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Hands Across America
I’ve always been a hard typer and I’ve not always used proper form. After many years of undisciplined typing, I found myself in a place where every time I typed it hurt. After living with this pain for a while, I decided to get some help and change my habits.
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PFC: A Cautionary Tale for Civic Tech
In a month of chaotic vaccine distribution rollouts, no government’s effort has been more dysfunctional, or controversial, than that of Philadelphia. To spearhead delivery of COVID-19 vaccines to city residents, the City of Philadelphia decided to partner with a young startup called Philly Fighting COVID (PFC).
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Filling up the Civic Tech Toolbox
It’s sort of a cliche to say it these days, but digital transformation in government is largely not about technology. It seems like this is an idea that has broad consensus, but much of the work that gets done in and around government technology modernization still views problems solely through the lens of technology. What […]
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Driving Innovation Beyond The Big City
In late 2014, I had a chance to present on the main stage at the annual Code for America Summit in San Francisco. To the surprise of very few people, I was there to talk about cities and data. Earlier that year, I had finished up my term as the first Chief Data Officer for […]
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Read My Book
Late last year, I wrote a book devoted to civic hacking based on my experience working in state and local government, and inside civic tech communities. It’s a book meant for public servants and people working inside government who want to connect with innovators and technologists outside of the bureaucracy. The premise is simple – […]
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Building the Engine of Change
The term “civic tech” gets used a lot, and it often means different things to different people. To me, this has always meant that the work being done in this area is dynamic, growing, and evolving rapidly – all good things that suggest the impact of civic technology will ultimately be broad and durable. I’ve […]
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The Last Mile of Public Service Delivery
The most important thing about civic technology has nothing to do with technology at all. The term “civic technology” gets used a lot, and it may mean different things to different people. I think this highlights the fact that the work being done in this area is dynamic, growing, and evolving rapidly — all good […]
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Civic Tech Organizing: A Tale of Two Cities
In early 2012, I had the opportunity to present at the annual South by Southwest Interactive Conference in Austin, TX. The focus of my presentation was the lessons learned from two civic hacking events in late 2011 that I had helped organize in Philadelphia and Baltimore. This was an exciting time for me professionally. After […]
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Shoveling for Civic Tech Gold
Unshoveled sidewalks during the winter months are a persistent problem for cities in the snow belt. For places with significant snowfall, unshoveled sidewalks pose a challenge to public safety and mobility for those that rely on walking (or public transit), and present an especially acute problem for those that have physical impairments. Uncleared snowfall on other kinds of […]
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Blood, Sweat & Civic Hacking
The recent article “Open Data and Civic Apps: First-Generation Failures, Second Generation Improvements” by Melissa Lee, Esteve Almirall and Jonathan Wareham looks at early efforts to build civic applications through government-sponsored app challenges. The article evaluates the outcomes of some of the early government app challenges like the District of Columbia’s Apps for Democracy Contest […]
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Civic Innovations 