Civic Innovations

Technology, Government Innovation, and Open Data

August 2009

  • Opening Government Data – the San Francisco Way

    The City of San Francisco recently unveiled a one-stop clearinghouse for all sorts of data generated and maintained by city agencies. Its an exciting first step in an effort that is high on the agenda of San Francisco CIO Chris Vein and Mayor Gavin Newsom – a tangible and visible commitment to open source technologies,… Continue reading

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  • Looking for Collaborators

    I’m thinking about starting a project to develop an application that uses crime incident data from the City of San Francisco and allows people to identify crimes that occur close to their homes and/or places of business. I worked on a similar project for the original Apps for Democracy contest last year. Crime incident data… Continue reading

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  • Identi.ca Looking Pretty Good!

    For those government agencies using Twitter for notification, 311 and other services I’ll bet its been a tough morning. They may want to have a look at Identi.ca – a competing (albeit much smaller) micro-blogging site that even piggybacks on Twitter’s API. I’ve said before that government’s need to spread the love among different social… Continue reading

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  • It’s About the Crowd

    Last night, when the polls closed for the special election in Delaware’s 19th Senate District, people across the state fired up their browsers and pulled up the web site for the Department of Elections to check the results. And then they waited… And waited… And waited some more. The waiting is the hardest part The… Continue reading

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About Me

I am the former Chief Data Officer for the City of Philadelphia. I also served as Director of Government Relations at Code for America, and as Director of the State of Delaware’s Government Information Center. For about six years, I served in the General Services Administration’s Technology Transformation Services (TTS), and helped pioneer their work with state and local governments. I also led platform evangelism efforts for TTS’ cloud platform, which supports over 30 critical federal agency systems.

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