gov20
-
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
-
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
-
It’s Not About Cheaper, It’s About Better
The Wall Street Journal recently featured an awesome story about civic hacking, focusing on the amazing work being done in the city of Chicago. It’s great to see the efforts of civic hackers and open data advocates covered in the mainstream press, and the team in Chicago – those both inside and outside of city Continue reading
-
The Case For Making Procurement Harder
Momentum seems to be building around public sector procurement reform. Governments are starting to experiment with new ideas and new approaches to procurement that hold the promise of streamlining the process for bidders and producing better outcomes for public sector purchasers. Startups are emerging with new tools to make the procurement process easier, and the Continue reading
-
Experiments in GitHub Based Procurement
The City of Philadelphia is experimenting with some new ideas that we hope will change the way that city departments procure technology solutions. The “petrie dish” for some of the more interesting of these experiments is the social coding site GitHub. The Background Philadelphia is looking for ways to partner more closely with local technology Continue reading
-
The Year That Civic Hacking Changed Everything
Back in January, I predicted that 2012 could turn out to be the year of the civic startup. And while I think that civic startups and other businesses built around open data and government innovation made great strides in 2012, more than anything else what happened this year demonstrated to me the real transformative power Continue reading
-
Getting RHoKed in Philly
This past weekend, civic hackers gathered at the new Drexel ExCITe Center for the latest installment of the Random Hacks of Kindness hackathon in Philadelphia. In addition to a new location for this latest installment of RHoK, the event was organized by TechnicallyPhilly (in previous years, TechnicallyPhilly had been a collaborator and supporter of the Continue reading
-
The App Economy and Government as a Platform
Most people in the civic technology world have heard of the concept of “government as a platform” – the term famously coined by Tim O’Reilly several years ago to describe the application of Web 2.0 concepts to government. I talk to people in municipal government about this concept on an almost daily basis, and I Continue reading
-
Creating the Commons
“Building a culture of collaboration and participation is a key ingredient to making innovative programs work in cities.” Listen to an interview I did recently for Gov20 Radio on municipal collaboration and innovation. Continue reading
-
Open Gov: What’s gone Right, What’s gone wrong
I had the pleasure of speaking on a panel at the recent MIT-Kinght Foundation Civic Media Conference in Boston. The panel was chaired by Susan Crawford and included Chris Vein, Deputy United States Chief Technology Officer for Government Innovation, and Mike Norman from WeFunder.com. The panel discussed what has worked well in the open government 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 