Procurement Reform
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What if We’re Doing it Wrong?
Ever since the botched launch of Healthcare.gov, procurement reform has become the rallying cry of the civic technology community. There is now considerable effort being expended to reimagine the ways that governments obtain technology services from private sector vendors, with an emphasis being placed on new methods that make it easier for governments to engage… Continue reading
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Built to Fail
The great truism that underlies the civic technology movement of the last several years is that governments face difficulty implementing technology, and they generally manage IT assets and projects very poorly. It can be tempting to view this lack of technology acumen as a symptom of a larger disfunction. Governments are thought to be large,… 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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Three Hard Truths for Government Procurement Reform
Advancing the innovation agenda within government often means confronting the harsh reality of the government procurement process. This is not a new problem, and there are a number of initiatives underway in governments around the country aimed at “streamlining” or “overhauling” the government procurement process to support the acquisition of new technologies and projects that… 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 