KAPadvising
Knowledge As Power provides consulting services, usability studies, and event management. Our advising supports open, modern, and interactive governments from the city to the national level. We’ve provided advice on how to create and manage open government solutions for national governments (including the US Congress, the White House, several US agencies and 10 Downing Street), as well as state and city governments (the NY State Senate, British Columbia and the cities of Seattle and San Francisco). We believe that creating useful and intuitive online services is key to giving citizens greater access to, and engagement within, government. We also think great advising doesn’t have to cost taxpayers a lot of money to yield great results.
Seattle's Mayor, Mike McGinn and CIO, Bill Schrier, announcing the new Seattle.gov website and Knowledge As Power's usability study which fueled the redesign.
Consulting Services
KAPadvising structures its advising process a bit differently than most government consultants. Here’s how:
- If we think there are other nonprofits, advisors, or resources that could be of more help to you than us, we’ll introduce you two.
- We provide low-cost services, leveraging KAP’s nonprofit status. How low? Contact us and we’ll be happy to put together a quote based on your needs. We think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
- KAP clients agree to have the results of our usability studies shared with the public, and to host with KAP a end of usability event, where your staff and KAP staff release findings and announce redesign work.
- For projects with the right fit, KAP will approach sponsors and foundations to help cover the costs of advising, usability studies, or event management.
Consulting
KAP’s staff and meet with your team, discuss current challenges, brainstorm solutions, connect your organization with resources to leverage, and apply KAP’s research on usability, gov 2.0, and government technology trends, to make recommendations, or work with your web team on design and implementation.
Consultation areas:
- Usability studies
- Open document formats and open legislative processes
- Citizen engagement strategies
- Event management and marketing strategy for open government, code-a-thons, and civic engagement events.
- Cross-government partnership development
KAP usability studies
KAPadvising’s usability studies have three tiers, reflecting the quantity of research conducted, the amount of reporting, and the diversity of the audience included within the study. KAP provides low rates to governments by leveraging various resources available to us as a nonprofit organization. We also ask our government partners to provide a quiet office space we can conduct the studies, lunch for the usability viewing sessions (lunch is for your staff, who are at the viewing), a internet connection if needed, and one to two staff contacts we can work with on the iterative process of designing the usability study.
Knowledge As Power’s usability client, the City of Seattle, redesigned Seattle.gov based on KAPadvising’s usability study and 79 page report. Just months later, Seattle.gov was recognized as the best municipal website in the United States.
KAPadvising has helped:
- The White House, Department of Transportation, Environmental Protection Agency, and Housing and Urban Development Agency, producing a marketing plan, providing advising, and managing Code for Livability’s West Coast event in Portland, Oregon on January 21st and 22nd.
- City of Seattle; Sarah Schacht, KAP’s executive director, is the open government advisor for Seattle’s Mayor, Mike McGinn
- Seattle.gov and Seattle’s Department of Information Services for a 2010 usability study of Seattle.gov
- Province of British Columbia, Queens Printer
- British Columbia’s Citizen Services & Open Government office on BC’s water act; citizen engagement and outreach planning.
- New York State Senate
- US Congressional Staff
- 10 Downing Street
- King County Council
- Dozens of legislators and public servants across the US and Canada.
