Five ways governments can encourage civic startups
- Mark Headd · January 4, 2012, 9:35 am
2012 is shaping up to be the “Year of the Civic Startup.”
Mark J. Headd is an experienced voice, mobile and web application developer who has been certified as a VoiceXML Application Developer by the VoiceXML Forum. He currently works as a Developer Evangelist for Voxeo Labs, where he helps developers build open government and civic applications using the Tropo and Phono platforms. He holds a Master’s degree in Public Administration from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University, and is a former adjunct instructor at the University of Delaware teaching a course in electronic government. He served for three years as the chief policy and budget advisor for the State of Delaware’s Department of Technology and Information. He has also served as Director of the Delaware Government Information Center and as Technology Adviser to former Delaware Governor Thomas Carper. Mark has built open source solutions using open government data and APIs for the District of Columbia, the Sunlight Foundation, the New York State Senate, and the cities of New York, San Francisco, Toronto, Baltimore and Philadelphia.
Baltimore Open Government 2011 Year in Review
- Mark Headd · December 30, 2011, 6:00 am
Following up on my previous post for the City of Philadelphia, this post describes what happened on the open government and open data fronts in the City of Baltimore in 2011.
Philadelphia Open Government 2011 Year in Review
- Mark Headd · December 29, 2011, 6:00 am
The time of year-end reviews and top 10 lists is now upon us, so I’m compiling the details of a watershed year for open data and civic hacking in two cities where I’ve seen huge leaps made in 2011 – Philadelphia and Baltimore.
OpenDataRace Begins in Philadelphia
- Mark Headd · September 19, 2011, 12:08 pm
Several months ago, with the unveiling of the OpenDataPhilly website, the City of Philadelphia joined the growing fraternity of cities across the country and around the world to release municipal data sets in open, developer friendly formats.
The Road ahead for Open Baltimore
- Mark Headd · August 1, 2011, 7:01 am
A couple of months ago, I wrote about the state of the open data program in the city of Baltimore.
Experiments in open data: Baltimore Edition
- Mark Headd · January 24, 2011, 10:47 am
A lot of my open gov energy of late has been focused on replicating a technique pioneered by Max Ogden (creator of PDXAPI) to convert geographic information in shapefile format into an easy to use format for developers.
Introducing GovFresh Voice
- Mark Headd · September 20, 2010, 3:11 pm
One of the more striking ironies of the Gov 2.0 movement is that despite the development of scores of new technologies, protocols, platforms and networks for enabling sophisticated interactions between citizens and their governments, a large number of people prefer to interact with their government the way they have for a long time – using the telephone.
The case for open transit data
- Mark Headd · August 2, 2010, 9:15 am
This is an awesome short film from StreetFilms.org that convincingly lays out the case for open transit data. 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 by State Senator Bethany Hall-Long.
The opposite of open government
- Mark Headd · July 27, 2010, 10:05 am
There has been some pretty good discussion lately going around the Interwebs about what Gov 2.0 and open government looks like. I can’t say that I agree with everything that has been thrown out there with a Gov 2.0 label on it, but I can say without equivocation that this is the opposite of OpenGov and Gov 2.0.
Open government hackathons matter
The civic hackathon – a gathering (either virtual or physical) of technologists for a few days or weeks to build civic-themed software – remains one of the more durable manifestations of the open government movement.