Cities
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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 Continue reading
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Density and Destiny
How land is zoned can be a critical factor in reducing income inequality and reducing the number of people living in high poverty areas by providing good options to the poor for secure, safe, affordable, and stable housing. Continue reading
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Rethinking Residency Requirements
As we move further and further into the digital age, the governments that are most successful at exploiting technology to improve performance and efficiency will be those that are built to attract and retain highly skilled technology employees. Continue reading
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Buck the system or work the system?
“Systems are broken because they exist to sustain themselves, and the people who run the system rely on the system to stay the same. Why should they change it? It works well for them.” — Chris Guillebeau My friends at Technical.ly Philly ran an interesting piece yesterday about the long road to the release of Continue reading
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Civic Tech Fundamentals
If you want to learn more about how design thinking is changing the way that digital public services are being built, you’d be wise to check out the latest issue of Civic Quarterly. It’s full of great insights from some of the best thinkers on this topic. The idea of building civic technology “with, not Continue reading
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Data is Law
“…[U]nless we understand how cyberspace can embed, or displace, values from our constitutional tradition, we will lose control over those values. The law in cyberspace – code – will displace them.” — Lawrence Lessig (Code is Law) In his famous essay on the importance of the technological underpinnings of the Internet, Lawrence Lessig described the Continue reading
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Realtime Open Data
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about data being collected about cities through remote sensor networks. It’s never been easier to build DIY sensors, and some cities are starting to look seriously at how sensor data can inform better policy decisions and better investment of public resources. It strikes me that this is a very Continue reading
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Open Data Beyond the Big City
This is an expanded version of a talk I gave last week at the Code for America Summit. An uneven future “The future is already here – it’s just not evenly distributed.” William Gibson. The Economist, December 4, 2003 The last time I herd Tim O’Reilly speak was at the Accela Engage conference in San Continue reading
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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” Continue reading
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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 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 