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Thinking Outside the Portal
The centerpiece of any government open data effort is usually a data portal. Data portals host open data or provide listings for datasets, and typically include things like license information, data schemas, developer documentation and a host of other details aimed at making it easier for end consumers to find and use data. There is…
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The Outreach Oversight
I recently had an opportunity to speak about open data at the annual Joint Education Conference of the Nevada Food Safety Task Force. Not the most obvious venue for a discussion of civic collaboration, but I sometimes go where the open data currents take me. And so it was this time. Sandwiched in between talks…
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Philly’s New Mayor is Serious About Open Data
The big news recently in Philadelphia open data circles is the release of city employee salary information. For the first time ever, the City of Philadelphia will make public – in easily usable formats – salary information on every city employee, including elected officials. This data is now available for anyone to download freely from…
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Civic Onboarding
Tomorrow, the President will speak at SXSW and issue a call to action for people inside and outside government to collaborate and solve the hard problems facing our country. This is a call to action that governors and mayors should echo – our communities are filled with people that want to help. Reading about the…
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Shoveling for Civic Tech Gold
For places with significant snowfall, unshoveled sidewalks pose a challenge to public safety and mobility for those that rely on walking (or public transit), and present an especially acute problem for those that have physical impairments. Uncleared snowfall on other kinds of public infrastructure – like fire hydrants – also poses dangers for city residents and public safety…
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The Future of Civic Tech
Data is the lifeblood of civic technology. It is the source of all innovation and advancement in civic tech, and is the basis for developing new ways of engaging with voters and taxpayers so that they may be informed about how government works and – hopefully – to help make it operate more effectively. Without data,…
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Blood, Sweat & Civic Hacking
The recent article “Open Data and Civic Apps: First-Generation Failures, Second Generation Improvements” by Melissa Lee, Esteve Almirall and Jonathan Wareham looks at early efforts to build civic applications through government-sponsored app challenges. The article evaluates the outcomes of some of the early government app challenges like the District of Columbia’s Apps for Democracy Contest…
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Thinking Differently About Data
Right before the New Year’s holiday, the City of Philadelphia released some very important information as open data. The city released a data set showing outstanding property tax balances for properties in Philadelphia, making the data available as both a static download and through an API. I’ve always believed that this data was incredibly important –…
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Open Data and 21st Century Regulation
In early December, Airbnb made headlines by releasing some data on how people are using the company’s platform in New York City. In doing so, the company has provided an object lesson in the critical role that data plays (and will continue to play) in government regulation of private companies in the 21st century, and…
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The Bomb, the Pill, and the Shot
A few days ago, Tom Steinberg – the founder and former director of mySociety – wrote a fascinating piece on power that was meant for people developing civic technology. In a post on Medium, Tom clearly describes the nature of power as it relates to technology and implored civic technologists to think more directly about…
Civic Innovations 