Standards
For discussions of speech technology standards.
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Revisiting “Density and Destiny”
Governor Kathy Hochul’s plan to change the way affordable housing is approved in New York State is sorely needed and will help not only alleviate the current affordable housing crisis, but address factors at the heart of segregation and income inequality. Continue reading
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Driving Innovation Beyond The Big City
In late 2014, I had a chance to present on the main stage at the annual Code for America Summit in San Francisco. To the surprise of very few people, I was there to talk about cities and data. Earlier that year, I had finished up my term as the first Chief Data Officer for… Continue reading
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The Future of Civic Tech
Data is the lifeblood of civic technology. It is the source of all innovation and advancement in civic tech, and is the basis for developing new ways of engaging with voters and taxpayers so that they may be informed about how government works and – hopefully – to help make it operate more effectively. Without data,… Continue reading
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The Bomb, the Pill, and the Shot
A few days ago, Tom Steinberg – the founder and former director of mySociety – wrote a fascinating piece on power that was meant for people developing civic technology. In a post on Medium, Tom clearly describes the nature of power as it relates to technology and implored civic technologists to think more directly about… Continue reading
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Thinking Small on Civic Tech
Designing simple systems is one of the great challenges of Government 2.0. It means the end of grand, feature-filled programs, and their replacement by minimal services extensible by others. — Tim O’Reilly, Open Government The original idea of Government as a Platform is now almost a decade old. In the world of technology, that’s a… Continue reading
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Density and Destiny
How land is zoned can be a critical factor in reducing income inequality and reducing the number of people living in high poverty areas by providing good options to the poor for secure, safe, affordable, and stable housing. Continue reading
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Enabling the Enterprise
Its not often that I run across posts about enterprise architecture that get me excited. This one – by Tariq Rashid – did. Very much so. This issue interests me because its one that, as a former state IT executive and policy advisor, I have personal history with. I also believe its an issue that… Continue reading
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On Data Standards for Cities
Creating open data standards for cities is really, really hard. It’s also really, really important. Data standardization across cities is a critical milestones that must be realized to advance the open data movement, to fully realize all of the potential benefits of openly publishing government data. More and more people are starting to realize the… 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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Building an Open311 Application with Node.js and CouchDB
Lots of work is being done to finalize the next version of the Open311 API spec (officially referred to as GeoReport V2). Almost a year ago I launched TweetMy311 – a service that lets people report non-emergency service requests using a smart phone and Twitter. Since then, a lot has changed – not only with… 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.