Democracy works on the assumption that citizens are informed and have an opportunity to participate and influence the workings of their government. Currently, governments are running at significant financial deficits. This means that governments are spending more than they are making each year. In the "good times" (aka the dot-com bubble burst and its real-estate bubble), governments saw large increases in property-tax revenue as housing prices rose dramatically. Government programs were started, staff sizes increased, pension benefits were adjusted (Solano County increased retirement compensation from 2% to 2.7%). Unfortunately, government typically expands in one direction. Yet, as the real-estate bubble burst, the government housing bailout was enstated, promising to pickup billions of dollars in default homeowner loans in a jumble of financier legalese. The housing crash left local governments with significantly less property tax revenues, and the growth that occurred during the boom became unsustainable during the dip. So, as it stands, governments are facing financial pressure, overspending on a yearly basis. Citizen demands remain the same if not higher during difficult economic times. Spending our way out this is not the answer. Simply, we must make better use of existing resources and spend within our means. We, as citizens, must assist we, as government, in prioritizing, communicating, and accomplishing the goals of a larger system human of governance. Public Agencies and their Employees are often operating at their maximum, abiding by existing legislation, monitoring and implementing new legislation, and managing the many recurring and regular tasks that must be completed as a baseline minimum of operations. Add the complexity of an ever-changing population and their ever-changing needs, it seems beneficial to begin to talk openly about shared concepts and mechanisms for actually realizing such things. What is great education? Great health care? What do we really want for our prison system? How do we want to spend public dollars? Are we subsidizing the right things? How do we know if we're doing a good job at it? GDP? Deficits? Unemployment Rate? Test Scores? I think we can do better.

Look at ESPN. More statistics about every pitch, free throw, and sack than you can keep track of. Their systems can access and provide an amazing number of views of their many facets of analyzed data. Sports were well underway when ESPN came along to provide TV coverage and provided new levels of value through data. I'll ignore the negative effects of turning athletes into primadonnas who watch their own to-be ESPN replays when striking out on the field.

Here are some of things that would be interesting to measure: Representation rates between citizens and public representatives. There are 5 Solano County Supervisors to represent ~400,000 people. Each city also has a Mayor and a City Council. Is that adequate? Solano County has a $780 million budget. 7 cities in Solano County have combined budgets of approximately $300 million in addition to the County's revenues. That equates to 400,000 citizens having about ~$1.1 billion in public revenues to provide services. Is that adequate? What is spent at all levels of government? Cities, Counties, Special Districts, States, and Federal. Note: It'd be neat to really flesh this out, and do this as a layered visualization. Consider if and how to show funds transferred between levels, such as Federal to Local, State to Local, or Local to Special District

At any rate, MoreQuality believes it is worthwhile to contemplate better uses of limited resources. Accordingly, government should seek to become a more efficient system to provide a baseline set of core services, while building a capacity to run flexibly-staffed programs as necessary.
A similar trend is taking place with in computing with the concept of cloud-computing. Spin up instances when you need them. Yet, human organizations to serve human people are much more complex and harder to debug and scale in practice.
In order to become more efficient, governments can proactively seek to enhance services without increasing total staff size by partnering and connecting with other public agencies to innovate in a shared fashion. Public systems, where they are in place, should be considered public domain as should all data within public systems (while adhering to privacy and security exceptions). Through the sharing and standardization of systems, data can become a valid feedback mechanism to governmental processes which we must realize are ever-evolving. The concept of Governance, as a whole, brings new and interesting challenges to today's government. There are many data points to track, but more importantly, there are more people to talk with and cultivate shared visions of the future. Measuring doesn't necessarily mean a cold, cut and dry approach as it relates to government. Government is always changing, we must understand that. Measuring allows us to better see our reflection as citizens in and of our government. Through that recognition we can build trust with our public bodies and reinforce some the natural process of Democracy.