Open Source
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Thinking Outside the Portal
The centerpiece of any government open data effort is usually a data portal. Data portals host open data or provide listings for datasets, and typically include things like license information, data schemas, developer documentation and a host of other details aimed at making it easier for end consumers to find and use data. There is… Continue reading
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Civic Onboarding
Tomorrow, the President will speak at SXSW and issue a call to action for people inside and outside government to collaborate and solve the hard problems facing our country. This is a call to action that governors and mayors should echo – our communities are filled with people that want to help. Reading about the… Continue reading
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Participation and the Cult of Catalogs
“Anonymous access to the data must be allowed for public data, including access through anonymous proxies. Data should not be hidden behind ‘walled gardens.’” – 8 Principles of Open Government Data In the world of open data, there are few things that carry more weight than the original 8 principles of open data. Drafted by a… Continue reading
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Why 18F’s New Approach to Procurement Reform Matters
In another recent post, I talked about how public sector technology procurement was not well suited for the digital age. But there are some efforts underway that seek to identify new methods of procuring technology solutions for government. As these ideas start to take hold, there is hope that those in the govtech community will create a… Continue reading
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GovTech is Not Broken
When we talk about the challenges that face governments in acquiring and implementing new technology, the conversation eventually winds around to the procurement process. That’s when things usually get ugly. “It’s broken,” they say. “It just doesn’t work.” What most people who care about this issue fail to recognize, however, is that while the procurement… Continue reading
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Open Data Beyond the Big City
This is an expanded version of a talk I gave last week at the Code for America Summit. An uneven future “The future is already here – it’s just not evenly distributed.” William Gibson. The Economist, December 4, 2003 The last time I herd Tim O’Reilly speak was at the Accela Engage conference in San… Continue reading
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The Philadelphia Experiment
Three years ago next month, the City of Philadelphia’s open data portal was launched by local technology firm Azavea as part of the inaugural Philly Tech Week. Two years ago next month, Philadelphia joined the small (but growing) fraternity of cities to adopt a formal open data policy – a milestone that stands as one… Continue reading
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On Sustainable Civic Technology
Sustaining civic technology will mean that both government’s IT infrastructure and the civic technology sector that builds on it will need to change. A pair of recent blog posts caught my eye and highlighted this theme in my head, and motivated me to capture a few thoughts on this topic. The first post was by… Continue reading
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Onboarding Civic Hackers
Earlier this week, I had the pleasure of attending a civic hacking event jointly organized by Code for Philly and Girl Develop It Philly. The event had a tremendously good turnout – over 50 people by my count – making it one of the larger events Code for Philly has organized in recent months. The… Continue reading
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Five Ways to Make Government Procurement Better
Nothing in recent memory has focused attention on the need for wholesale reform of the government IT procurement system more than the troubled launch of healthcare.gov. There has been a myriad of blog posts, stories and articles written in the last few weeks detailing all of the problems that led to the ignominious launch of… 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 