(ˌpaɪəˈnɪərɪŋ ˈspɪrɪt ) noun. a willingness to endure hardship in order to explore new places or try out new things 

Cover photo

Rekindling cafeterias as a cultural commons

I recently started working at Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. Located downtown by Union Station, the District's headquarters has a great cafeteria. Quality, dependable food at affordable prices. When I interned at Met seventeen years ago and was running the CA data collaborative a half decade ago, it was cool to see the many people from many walks of life who'd come to the Met cafeteria for a meal. It was right across a nice plaza from Union station.Today that cafeteria re...

#commons#civic#reform#connection#community

Few global news climate links for Black Friday

COP29 missed many important faces, including the current POTUS. Hardly any of the world’s most powerful leaders will be making an appearance in Baku, Azerbaijan — yet another year that the annual Conference of the Parties, convened to stem the problem of warming, has been hosted by a petrostate. President Xi Jinping of China won’t be there, and neither will Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission. President Emmanuel Macron of France, the bedraggled face of Western liber...

#climate#global#news#geopolitics#updates
Cover photo

Pioneering public sector training programs that meet our current civic challenges

I recently had the opportunity to hear the new President of Art Center, the world leading design training institute in Pasadena, speak. Her fireside chat was great and one piece in particular jumped out at me. She emphasized the criticality of Art Center's connectivity with industry - through alumni engagement, industry sponsored projects and also encouraging professors to either consult or work four days and teach on the fifth. That model reminded me of the founding MIT model, well documente...

#education#civic#tech#gov_tech#public_tech#data#mpa#mpp
Cover photo

The March of Folly

Why did the Trojans fall for such a seemingly obvious ruse as a wooden horse housing an invading army? Why did the Renaissance popes persist in corrupt behavior — ranging from rampantly promiscuous parties to using the papacy as a tool for self enrichment — that ignored growing resentment amongst the people? Why did the British act to turn their colonists into rebels and instigate a war which could never achieve Parliaments initial financial objectives? Why did America back a decrepit regime ...

#folly#current_events#future#troy#vietnam#rebellion

State capacity shortage, California public employee edition

California spending on city workers has grown 76% since 2010. Inflation over that period was 42%, meaning that real wage growth increased 185%. Much of that cost comes from exponentially increasing pension costs. Meanwhile, California population has declined slightingly over that period. Are city services 185% than 2010?Anyone know the core factors affecting the wide disbursement of city employee costs per resident? Are the sub-thousand dollar cities having services largely provided by the Co...

#muscular state#california

State capacity shortage, process for the sake of process edition

This procedural burden weighs especially heavily on new players and novel technologies that haven’t had time to work the system. Oil and gas drilling companies, for instance, have been granted several NEPA exceptions that reduce the requirements for things such as drilling exploratory wells. Geothermal energy, on the other hand, does not receive such exceptions, even though it involves drilling wells like those for oil and gas. Procedural requirements, like most regulations, heavily favor the...

#state capacity#procedure#rules

State capacity shortage, let people do the work

Who wouldn't want to let more kids learn? “Oh, by the way, I have the solution to your problem of low learning levels, or at least part of the solution. Look, we’ve got this powerful evidence that this works to improve leading outcomes by putting these volunteer tutors and pulling their low learning kids out.” The response of the secretary of education was, “What do you think my job is? Why do you think that this is a solution to a problem I have? Look around my office. See these piles and pi...

#state capacity#muscular government#digital public goods
Cover photo

How no-code tools increase adaptive capacity in water utilities

Many water utilities struggle to shift from traditional water meters to AMI or automated metering infrastructure. This means moving from monthly or bimonthly meter reads to a torrent of high frequency regular data. That requires a intricate array of data transfers -- bringing data from the meter via radio, centralizing and storing that data, making that meaningful for billing and also easily accessible for customers on their phone, on the web, via a mailer or really however the customer prefe...

#water#data#ami#climate

State capacity shortage, IT inanity edition

The following Bloomberg deep dive into one of the big local government IT titans you've never heard of does a great job of describing how "lock in" works:A multiyear license for a city of 20,000 people might cost $1 million up front, then bring in $200,000 annually for software support. Moore’s predecessor as CEO used to joke that he had three daughters and a fourth kid named “maintenance revenue.” This golden child came to haul in hundreds of millions of dollars each year, as clients proved ...

#state capacity#more muscular government#digital public goods#public interest technology

State capacity shortage, talent matters edition

The Progress Ireland Institute did a nice analysis of global transit projects as part of examining how to improve project delivery in Ireland, with lessons for the larger Anglosphere. The chart below shows the massive discrepancy in normalized costs. Over 10x across the range of countries!* What accounts for the difference in construction cost per kilometre? The most important difference between models is in their use of in-house expertise. Metro projects in English-speaking countries don’t t...

#muscular government#talent#ireland