Open Source
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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
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Communities Matter
Philadelphia is unique among big cities in how it publishes open data for civic hackers, journalists, entrepreneurs, researchers and other users. The City of Philadelphia has designated the community-built Open Data Philly website as it’s official data directory for open data – we’re the only big city in the country (maybe the only city period) Continue reading
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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
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Shutting Down a Civic Project
It’s never easy to shut down a civic project or app, but sometimes its the right thing to do. And so it is with a project I started at the original Apps for SEPTA event in Philadelphia during the Fall of 2011. Effective last Friday, SEPTAlking stopped accepting phone calls and text messages for the Continue reading
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Urban Storytelling with Open Data
One of the most important qualities of open data is that it can provide unparalleled insight into how a city works. Open data empowers urban storytelling – the process of identifying a trend, or some important characteristic of an urban area and then presenting that information in a compelling way for others. When I speak Continue reading
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Mid-Atlantic Osmosis
I had the pleasure of attending the UnWIREd conference in Baltimore this past weekend, and got a chance to watch people that love their city engage in a productive dialog about how to make it better. I have lots of friends in Baltimore, and attending civicly-focused events there is always fun because of the passion Continue reading
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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
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From “Zero to Civic” in 5 Minutes
One of the most powerful things about open government data is all of the options it enables. Open data is the single most important ingredient in civic apps, and it can also power visualizations, mashups and countless other civic uses. The very best open data typically lends itself to several different kinds of uses. When 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 