Participatory Budgeting Goes High-Tech in the Big Easy

New Orleans has made significant strides since Hurricane Katrina battered the city’s neighborhoods in 2005. Since then, it’s brought back its main industry — tourism— and older areas, including Faubourg Marigny and Tremé have become new again.
But long-time residents, who witnessed billions of post-Katrina dollars go to waste on poorly executed recovery and cleanup efforts in some of the hardest hit areas like the Lower Ninth Ward, are wary about how the government spends money.
“No matter what the dollar amount was, if the house next to you is still vacant and blighted and your street light still doesn’t work and your street still has potholes, it just doesn’t matter,” says Kelsey Foster, campaign manager for the Committee for a Better New Orleans. “That kind of translated into, ‘There’s money coming into town. I don’t see it happening on my block.’”
To increase civic participation and build interest in how government budgets, Foster created the Big Easy Budget Game, a multi-platform application that lets people suggest how much money the government should be spending and on what.
“We believe in the idea that cities work better when the people who live in them have a say in how they work. We believe that every New Orleanian has a voice, and every voice should be heard,” Foster says. “And so we’re here just to make sure that no matter what the issue is — whether we’re talking about the city budget or we’re talking about water management or paving streets — we think that the community needs to be consulted and that they know what’s best.”
The game is simple: Players log in and see a couple dozen white cups on the screen representing various spending allocations, as well as a finite number of red beans (a tip-of-the-hat to the local food staple, red beans n’ rice). Each bean represents $1 million dollars, and players choose where the beans go, be it rodent removal or civil service jobs. The results are tallied and used to inform budget meetings and local activists on how residents feel money should be spent.
“What is surprising is how off we are in regards to the priorities that are coming up from the ground, and then where the budget and the resources are being allocated,” says Latoya Cantrell, a New Orleans city councilwoman. “So one example could be youth and families, right? We spend about 3 percent of our budget on youth and families, but clearly, from the game [we see] our residents want more resources going toward youth and families.”
Before migrating online in 2016, the Big Easy Budget Game started as a physical game two years prior with actual red beans and cups. But from a data perspective, red beans are messy. They can break and manually counting them can result in a higher margin of error.
“It took forever,” Foster says, laughing.
So a digital version of the game was created.
In addition to desktop, The Big Easy Budget Game is available on mobile, which is beneficial to low-income communities, including those living of the Lower Ninth Ward who may want to offer their suggestions, but don’t access to a computer or broadband
Volunteers are also available to sit down with community members in neighborhoods with high illiteracy rates and walk them through the game.
The game is now being modeled and used by two other U.S. cities, says Foster.
“Our hope very much is that our next city council and our next mayor will really take to heart citizen participation and community involvement and come to us first and talk to us,” she says. “If we don’t start [the conversation] now, we’ll never get there.”
The 2017 AllStars program is produced in partnership with Comcast NBCUniversal and celebrates social entrepreneurs who are powering solutions with innovative technology. Visit NationSwell.com/AllStars from Oct. 2 to Nov. 2 to vote for your favorite AllStar. The winner will receive the AllStar Award, a $10,000 grant to help further his or her work advocating for change.
 
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Inside the Push for Equality in the Gaming Industry

Add gaming to the list of male-dominated industries. Despite the exploding popularity of this medium across demographics — according to a Pew Internet and American Life Project and Mills College survey, 97 percent of American teens aged 12 to 17 play video games at least two hours a week — women make up only 13 percent of the employees in the gaming industry. And that includes business positions, not just creative jobs like the coveted role of video game designer. Additionally, women in this industry are paid an average of 25 percent less than men. What gives?

According to Dr. Mary Flanagan, an award-winning game designer, researcher,and professor at Dartmouth College, the underlying problem is that the industry still exudes “a culture of virtual guns, babes and ammo … and spoils what could otherwise be a revolutionary design space for new kinds of thinking, learning and collaboration, if only the industry would diversify.” In short, she writes in Gamasutra (the online version of Game Developer Magazine), the gender disparity is the last thing that the industry wants to “deal with.” She writes, “No one wants to ask development teams to self- censor. What if that hurts creativity? Why deal with this at all? Wouldn’t it be easier to just avoid women altogether?”

MORE: When Nobody in Technology Looked Like Her, This Woman Did Something About It

But Flanagan argues that this issue should be “dealt with,” for the betterment of the industry. Not only is it proven that women can design great video games (and other games as well), but in general, Flanagan argues, the industry would benefit from teams that include a variety of opinions and ideas from different demographics.

In fact, gaming was arguably created by a woman, Anne W. Abbott, who designed the first board game published in the U.S. in 1843. Other iconic American games, such as Jenga, Monopoly, Portal, and Centipede, were also created by women. And the Alien Game project has proven that games that are created by women have a broader appeal across genders, which equals greater sales and profits for businesses.

Flanagan is pushing to revolutionize the gaming industry by making it gender equal by 2020. To do that, she says that women in the industry need to speak up and make their presence known. She recommends that these women visit schools or host a panel at a gaming conference to prove to young women and girls that they, too, can become game designers. But the men can also help, by pushing for equality on industry panels and in the workplace. After all, diversity is good for business. “If we add more diverse voices to the video game industry, we will create vastly different games that reflect a diversity of thought and social values,” Flanagan writes. “Bring us different games, those that inspire, teach, entertain and open minds.” And bring in the women.

ALSO: Give Video Games a Chance to Help Kids Develop Positive Traits

Can Playing an App Enable You to See Better?

To say that your eyes are weary after spending hours battling against the chocolate blocks in Candy Crush Saga is the understatement of the century. But just because squinting at your smartphone’s screen makes your vision feel strained doesn’t mean that all apps are bad for your eyes. In fact, an interactive gaming app developed by University of California, Riverside researchers actually improves your vision.
The app, which is called ULTIMEYES, improves the brain’s ability to process information that it receives from the eyes. To play the app, users are required to complete tasks such as clicking on hard-to-see targets. The more successful you are, the more points you earn. After using it, test subjects walked away with an improved ability to see in dim light and a sharper vision. Researchers used the improved stats to draw the conclusion that this type of technology could improve the quality of life for people with reduced vision as they complete everyday tasks like reading, driving, and watching television.
ULTIMEYES was tested on collegiate baseball players from the University of California who used the technology to better read pitches and improve their ERAs (earned run averages). According to the research recently published in the journal Current Biology, baseball players that used the app for 30 25-minute sessions registered a 31 percent increase in eyesight.
Perhaps players should sing to themselves, “I can see clearly now…”
Check out the video below to learn more: