Open Source
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Democratizing Transit Data with Open Source Software
Democratizing government data will help change how government operates—and give citizens the ability to participate in making government services more effective, accessible, and transparent. — Peter Orszag, OMB Director This post is a continuation in a series on building a transit data application using GTFS data recently released by the State of Delaware. If you… Continue reading
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How to Build an Open Transit Data Application
Earlier this year, I had the chance to work with one of my state’s Senators to draft and pass a bill requiring the state’s transit agency to publish all of it’s route, schedule and fare information in an open format for use by third parties. This bill was signed into law by the Governor a… Continue reading
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Gov 2.0 is Open Source
It’s interesting to reflect back on the not too distant past and think about how governments have used open source software. For many state and local governments – as recently as a few years ago – the use of open source software was something of a foreign concept. Many a government IT worker made an… Continue reading
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OpenGov APIs: Interfacing with Open Government
There has been lots of good talk (and a good deal of action) lately around open government APIs at events like Transparency Camp, Where 2.0 and on the Twitters. So, as a prelude to a talk I’ll be giving at eComm next month, I wanted to write a post surveying the landscape of recent government… Continue reading
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Open311 Goes Big Time
This was a big week for the Open311 initiative. Federal CIO Vivek Kundra joined Gov 2.0 rock star Mayor Gavin Newsom from the City of San Francisco to announce a national initiative to adopt a common standard for a 311 API. The number of supporters for the initiative is growing, and I think it’s high… Continue reading
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The Growth of Civic Apps
A pretty good indicator of the growth in the number of “civic applications” can be seen in the creation of some new application directories. City-Go-Round is a really nice site that pulls together dozens of applications that relate to travel and transit systems. It lets users enter a zip code so they can identify apps… Continue reading
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Toronto Opens Government Data
The City of Toronto recently joined a growing fraternity of governments to release public data sets for developers and other interested parties to use to create interesting and useful mashups. It’s gratifying to see more and more cities place an emphasis on releasing open data sets to the public. Toronto’s open data web site is… Continue reading
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Prowling for NY Senate Bill Status Updates
Ever since I started working on a multi-modal application for looking up the status of a bill in the New York State Legislature using the fabulous Open Leg API from the NY Senate, I’ve been thinking about ways to enable “subscriptions.” By subscriptions, I mean allowing people to specify which bill (or bills) they are… Continue reading
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Coming Full Circle on 311
Tomorrow in New York City, developers, project managers, public policy specialists and others will come together to discuss an open standard specification for 311 services. One of the primary motivators for this discussion is the work that has been done by the District of Columbia which has deployed an open API for reporting 311 requests.… Continue reading
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Open Gov Data = The New Outsourcing
It’s been a tough few months for old school government IT outsourcing initiatives. Projects in Virginia, Texas and elsewhere are under increased scrutiny, or just plain in trouble. Over the last year and a 1/2, a handful of forward thinking governments have started to lay the groundwork for a new way of outsourcing IT work… 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 