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Keeping the Faith on Open Data
A few weeks ago at Personal Democracy Forum, I had the pleasure of speaking on a panel discussing “Do’s and Don’ts” for civic hackers. The makeup of the panel was fantastic, and included smart people like Tom Steinberg from MySociety, Catherine Bracy from Code for America, Erie Myer from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and…
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The Case For Making Procurement Harder
Momentum seems to be building around public sector procurement reform. Governments are starting to experiment with new ideas and new approaches to procurement that hold the promise of streamlining the process for bidders and producing better outcomes for public sector purchasers. Startups are emerging with new tools to make the procurement process easier, and the…
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Hacking Without Borders
The Idea On June 1st and 2nd, cities across the country will take part in a national civic hacking event being coordinated under the auspices of the White House. Philadelphia and Baltimore – two cities with long histories of hacking events, and active civic hacking communities – are both holding local events as part of…
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Experiments in GitHub Based Procurement
The City of Philadelphia is experimenting with some new ideas that we hope will change the way that city departments procure technology solutions. The “petrie dish” for some of the more interesting of these experiments is the social coding site GitHub. The Background Philadelphia is looking for ways to partner more closely with local technology…
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Shutting Down a Civic Project
It’s never easy to shut down a civic project or app, but sometimes its the right thing to do. And so it is with a project I started at the original Apps for SEPTA event in Philadelphia during the Fall of 2011. Effective last Friday, SEPTAlking stopped accepting phone calls and text messages for the…
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On Data Standards for Cities
Creating open data standards for cities is really, really hard. It’s also really, really important. Data standardization across cities is a critical milestones that must be realized to advance the open data movement, to fully realize all of the potential benefits of openly publishing government data. More and more people are starting to realize the…
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Open Data and the Digital Divide
I had the pleasure recently of taking part in a series on WHYY’s Radio Times focusing on Philadelphia Innovators. I got a chance to talk about what the City of Philadelphia is doing to release more open data to technologist, entrepreneurs and researchers in an effort to spur innovation. Host Maiken Scott led a great…
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The Year That Civic Hacking Changed Everything
Back in January, I predicted that 2012 could turn out to be the year of the civic startup. And while I think that civic startups and other businesses built around open data and government innovation made great strides in 2012, more than anything else what happened this year demonstrated to me the real transformative power…
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2012 Blogging Year In Review
It’s been a busy year for blogging – my WordPress.com 2012 annual report for this site is now available. If you’re interested, take a gander. Here’s an excerpt: 600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 9,300 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt.…
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Urban Storytelling with Open Data
One of the most important qualities of open data is that it can provide unparalleled insight into how a city works. Open data empowers urban storytelling – the process of identifying a trend, or some important characteristic of an urban area and then presenting that information in a compelling way for others. When I speak…
Civic Innovations 