Reflections on DTPR’s progress one year after MozFest 2021

Keeping the conversation about trust and transparency going strong and exploring what it takes to get DTPR from idea to implementation

With Mozilla Festival 2022 wrapping up, I realized it’s already been a year since our MozFest 2021 workshop, “Transparency Interfaces for Everyday Places,” which helped us lay the groundwork for everything we’ve accomplished over the last year.

Looking back, 2021 was another year where issues of trust took centre stage. Discerning what information, institutions and individuals to trust was top of mind as the world made its way through the second year of a global pandemic.

In particular, trust in technology is continuing its 10-year decline. This poses a challenge for communities interested in exploring how smart technologies can improve residents’ quality of life and address societal challenges, such as pandemic response and the climate emergency. In our MozFest session last year, we discussed a number of “smart city” scenarios and the value of increasing transparency into how digital technologies work.

At Helpful Places, we believe that a lack of transparency around the implementation of technology in our communities furthers the erosion of public trust. We think the adoption of technology needs to reflect a process of fostering understanding and constant dialogue between residents and implementing actors — both public and private.

And this belief is reflected in our mission to steward, advocate for and explore adoption pathways for DTPR (Digital Trust for Places and Routines), an open-source communication standard intended to bring legibility to technology and foster civic dialogue.

WHAT WE WERE UP TO

Dialogues and conversations

Since Helpful Places formalized our stewardship of DTPR in 2020, we’ve been participating in many discussions around trust and tech:

We organized workshops sharing and exploring the utility of DTPR at:

• The Data Transparency in Public Space conference (organized by the BRIDE project and the AMS Institute’s Responsible Sensing Lab)
• Mozilla Festival 2021 — a session called “Transparency Interfaces for Everyday Places”
• We hosted a “Community Chat” to bring together more than 30 folks who had expressed interest in DTPR, so that we could better understand the different problems and opportunities that DTPR could support
• I spoke with Alistair Croll (co-founder and chair of FWD50) about DTPR for an episode of FWDThinking
• We wrote an article for the Urban AI think tank on DTPR
• A brief Twitter conversation with Bryan Boyer, from the Urban Technology program at the University of Michigan, led to an exploration of DTPR in their newsletter, Reading the Street

Thank you to everyone who’s communicated with us and given us feedback over the last year. These conversations have helped us learn more about how we can best further transparency, accountability and agency for people when it comes to tech in the built environment.

Our first cohort

In the second half of 2021, we launched a call for organizations to participate in our first organized cohort to implement DTPR through an open learning program. We were thrilled to receive nearly three dozen applications and expressions of interest from organizations across seven different countries!

Planning is underway to announce this first “DTPR Cohort” in the spring of 2022 in collaboration with the World Economic Forum’s Future of the Connected World initiative.

Mentions and recognitions

We were also thrilled to see our work on DTPR recognized and discussed in a number of forums and publications:

• Cornell Tech’s Rebooting NYC: An Urban Tech Agenda for the Next Administration report
• The SAIT School for Advanced Digital Technology (SADT)’s article on digital trust
• NYC Council testimony on open data from The GovLab’s Stefaan Verhulst
• Cities Today’s article on urban tech and civic trust
• Urban AI’s interview with Nigel Jacob, co-founder of the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics at the City of Boston

WHAT WE’RE LEARNING

Through all these opportunities, conversations, and inbound inquiries from the DTPR-curious, there have already been new learnings and questions emerging.

There’s demand to implement DTPR

We’ve noticed demand for DTPR from two types of organizations in particular:

• Place Managers, such as municipal or institutional staff, who are responsible for technology implementation in a place or on a thing
• Intermediaries, who sell or provide services to Place Managers who are interested in how DTPR could support their service offering

How Helpful Places can be a resource and steward

2022 will see Helpful Places continue to refine and develop tools, processes and resources to support Place Managers and Intermediaries in implementing DTPR.

And as we learn more about who wants to use DTPR, and how it gets used, we’ll also be figuring out Helpful Places’ role in developing a stewardship and governance model for the standard.

WHAT’S NEXT

We’re excited about what lies ahead and know it won’t be possible without the support of so many organizations and individuals who have already put their energy, time and resources into making DTPR a reality over the last few years.

The Helpful Places team would like to thank YOU — the folks who continue to be curious about, support, advocate for and ask thoughtful questions about DTPR — our partners at Normative, as well as our emerging coalition of supporters including GLIA Foundation, Digital Public Square, and Boston’s Office of New Urban Mechanics.

We look forward to continuing to share our learnings and updates — especially as we launch the first DTPR cohort — as well as any opportunities for collaboration.

New to DTPR? Curious to learn more or get involved?

• Check out the DTPR website and GitHub repository
• Stay informed by joining the Slack channel here
• Contact the Helpful Places team at dtpr@helpfulplaces.com

What is DTPR?

DTPR is an open-source “system-to-people” visual communication standard for transparency and accountability around digital technology in the places where people live and work. It includes a standard dictionary of concepts around digital tech and data practices, and a standard set of icons and design patterns to quickly and clearly communicate those concepts. Through the DTPR project, we can begin to advance an understanding of how to foster trust in digital systems.

The open-source standard was initially developed through a multi-stakeholder co-design process to integrate design-thinking, user research and prototyping to improve public literacy and awareness of digital technologies. The project is being stewarded by Helpful Places and an emerging coalition of organizations. The Icons, Design Guide and Taxonomy for DTPR are licensed by the Digital Transparency in the Public Realm contributors under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).

The role of Helpful Places

DTPR is an open-source standard, available to municipalities, companies, individuals and organizations around the world. In 2020 stewardship of the DTPR standard was passed from Sidewalk Labs to Helpful Places, a mission-driven startup I founded to explore implementation pathways and coalition building to advance the adoption of DTPR,

In its exploration of how best to support DTPR, Helpful Places has heard from various stakeholders that there is a clear need for support with implementation of the DTPR standard — and that is where Helpful Places comes in. The team can help you identify specific use cases within your community, guide you on how best to identify DTPR icons for signage, support you with relevant technology based on your local context, and help you collect and analyze the data that emerges to inform future strategy and decision making.