Cities
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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. Continue reading
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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 Continue reading
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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 Continue reading
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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, Continue reading
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The Philadelphia Experiment
Three years ago next month, the City of Philadelphia’s open data portal was launched by local technology firm Azavea as part of the inaugural Philly Tech Week. Two years ago next month, Philadelphia joined the small (but growing) fraternity of cities to adopt a formal open data policy – a milestone that stands as one Continue reading
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The Problem with Public Data
Governments make a wealth of data available on their public websites. Forward thinking governments have take steps to ensure that more and more of this information is available in open formats. But the majority of the data available on government websites – even those with formal open data policies, like Philadelphia – is not open. Continue reading
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Onboarding Civic Hackers
Earlier this week, I had the pleasure of attending a civic hacking event jointly organized by Code for Philly and Girl Develop It Philly. The event had a tremendously good turnout – over 50 people by my count – making it one of the larger events Code for Philly has organized in recent months. The Continue reading
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The Internal Benefits of External Data
2013 was a big year for municipal open data, but I think 2014 will be even bigger. Last year saw the development of an interesting dialog on open data focused on the proper goals for government open data programs. With their roots in transparency efforts, a growing number of people observed that open data programs Continue reading
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How Open Data Can Help Fight the Flu
This season, influenza activity started about 4 weeks early and was intense. Influenza-like-illness rose quickly to well above the baseline of expected activity and remained elevated for 15 consecutive weeks, making this season slightly longer than average. — 2012-2013 Flu Season Wrap Up, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention When open data and an acute Continue reading
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Open Data and “Exoproduction”
I’ve been thinking about a way to describe what I have seen happening in the world of open data over the past few years, where outside developers create new applications and solutions built with government data to provide a service or transaction that might otherwise be provided by a government agency (or not provided at 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 