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Time to Get Tough with 311 Vendors
Big news recently in the Open311 world. Lagan – a technology company that provides solutions for local government, including 311 systems – has announced the launch of an integration toolkit to allow “local government customers worldwide to receive and action service requests via social networks, mobile applications and third-party websites.” This is good news for… Continue reading
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The Case for Open Transit Data
This is an awesome short film from StreetFilms.org that convincingly lays out the case for open transit data. http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=13764646&server=vimeo.com&show_title=0&show_byline=0&show_portrait=0&color=9086c0&fullscreen=1 Later this year, the State of Delaware will – for the first time ever – release all of its transit data in open formats. This is the result of a bill introduced this past legislative session… Continue reading
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A ‘Glass Half Full’ View of Government App Contests
An increasing number of people are starting to suggest that the concept of the “app contest” (where governments challenge developers to build civic applications) is getting a bit long in the tooth. There have been lots of musings lately about the payoff for governments that hold such contests and the long term viability of individual… Continue reading
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The Economic Promise of Open Government Data
It’s been a few weeks since I suggested that by embracing open government data, the State of Delaware (and other states and localities) could encourage the development of nimble software companies and spur entrepreneurship. Since then, it’s been very gratifying to see lots of other people come to the same conclusion: The Open Gov Initiative:… Continue reading
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Building an Open311 Application
Earlier this year, I had an idea to build a Twitter application that would allow a citizen to start a 311 service request with their city. At the time, there was no way to build such an application as no municipality had yet adopted a 311 API that would support it (although the District of… Continue reading
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Cleaning up Graffiti. With Twitter.
Can you use Twitter to clean up graffiti? Or patch potholes? Or report a problem with a sidewalk, sewer covering or trash pickup? If you live in San Francisco, the answer is yes. This yes answer will soon apply to the District of Columbia as well, and any other city that adopts the Open311 standard.… Continue reading
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Open Data: It’s About the Economy Stupid!
When you look at some of the places where government agencies have embraced open data, you see something interesting. You see active, engaged developer communities building great applications that benefit both citizens and governments. At almost exactly the time that I write this post, there are developers gathering in Google’s NYC offices to hack on… Continue reading
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What’s Old is New: How Citizens Communicate with Government
Social media enthusiasts (myself included) let out a big huzzah recently at the results of a study conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project entitled Government Online. The report, like a similar one several years ago, looks at how citizens communicate and interact with their government. This study focused specifically on online contact… Continue reading
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Making Democratic Participation Frictionless
This week, I had the pleasure of presenting at the Emerging Communications Conference & Awards (eComm) event in San Francisco. I gave a presentation on the convergence of two powerful trends that promise to deliver more and more choices to people in how to communicate, interact and transact with their governments. The first is the… 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
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 