Ottawa's Creativity-Reality Gap (Part I)

In 2009, the Martin Prosperity Institute - a creation of Richard Florida - partnered with the Ontario Government to benchmark Ottawa-Gatineau's competitive performance in the so-called creative economy. Our '3Ts' were evaluated: technology, talent, and tolerance. Surprisingly - or not - we placed number one. According to Florida's creativity index, Ottawa-Gatineau was the most creative among the metropolitan peer regions that were selected in the study, and third most creative among all 374 metropolitan regions in North America (as well as first in Canada, overall). This senior ranking is interesting on many levels but it's particularly interesting because of the partial mismatch with how we have built our city.

One indicator of municipal policy effectiveness and taxpayer value is a city's sustainability performance. Although the process of realizing or operationalizing sustainability approaches obviously takes time, the general argument for the principles of sustainability is essentially over - from waste diversion to alternative energy the shift is taking place. Today, the primary debate exists mostly around timelines and will, whereas the administrative trend is clear: there is no alternative.

Observing from a City of Ottawa perspective, our sustainability performance, oddly, never ranks first, regardless of the evaluation, and despite our disproportionate and impressive level of creativity. Over the last five years, numerous evaluations have been completed within local, provincial, national, and international contexts, and Ottawa rarely displays more than a mid-level performance. See Table1 for an overview.[1]

Table 1. Summary of Sustainability Performance Reports, Ottawa
LOCAL	RANK
Ecology Ottawa: Council Watch Report, 2011	B
Community Foundation of Ottawa: Vital Signs, 2010	B+
PROVINCIAL	RANK
Pembina Institute: Ontario Community Sustainability Report, 2007	5th of 27
NATIONAL	RANK
Corporate Knights: Most Sustainable Cities, 2011	8th of 11
World Wildlife Fund Canada: Earth Hour List, 2011	0 of 10
Conference Board of Canada: City Magnets II, 2010	29th of 50
INTERNATIONAL	RANK
Siemens: US and Canada Green City Index, 2010	12th of 27
Mercer: Quality of Living Survey, 2010	3rd of 221
OTHER	RANK
TomTom North American Congestion Index, 2012	10th of 26

Ottawa, Ontario, Canada: the core of the most creative region in the country; the capital city of a G8 nation; centrally located in one of the most developed countries and economies in the world; home of our Prime Minister and a National Capital Commission that amplifies our municipality's resources and capacity; and yet, we remain middle-of-the-road when it comes to our sustainability performance.

In part, this is not a uniquely Ottawan experience. Municipal-level public administration and participation is sometimes perceived as a less significant matter than at other levels of government. But a new political landscape is emerging and cities around the world are increasingly becoming central actors. They are harnessing their creative capacities and focusing their potential toward their built environments. Canadian cities that are leading our country in economic growth - like Toronto and Vancouver - are also positioned as urban sustainability leaders, and other top metropolitan economies are working to reach that coveted position, as well (ex. Edmonton's investment in its City Centre Redevelopment plan, which includes the development of a massive carbon neutral neighbourhood). There are sound, economic explanations for this common feature among our country's leading urban centres. In simple terms, sustainability makes business sense.

In Ottawa, according to objective accounts, there is a clear gap between the creativity that makes us who we are and our ability to harness that creativity into building an era-appropriate municipal performance. One clear choice that can help bring Ottawa's economic prosperity to a competitive level with other Canadian cities would be to close our creativity-reality gap. Increasing our strategic resources to better integrate sustainability into our built environment would constitute a major step in the right direction.

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[1] Most of the reports listed focus on the city of Ottawa (i.e. the municipality) and not the metropolitan region (i.e. Ottawa-Gatineau). Certain evaluations displayed greater methodological rigor than others. Siemens, Conference Board of Canada, and the Pembina Institute displayed the highest level of validity of the reports listed; Mercer and the Community Foundation of Ottawa displayed the lowest. The TomTom report presents ratings from worst to best (i.e. Ottawa is the 10th most congested city of the 26), whereas all the other reports listed present their ratings from best to worst.

if you’re not a target already, you will be soon enough.

iPolitics
May 4, 2012

Within the frame of the robocall scandal, pundits across Canada seem to be talking a lot about “microtargeting.” Political parties are compiling information about us and using this information to segment their political markets and surgically deliver their communications and organization. They know what kind of cars we drive and therefore they know how we’re going to vote. This – the pundits say – is standard operating procedure, these days.

This description, while eerily familiar, is actually about one part truth and two parts fiction. Although research and sociodemographic selection are hallmarks of American political campaigns, the principles of research-based campaigning are not always applied, applied inconsistently, or applied with varying degrees of success in Canada, especially at the riding level. This is due, in part, to the limited resources available to our local teams. Riding-level campaigns generally have less capacity than their central command centres. Holding a clear recognition of this challenge, political parties have pushed to empower campaigners with new and innovative tools to deliver higher performance campaigns. One highly effective solution that has become a standard tool in the Canadian campaign toolkit is a locally accessible, centrally integrated and managed database. Data is information and information is becoming the foundation of today’s increasingly intelligent campaigns.

 Within a simplified version of the current voter identification process, constituents’ party support is recorded “on the ground” through phone and door-to-door canvasses, administered by or on behalf of the riding-level campaign. The data is then inputted, aggregated centrally, and used to focus local and central campaign communications, and get-out-the-vote resources during advance-poll voting periods and election day (and possibly other purposes – like fundraising – during interim campaign periods). This process is the most important operational function of a political campaign. It’s often quite complex and managing voter identification data is both an art and a science. To a certain degree, Conservatives now know who the Liberals are in a riding and Liberals know where to find the Conservatives, as well as the NDPs and Greens. Parties know where the non-voters are located, as well. They won’t tell you this but they ignore those folks as much as possible.

The term microtargeting, however, means something completely different to political consultants and other campaign professionals than simply identifying supporters. It includes the practice of applying mathematical analysis over top of large datasets to predict individual voter behaviour. Microtargeting analyzes the responses to survey questions collected from a sample population and builds statistical models that accurately predict likely responses for people in the electorate who haven’t been contacted.

Microtargeting models quantify the chance of an elector’s response to questions such as “Which party or candidate do you support?” This likelihood is calculated as a score and is used to rank electors in a riding. Obviously, very few ridings have the resources to microtarget potential supporters given the level of sophistication required to administer the process. Such efforts are usually managed out of our capital cities, nationally and provincially, by central campaigns.

More often, today’s traditional door-to-door and phone canvasses are being complemented or even supplemented by centrally-led microtargeting operations, providing local, user-friendly data through fully integrated, online databases. Nevertheless, neither the ubiquity nor the effectiveness of microtargeting should be assumed. Parties and campaign teams may be attempting to increase the capacity of their voter contact programs to include microtargeting techniques but it’s still a relatively new process. Campaigns are making mistakes, are still learning, and much of the expensive knowledge transfer is coming from south of the border. There are different statistical models used by many different teams, results have been varied, and candidates – especially veterans – are often slow to warm to such a hands-off approach to voter contact. The commitment from party insiders, on the other hand, seems to be rock solid.

To help manage and microtarget Canadian political markets, today’s campaigns are indeed becoming research-centric. This should not be a surprise to any Canadian. Each one of us are in multiple databases based on our own socio-demographic particularities. Google and Facebook monitor and sells us. Our smartphones geo-locate us. And political campaigns identify us and now increasingly analyze and microtarget us.

Although still far from standard operating procedure, we are getting closer and closer to experiencing political communications and organization that is as intelligent and sophisticated as our American counterpart. But we’re not quite there – yet. Who knows, the robocall scandal may impact future Canadian elections positively. Reforms could force politicians to remove the calculus and actually connect with all voters. We may become targets the old fashioned way - without the math.

porter hypothesis.

Porter Hypothesis @ 20 - Michael Porter Keynote Address from SP on Vimeo.

sustainable development is economic development.

The city of Ottawa may be on the cusp of a sustainability transformation. With the release of the Choosing Our Future sustainability plan and the consultation stages of the NCC's Horizons 2067 ongoing there is a momentum building in the Ottawa region behind an evolving agenda of sustainable development. This agenda, however, will require increased leadership and new governance structures if we truly want to reach the expected outcomes described by the vision and planning framework that is emerging.

With a major rethink of Ottawa's approach to economic development, the Mayor's launch of Invest Ottawa is an example of our city's evolving development identity. There has been no mention, however, of environmental sustainability or sustainable development within Invest Ottawa's mandate. Soon, it is expected that a "reinvigoration" of The Ottawa Partnership will be announced, an organization also focused on a form of economic development that probably will not include a sustainability lens. In addition, the Mayor is proposing a mega-BIA or Greater Ottawa Business Improvement Area (BIA), which would include approximately 17 BIAs. And the City of Ottawa has a Business Advisory Committee (BAC), to boot. Again, neither the 17 BIAs, the mega-BIA, nor the BAC have mandates to apply an environmental sustainability lens. And there's at least one more major player in Ottawa's economic development network: the Ottawa Chamber of Commerce. It's important to highlight that the Chamber - the oldest and most influential business organization in the National Capital region - to it's great credit - actually has an environment committee, with strong leadership.

For the most part, Ottawa's new experiment in economic development is an important one but it does not yet include a sustainability focus. The inconsistency with our city and region's strategic priorities is evident. Ten of the thirteen (or 77 percent) of the City of Ottawa's service and program strategic objectives from its Term of Council Priorities - the core priorities of the City of Ottawa - relate directly to the environmental or social legs of the sustainability stool; only three directly relate to economic prosperity. On the first page of the City's Official Plan, described by our Mayor as our "constitution," states that "[it is] one of the most important tools a City has to demonstrate a commitment to sustainability. This plan has sustainability as its primary goal." The NCC's Horizon 2067's overview claims "that in the long term, the most desirable and creative cities will be those that have implemented comprehensive sustainable development strategies. In this context, the Capital must resolutely continue to commit to the implementation of a sustainable development model that will inspire the citizens of the country." And our region's new Choosing our Future sustainability plan states "[that it will need] the widespread support of individuals and organizations in the community to be fully implemented."

Urban thought leaders, policy makers, business, and development enthusiasts of every stripe increasingly recognize sustainability as a driver of innovation, productivity, and "era-appropriate" economic development. In other words, sustainable development is economic development. Does Ottawa's civic leadership fully appreciate this 2012-reality and if so where are the voices, inside and outside of government? And more importantly, where are the structures to express and apply the stewardship that is necessary to realize our region's commitment to sustainable development? Or put more innovatively, why not remove the false dichotomy and fully integrate our region's sustainability vision throughout our economic development governance and planning frameworks?

There is no doubt a highly innovative business community and a wealth of active, nonprofit and community organizations throughout the Ottawa region. Numerous stakeholder groups engage all levels of government on many different facets of development; however, often this engagement takes place in a vacuum and, at times, works at cross-purposes. A multi-sectoral forum is required for stakeholders to openly explore the mutual challenges that they face. Within this forum, the principles of sustainable development that drive both return on investment and a higher quality of life can act as the bridge that strengthens the linkages between these groups. The very elements that make our city more sustainable will also make it healthy and prosperous. Our communities share a strong passion for the Ottawa region but we will need an open and active partnership of committed leaders if we want to make our collective vision of a sustainable Ottawa a reality

an event like no other.

Over the last few days, I've been listening to the news - with great interest - regarding what seems to be the misuse of private and confidential data (including phone numbers) to make misleading phone calls for political gain (and potentially exemplifying the most egregious contravention of the Canada Elections Act in the history of our country).

Two key questions journalists and investigators should consider are: 1) Were the alleged and/or reported phone calls (live or automated) based on voter identification data? And 2) Where did the data (including phone numbers) come from that were used for the phone calls?

Phone calls of this nature - live or automated - are usually based on voter ID data.

If this premise proves correct then it is highly improbable - due to the nature of today's standards in Canadian political campaign and data management - that a) this was a "rogue" event; and/or b) that this event was not i) centrally organized and/or ii) a result of a central directive. (Central is defined as a CPC employee or operative working within the national or regional campaign structure(s).)

See below for a political campaign and data management briefing that I forwarded to national media representatives. It outlines why the argument being put forward by the Prime Minister is highly unlikely.

Robocalls Media Briefing

2004. the year we last had an urban agenda.

community links.

Flowing from a great yowyow event a few days back, an enthusiastic group discussed the benefits of community organization from different perspectives. I promised to list a few links here at Canning's Guess. I spoke about the Centretown Citizens Community Association but there are thousands of community groups that are looking for volunteers. With so many community-based groups around Ottawa, it can be difficult to pick one but I think a good starting point – a practical starting point – is with your community association. Here's a somewhat dated (but still useful) community association directory to help with your choice. Good luck.