief Technology Officer’s labs page here to see the data for yourself.
Looking at this page, I was reminded about the transformative role Google has played in making transit data public. Having helped design common (open) technological standards, Google empowered developers to build Android and iPhone Apps, mash-ups, and of course improved Google Maps.
The DC government provides Circulator data in three different formats: KML, GTFS, and CSV. A KML file is the file format used for Google Earth, originally invented by Keyhole, Inc. (which was purchased by Google in 2004). GTFS or General Transit Feed Specification format was originally called the Google Transit Feed Specification and only went public in 2008. CSV files in the transit database provide additional information and weekly updates with GPS data points of every city bus every 15 seconds.
Google’s specifications have made releasing transit information easier than ever before, and both (the KML and GTFS) are essentially open file formats. The Open Geospatial Consortium has given its seal of approval to KML, and GTFS was released with open-source editing tools.
Transit data is essential public information that empowers anyone armed with wifi or a smart phone to control their travel from beginning to end: knowing when and where to arrive for transit and how long it will take to get to a destination gives a person an incredible amount of agency. Although I’d like to see more file formats like OSM for Open Street Map or more information like the GPS located CSV data, the important thing is to just get the data out there. And for all its successes, there’s a lot more DC could be doing on this end. Last week techPresident reported that London is setting up its own apps challenge — and that they released all of their transit data. Liberating this data is a global challenge, but one we can be active in. Check out the GTFS exchange website to see if you should be contacting your local transit authority.
Cybersecurity: Better vs Different
There’s been a lot of discussion this past week on cybersecurity. A lot of this relates to Richard Clark’s latest book Cyber War: The Next Threat to National Security and What to Do about It. While it is easy to come to the consensus that cyberwar is indeed a real threat, it is more difficult to identify what the solutions are.
There are two ways of achieving better security from a macro scale: different networks or more secure networks. If for example, we build networks to operate our nuclear weapons, electricity, satellite navigation, etc. so that they are completely disconnected from the Internet, then we achieve security…unless foreign intelligence agencies have agents physically on the ground. Alternatively, we could just build really secure systems. I imagine these would involve limiting user privileges and developing incredibly complex passwords.
There is obviously a trade-off between these systems, but it’s helpful to be able to conceive of cybersecurity in this mindset. For example, while separating a system from the Internet is one way of being “different;” another is to simply use an alternate operating system. The reason that Mac computers get less viruses has a lot to do with their being different. This is also the reason behind a new, seperate opperating system called Kylin, developed by the Chinese governemnt. A report released by the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission claimed the intent of this OS was for security reasons (though there is little evidence to support this claim).
In his book, Richard Clark takes a strong anti-Microsoft stance, focusing particularly on the issue of Pentagon technology acquisition. Not only does Microsoft not claim that their OS is incredibly secure, it’s also what almost everybody else has. As hackers focus their attention on large scale operations, Microsoft (and particularly old Windows) computers are easy targets.
And yet, I don’t know if I can be an advocate for “different” systems. Metcalfe’s Law suggests that the more systems we have interacting together, the more valuable the system is. Why wouldn’t this apply to the Internet? It’s certainly an issue that technologists and policy wonks should reflect on.
Broadband Internet Technical Advisory Group
A new Internet power structure is being developed by some heavy hitters in the American telecom industry. The creation of the Broadband Internet Technical Advisory Group (BITAG or TAG) was announced today by Adjunct Professor Dale Hatfield (see picture) of the University of Colorado at Boulder. Professor Hatfield has been called on to facilitate TAG, which he described as “a neutral, expert technical forum [to] promote a greater consensus around technical practices within the Internet community.” As the former Chief of the Office of Engineering and Technology and before that Chief Technologist at the Federal Communications Commission, Professor Hatfield is well respected in the field.
What does this new group mean for the tech sector? Before it becomes active, it’s difficult to know definitively what TAG’s roll will be, however we can already answer some important questions:
- What kind of policies does Dale Hatfield endorse?
- Who are the initial sponsors of TAG?
- Who outside of the committee is endorsing TAG?
The answers to questions one and three are for another blogpost. Dale Hatfield’s bio didn’t provide any immediate insights for me into his policy leanings. While Leslie Daigle of the Internet Society is quoted in the PRwire endorsing TAG, we’ll probably have to wait on other endorsements in the months ahead for a real answer to question one. For now, let’s focus on the second question: Who are the initial sponsors of TAG?
I want to look at the founding members of TAG to try and pose a conjecture about what type of policies they might endorse. From this, we can also infer how powerful is their collective voice. The list of founding members — 10 in all — is full of big names: AT&T, Inc., Cisco Systems, Inc., Comcast Corporation, DISH Network, L.L.C., EchoStar Corporation, Google, Inc., Intel Corporation, Level 3 Communications, LLC, Microsoft Corporation, Time Warner Cable, and Verizon.
My first observation is that this list of players is seriously tilted towards “the tubes“ and away from content — no surprise considering this is a broadband group.
I just hope that we can resolve Net-Neutrality before this group starts having a larger voice. While the above graph might be able to bring these players into lockstep on Net-Neutrality (as each would benefit from charging content creators for access) the committee is otherwise surprisingly diverse. I consider Verizon to be a half-cable and half-telephone company — see my excel file here.
Bringing together companies from telephone, cable, and satellite seems promising because it’s important that these traditional competitors can find common standards and consensus. Thankfully, while currently occupied by major players, the committee is committed to “diverse membership” and experts from other companies, non-profit groups, academics, and the Internet community will be invited to participate.
If Leslie Daigle hadn’t endorsed Professor Hatfield and TAG, I might be more concerned. As it stands, the Internet Society (ISOC) provides an open and diverse forum for discussing these issues amongst experts — essentially, they’ve been doing what TAG proposes to do, only ISOC’s been in the game for 18 years. Hopefully these two forums will help focus the discussion around broadband and provide consensus based solutions, rather than proving themselves redundant.
Orzag Speaks the Truth
Today, Peter Orzag, head of the OMB, gave a critical speech that claimed that government agencies should make deep cuts across the board. While I won’t conjecture about how realistic these plans are, I will say that I was very excited about the focus of his speech. Orzag firmly stated that “closing the IT gap is perhaps the single most important step we can take in creating a more efficient and responsive government.” I could not agree more.
He then broke down how far behind government has fallen, stating,
Both the public and private sectors productivity growth were matched through 1987. But the private sector’s growth rose by 1.5 percent annually through 1995, while the public sector grew by only 0.4 percent per year. As the private sector’s productivity took off again after 1995, the public sector lagged behind.
Amusingly, Orzag followed this statement by noting that he can’t provide recent statistics because the Bureau of Labor Statistics stopped collecting these statistics due to budget cuts. This seems to demonstrate the disconnect between budget cuts and efficiency. Thankfully, we’ve known for years that technology is responsible for increases in productivity. But even more important than the gains from new technology is the productivity gained when lots of people know how to use it.
While Orzag emphasizes physical technology (i.e., old computers), I am equally concerned that federal workers have their hands tied by the usage of technology. The federal government is only very slowly beginning to use social networking to its full advantage. Concerns over privacy, messaging, and security are holding federal employees back. A great example of this stoppage lies with an intern at the EPA who posted on a private blog about the benefits of vegetarianism. She was attacked by officials at the Department of Agriculture and those in the meat industry. Speaking as a blogger and as a citizen, I think the real step toward “closing the IT gap” needs to include the creation of a political environment that both promotes government transparency and empowers government workers to use the web without fear.
