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Black Holes & Government Tech Debt
Lines are the physical manifestation of technical debt. And like black holes, technical debt can have an immense gravitational pull, trapping those that need government services in a long cycle of confusion and frustration. Continue reading
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Municipal Residency Requirements and Tech Worker Recruitment
I’m re-upping this post I wrote a while back about municipal residency requirements and my time working as the Chief Data Officer in the City of Philadelphia. In light of current sentiment among tech workers, it’s more essential than ever that governments not only support remote work, but that they actually seek out ways to… Continue reading
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I-81 Obstructionists Say the Quiet Part Out Loud
This week, in response to State Supreme Court Justice Gerard Neri’s ruling that additional studies are needed before work to remove the I-81 viaduct through Downtown Syracuse can commence, lawyers for the shadowy group obstructing this important project made an inadvertent admission. Continue reading
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Subsidizing Exclusion
Exclusionary zoning reduces affordable housing and exacerbates racial segregation. Adding insult to injury, taxpayers actually subsidize these outcomes through special tax breaks and incentives for suburbanites. Continue reading
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The Federal Government Needs Platform Evangelists
If shared services like Login.gov are going to be successful in the long run, they need a healthy, vibrant, and growing community of users around them. This is a job that is perfectly suited for a platform evangelist. Continue reading
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Revisiting “Density and Destiny”
Governor Kathy Hochul’s plan to change the way affordable housing is approved in New York State is sorely needed and will help not only alleviate the current affordable housing crisis, but address factors at the heart of segregation and income inequality. Continue reading
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A Resolution for Digital Transformation
No one gets fit overnight, or even in a whole month. It is a process that takes time and requires consistent commitment and the right approach to be successful. Digital transformation are the same. If you approach the process correctly, you’ll change the way your organization works forever. Continue reading
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Bad choices, good reasons
Sometimes government make poor technology decisions for good and entirely rational reasons. Understand this dynamic is important for those of us working to make government adoption of technology more successful. Continue reading
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Back to the 90’s, the Hard Way
If you need an object lesson to demonstrate how inextricably linked technology is to the basic functioning of government, just look at the municipal governments that have been hit with cyber attacks recently and forced to shut down their digital systems. For these governments it’s like a bumpy trip back to the way they used… Continue reading
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Moar Reading in 2023
In the last couple of years, I’ve been trying to read more books. Here’s what I have done to pick my reading habit back up. Maybe one of these strategies will work for you if, like I once did, you miss being a reader. 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 