Today, I had the opportunity to attend Code for Oakland 2012 and, as always with events like this, walked away inspired by the work of good friends and the enthusiasm of citizens and public servants wanting to do more for their communities. Big kudos to all involved engaging, organizing and sponsoring a great event in a great city.
Code for Oakland will be held July 21 at the Kaiser Center in Oakland, Ca. Steve Spiker, OpenOakland Brigade Captain and Director of Research & Technology for Urban Strategies Council, discusses Oakland’s open data progress and what attendees can expect from the event.
Palo Alto, Calif., Chief Information Officer Jonathan Reichental discusses his “digital city” vision, including how he leveraged the local developer community to help build city applications, bringing a “hacker ethic” to bureaucracy and the importance of supportive leaders in managing IT and cultural change.
Palo Alto (California) Chief Information Officer Jonathan Reichental shares his vision of the “Digital City” with attendees at the Silicon Valley iOS Developers’ Meetup on May 21, 2012.
California Controller John Chiang has appointed Tina Lee as Director of Outreach and Innovation to help his office better engage with the state’s citizens, non-profit and community organizations and businesses.
Alissa Black joined the New America Foundation in April to lead the newly-formed California Civic Innovation Project, focused on building “communities of practice within California’s local governments and identifies best practices to improving service delivery, opening new channels for public voices, and bridging the state’s digital divides.”
MindMixer is working with the San Francisco, Los Angeles and other local communities to help crowdsource ideas for civic improvement. CEO and Co-Founder Nick Bowden discusses his venture and the value of government-citizen collaboration.
Last February, officials from San Francisco collaborated with the California College of the Arts and Mix & Stir Studio for the SF Taxi & Mass Communication Challenge, a 24-hour hackathon focused on “design-driven technology solutions to real world problems.”
Oakland, Ca. is the latest major U.S. city to launch a 311 application that allows citizens to report issues directly to government from their smartphones.
San Francisco has published a request for proposal to integrate Open311 with the city’s CRM software, Langan. Bid submissions are due February 3.
There’s been a great deal of discussion lately around the topic of government innovation, especially here in San Francisco, with the appointment of a new chief innovation officer, a new “civic accelerator,” a new venture with a consortium of Bay Area technology companies and a new technology and innovation task force led by SF Mayor Ed Lee.
Government Technology reports that Los Angeles is beta testing a new website, the first major redesign in 14 years, but a cursory review of the homepage leaves me wondering why the city spent $100,000 on a usability expert to get essentially the same site it’s had since 1998.
San Francisco Director of Innovation Jay Nath’s TEDxSoMa talk from earlier this year:
O’Reilly Media’s Alex Howard interviewed San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee this week at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. Lee discusses open source, open data, apps, mobile and bridging the digital divide.
San Francisco has led the nation with Gov 2.0 innovations, like Twitter311 – connecting the City’s 311 Call Center to Twitter — allowing residents to contact the City about potholes, graffiti and interact with government in real time with a tweet, DataSF.org – the City’s one stop shop for government data that has empowered developers to create incredible apps that bring city data to life, and Open311 the first national API in government.
The world’s biggest little city is about to get its code on.
San Francisco Chief Information Officer Jon Walton and Director of Innovation Jay Nath discuss government innovation and the work they’re doing within the SF Department of Technology.
In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, SF city attorney and mayoral candidate Dennis Herrera said, if elected, he would create an innovation department and appoint a Chief Digital Officer to lead the city’s web and social media strategy that embraces open engagement with citizens.
Kristy Fifelski of GovGirl.com and Reno.gov joins us on Gov 2.0 Radio to discuss Reno’s planned inaugural civic hackathon, her GovGirl video series, the upcoming National Association of Government Webmasters conference and the new NV.gov.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs recently presented to the Cupertino, CA, city council on the company’s plans for building a new campus.
SF Environment Internet Communications Coordinator Lawrence Grodeska discusses his agency’s approach to open data on GovFreshTV.
GovFreshTV talked with Routesy founder and developer Steven Peterson about his experiences creating the app and asked him to share his advice to civic developers and government.
Transportation enthusiasts will gather in New York City and San Francisco over the next few weeks for TransportationCamp, a series of transit-meets-tech unconferences organized by the non-profit OpenPlans.
From open data to open source procurement policy to open311, San Francisco has led the open government way, but with the recent departures of former mayor Gavin Newsom (now California lieutenant governor) and former chief information officer Chris Vein, it looks as if Baltimore is on its way to becoming the new San Francisco.
Building Gov 2.0 Community in San Francisco: Abhi Nemani of Code for America, Jay Nath of the SF Dept. of Technology, and Chris Heuer, co-founder of the Social Media Club, join Gov 2.0 Radio to talk about building sustainable Gov 2.0 community at the grassroots level.
Two important San Francisco open government announcements from OpenSF founders and contributors Jay Nath and Adriel Hampton.
Just received the latest Code for America newsletter and wanted to share info about its ‘Lab Day’ program that happens every Friday in its San Francisco offices.
Last week’s election brought a new party to power in our nation’s capitol and shook up the political landscape in San Francisco. With Mayor Gavin Newsom’s ascension to Lt. Governor of California there is a job opening in City Hall. His election has officially kicked off a process to name an interim mayor and who it’s going to be has been the buzz of the City for well over a year.
I had the opportunity to sit down with San Francisco Chief Information Officer Chris Vein during sf.govfresh and ask him about his work around open government, open data and government innovation. What resonates most with me is how he touches on the importance of a partnership between mayor and CIO and SF Mayor Gavin Newsom’s willingness to let him ‘fail forward.’
If you live in the U.S. and have turned on your TV or surfed the web in the past 24 hours, chances are you have seen one, or more likely hundreds, of political ads. You cannot shake the wall-to-wall political coverage about the significance of next week’s election.
