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Some Tips on API Stewardship
Following up on my last post, and a recent trip to St. Paul Minnesota for the NAGW Annual Conference to talk about open data APIs, I wanted to provide a few insights for proper API stewardship for any government looking to get started with open data, or those that already have an open data program…
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The Promise and Pitfalls of Government APIs
Fresh off a week in San Diego for the annual Accela Engage conference (where Tim O’Reilly gave a keynote presentation) and some stolen hours over the weekend for hacking together an entry in the Boston HubHacks Civic Hackathon, I’ve got government APIs front of mind. Getting to hear the Godfather of “Government as a Platform”…
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Turning Governments into Data Stewards
The civic entrepreneurs behind Open Counter recently launched a new service called Zoning Check that lets prospective businesses quickly and easily check municipal zoning ordinances to determine where they can locate a new business. This elegantly simple app demonstrates the true power of zoning information, and underscores the need for more work on developing standard…
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The Hacker Ethos and Better Cities
The thing I’ve always loved about hackathons is how they make it possible for anyone to build something that can help fix a problem facing a neighborhood, community or city. Going to a hackathon isn’t like going to a government-sponsored meeting, or legislative hearing – those are places where people offer testimony to others, who…
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Making FOIA More Like Open Data
The Freedom of Information Act, passed in 1966 to increase trust in government by encouraging transparency, has always been a pain in the ass. You write to an uncaring bureaucracy, you wait for months or years only to be denied or redacted into oblivion, and even if you do get lucky and extract some useful…
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Built to Fail
Governments are not bad at adopting new technologies on accident. The processes that support the adoption of new technology were built to fail. Understanding this is the first step to fixing them.
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In Defense of Transit Apps
The civic technology community has a love-hate relationship with transit apps. We love to, and often do, use the example of open transit data and the cottage industry of civic app development it has helped spawn as justification for governments releasing open data. Some of the earliest, most enduring and most successful civic applications have…
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Making Room For Science
Interesting things are happening at Philly Hackathons. Increasingly, participants at local events are opting to work on what would best be described as “citizen science” projects – projects not focused on the development of an app as a final product, but where an app or device constructed at the event is the means to a…
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Building a Government Data Culture
“‘Are people innately altruistic?’ is the wrong kind of question to ask. People are people, and they respond to incentives.” – Steven Levitt & Stephen Dubner (SuperFreakonomics) One of the most important things an open data directive can accomplish – whether it takes the form an informal policy, an executive order or an open data…
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One More Week, Three More Things
My time as the City of Philadelphia’s Chief Data Officer is coming to an end. It’s been an incredible experience – I’ve had the pleasure of working with a great team, and to have helped change the way that government officials think about open data and civic hacking. Before I move on to new things,…
Civic Innovations 