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Ethics and Algorithms
Who do we hold accountable for decisions that get made or actions that are taken by government when some part of the decision making has been ceded to an algorithm? And because the consequences of algorithm use in government are now much more immediate for specific individuals, how do we ensure that their use is being applied fairly and without prejudice or bias?
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Towards Ethical Algorithms
Old tools & new challenges for governments There is a common misconception that data-driven decision making and the use of complex algorithms are a relatively recent phenomenon in the public sector. In fact, making use of (relatively) large data sets and complex algorithms has been fairly common in government for at least the past few […]
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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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Operation Data Liberation
I’ve had the opportunity recently to talk to people in several different city governments that are facing a common challenge — how to liberate operational data from a legacy system. This is a challenge that lots of city governments face, and it strikes me that there are some common lessons that can be derived from cities that […]
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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 Government Data Toolkit
We live in a time when people outside of government have better tools to build things with and extract insights from government data than governments themselves. These tools are more plentiful, more powerful, more flexible, and less expensive than pretty much everything government employees currently have at their disposal. Governments may have exiting relationships with […]
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The Changing Role of the Government CDO
The title of “Chief Data Officer” – once an uncommon one in state and municipal governments – is becoming less uncommon. And that’s a very good thing for public sector innovation. As recently as a few years ago, Chief Data Officers were found almost exclusively in big city governments like Chicago, New York and Philadelphia. […]
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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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Meeting in the Middle
There’s an interesting piece on open data APIs on GovTech that echos a lot of the things I’ve thought and said about government APIs over the past few years. It’s worth a read. APIs are an increasingly important way that governments make their open data available to outside users. Typically, when we talk about open […]
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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 Innovations 