Procurement
-
The Case For Making Procurement Harder
Momentum seems to be building around public sector procurement reform. Governments are starting to experiment with new ideas and new approaches to procurement that hold the promise of streamlining the process for bidders and producing better outcomes for public sector purchasers. Startups are emerging with new tools to make the procurement process easier, and the… Continue reading
-
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
-
Bizzaro Budgeting and Public Sector Innovation
Why is it so hard for governments to adopt innovative new technologies? Why does the public sector lag so far behind the private sector in leveraging new technology to create efficiencies? As an organization that works at the intersection of government and technology, these are questions we hear a lot at Code for America. Through… Continue reading
-
Will A Lack of Procurement Reform Smother Civic Startups?
A few weeks ago, I wrote a post listing five things that governments can do in 2012 to encourage and foster civic startups. Though the month of January is not yet over, we now an interesting case study developing in the City of Chicago that highlights the overwhelming importance of one of these five items… Continue reading
-
What Does A Civic Startup Look Like?
In my last post, I made reference to some of the qualities of civic startups – the special and important things about these kinds of small, agile companies that set them apart from other startups. I think clarifying what civic startups are (and what they are not), as well as what we expect them to… Continue reading
-
Five Things Governments Can Do to Encourage Civic Startups
2012 is shaping up to be the “Year of the Civic Startup.” With the growth of the open government movement and more and more governments embracing open data, we see an increasing number of useful civic applications being developed. Every weekend hackathon spawns multiple projects that could potentially live on as a successful venture or… 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 