civic hacking
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Mid-Atlantic Osmosis
I had the pleasure of attending the UnWIREd conference in Baltimore this past weekend, and got a chance to watch people that love their city engage in a productive dialog about how to make it better. I have lots of friends in Baltimore, and attending civicly-focused events there is always fun because of the passion… Continue reading
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Over 230 Startups Apply to Code for America
Just a little over six weeks ago, Code for America opened up applications for the CfA Startup Accelerator. Honestly, when we did, we thought we would receive maybe a dozen or two applications. We weren’t sure if folks would know what we meant by “civic,” or be able to hear about it soon enough to… Continue reading
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Philly Tech Week Hackathon Recap
On Saturday, April 28th, the 2nd Philly Tech Week came to a close. Like the inaugural Philly Tech Week last year, this weeklong series of technology events and panels concluded with a hackathon focused on open government data and journalism. I gave a brief preview of this event over on the Code for America blog,… Continue reading
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Building The New Civic Hackathon
Sometimes, a word can’t do justice to an idea. To some, the word “hackathon” means a somewhat narrow, one-dimensional kind of event that attracts software developers cloistered away to tinker with new APIs – fueled by pizza, Red Bull and the incessant beats of the very latest dubstep jam. And while hackathons of all varieties… Continue reading
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Open Government and the Bully Pulpit
Last week in Honolulu, the Mayor got on a bus. And while this may seem like a small thing, it’s just the latest example of how mayors and municipal leaders are using the weight of their offices to advance the agenda of open government. Mayors are not often known for their prowess at writing code.… Continue reading
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Code for America Launches Civic Accelerator
Several weeks ago, I wrote a post about civic accelerators that were spinning up on the East Coast. Following that post came the formal launch of the Urban Apps & Maps Studio in Philadelphia. But another accelerator program in Baltimore, that had been in the formative stages, seems to have hit a dead end with… Continue reading
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To API, or Not to API
A recent blog post by Peter Krantz has sparked some interesting dialog on whether governments publishing open data for citizens and application developers need to deploy an Application Programming Interface (API) to their data. The full post can be viewed here. It provides a nice set of considerations for governments looking at standing up an… Continue reading
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A Tale of Two City Hackathons
I had the pleasure of traveling to Austin, TX last week for the SXSWi festival and to present on civic hacking events in Baltimore and Philadelphia. The presentation I gave can be viewed below. There’s also a storify covering my session here (courtesy of @sam_piroton) I had a lot of fun preparing this presentation as… Continue reading
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Coding towards critical mass
It’s a rare thing to get a glimpse inside of a truly creative organization, to learn how it works and to identify lessons that can be applied elsewhere. A recent New York Times article on the staggering history of innovation at Bell Labs offers a glimpse inside the mind of the man responsible for the… Continue reading
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Storming the City Walls with Code for America
Last year, I wrote about a civic hacking event that took place in Philadelphia at the office of Azavea. The event last year was organized by the team of Code for America fellows working for the year in Philadelphia. Exactly one year to the day later, the latest group of fellows working in Philadelphia held… 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 