Cities
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Finding a Home for Your Digital Services Team
The question of where to locate a digital services team within the state or city bureaucracy and deciding who they report up to can be a tricky one. There are pros and cons to each choice. 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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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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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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Civic Hacking Nostalgia
The PhilTel project is a reminder of the power of civic hacking to highlight ways that cities can be better. To show how innovative thinking can foster creative solutions to complex problems. Let’s not forget. Continue reading
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Frivolous Lawsuit by Shadowy Astroturf Group threatens to Derail Community Grid in Syracuse
We should insist on fair and open processes by our state and federal leaders, and we should dismiss baseless claims against these processes by self-interested parties out of hand. Continue reading
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On Zealotry and Cryptocurrency in Government
People that advocate for the use of blockchain technologies or cryptocurrencies in government tend to sound evangelical about it. They are true believers. I can relate to that. But this new enthusiasm for blockchain in government is misplaced. It is a poor foundation for public policy and government operations. 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 