Civic Tech
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Requiem for Procurement Reform
Much of the work that is done to build, deliver, and support government digital services comes from private vendors. It’s naive to think that we’ll ever improve these services as much as we hope without changing the outcomes that are possible through existing procurement rules and practices. Continue reading
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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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The Civic App That Changed My Life
In 2008, I was looking for a way to make an impact again after leaving government several years before. Civic Hacking gave me a way to do that. Continue reading
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Come for the mission, stay for the impact
Agencies are smart to use the critical nature of their missions and the people they serve to attract new tech talent into government. They should also identify pathways for these people to remain in government and make a career out of improving digital services if they want to. Continue reading
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Bend them, don’t break them
Digital service teams are in an odd spot. They need to bend the rules regularly to change the way governments work. And they also need to be the guardians of the rules, to make sure that crossing the line is never rationalized for what seems like a good reason. Continue reading
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Which Less is More?
There’s no shortage of hype these days surrounding ChatGPT, LLMs and other generative AI tools. A good way for governments to cut through the hype and determine if these tools provide real value in helping to develop digital solutions is to ask whether they are interested in WRITING less code, or writing LESS code. Continue reading
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Black Holes & Government Tech Debt
Lines are the physical manifestation of technical debt. And like black holes, technical debt can have an immense gravitational pull, trapping those that need government services in a long cycle of confusion and frustration. 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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The Federal Government Needs Platform Evangelists
If shared services like Login.gov are going to be successful in the long run, they need a healthy, vibrant, and growing community of users around them. This is a job that is perfectly suited for a platform evangelist. Continue reading
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A cloud migration is like a kitchen remodel
It just so happens that things like renovating a kitchen or putting an addition on your house can hold valuable lessons for moving systems to the cloud. 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 