Development Tools
Category for discussing development tools and IDE’s for VoiceXML and voice applications.
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Conway’s Law and the challenge of building software in government
Good news, you’ve discovered that Conway’s Law is what is causing issues with your government software development team. Bad news is the typical approach to addressing the problem doesn’t work well inside government. Continue reading
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Vendor Lock-In: Shadow Technical Debt
Vendor lock-in is one of the most under-appreciated forms of technical debt, and it isn’t reserved just to custom solutions. Agencies need to understand this in order to better avoid taking on more technical debt. Continue reading
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Patience is a Virtue: The Smart Approach to AI Investments for Government
By improving how they collect, clean, and govern data, agencies can ensure they are ready to leverage the best AI tools when the time is right. Continue reading
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Software Delivery Platforms: The Original Low-Code Platforms
At their core, both low-code platforms and software delivery platforms share a common goal: making it easier to build digital solutions that meet the needs of users. Continue reading
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Using generative AI to transform policy into code
Last week, I took part in BenCon 2024 — an annual two-day conference hosted by the Beeck Center for Social Impact + Innovation at Georgetown University focused on charting the course to excellence in digital benefits delivery. Continue reading
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Two clear signs that you might be under-investing in your software delivery platform
As agencies use platforms to support these efforts, issues occasionally crop up. In this post, I talk about two common issues, what they mean, and how they can be fixed. Continue reading
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Government Agencies Need AI Laboratories
Governments need ways to safely experiment with new generative AI tools to discover for themselves what works best for those they serve. Continue reading
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Engineering smaller burdens
The performance of a website or digital service has direct implications for the size of the burden placed on users. Reducing the size of this burden requires agencies to think carefully and to engineer services to make potential burdens as small as possible. Continue reading
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What to know about no code development tools
Low-code and no-code tools present an attractive option for government agencies under pressure to deliver new digital solutions quickly. But they also come with tradeoffs. Understanding these tradeoffs is important for agencies to position themselves to most effectively deliver new and improved digital services. Continue reading
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Friction as Security
Too often, the concept of friction as a control mechanism finds its way into the software and technology platforms that are used by government agencies. There is a better way. 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 