May 2010
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Building an Open311 Application
Earlier this year, I had an idea to build a Twitter application that would allow a citizen to start a 311 service request with their city. At the time, there was no way to build such an application as no municipality had yet adopted a 311 API that would support it (although the District of… Continue reading
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Cleaning up Graffiti. With Twitter.
Can you use Twitter to clean up graffiti? Or patch potholes? Or report a problem with a sidewalk, sewer covering or trash pickup? If you live in San Francisco, the answer is yes. This yes answer will soon apply to the District of Columbia as well, and any other city that adopts the Open311 standard.… Continue reading
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Open Data: It’s About the Economy Stupid!
When you look at some of the places where government agencies have embraced open data, you see something interesting. You see active, engaged developer communities building great applications that benefit both citizens and governments. At almost exactly the time that I write this post, there are developers gathering in Google’s NYC offices to hack on… Continue reading
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What’s Old is New: How Citizens Communicate with Government
Social media enthusiasts (myself included) let out a big huzzah recently at the results of a study conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project entitled Government Online. The report, like a similar one several years ago, looks at how citizens communicate and interact with their government. This study focused specifically on online contact… Continue reading
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.
Civic Innovations 