Last week at DrupalCon, representatives from the city of Los Angeles, CivicActions and Acquia shared their development and project management process to begin migrating and consolidating websites across 40 agencies to a single instance using Acquia Cloud Site Factory.
Getting started with Agile government
It was an excellent discussion that went a little beyond the basics, and there were a number of questions we didn’t get to, but overall it’s a helpful introduction that includes some great panelist anecdotes.
Analytics and outcome-based government
Michael Flowers shares insights into his time as the former New York City chief analytics officer at the NYC Office of Data Analytics under Mayor Michael Bloomberg at the 2014 Code for America Summit.
Defaulting to open: A foundation for data-driven decisions
San Francisco Chief Data Officer Joy Bonaguro shares her vision for the city’s open data future at the 2014 Code for America Summit.
Doubling down on government technology
We’ve recently seen an uptick in venture capital interest around government and civic technology startups, but before we enthusiastically celebrate these investments, we must ask ourselves whether this potential bubble will truly reshape government IT or simply leave us five years from now in the same place we are today.
Hack like Ben Franklin
Code for America’s Catherine Bracy has a great TED Talk on civic hacking and one of America’s greatest civic hackers, Ben Franklin, inspired a brigade of do-good developers across the world.
Baratunde on how to code back
Internet Renaissance man Baratunde Thurston is the latest tech celebrity to pitch the Code for America fellowship program targeted to developers, designers, researchers, data enthusiasts, urban planners and entrepreneurs who want to make a civic difference.
Visualize this: 32,000 DC Bikeshare Trips (VIDEO)
In the 32,000 trips included in the 5-day sample, rush hour surges, pulses of local traffic, cross-river commutes, and 3 am Sunday morning “Rides of Shame” can be seen throughout Washington, D.C.
Gaming the future of government
On January 22-23, the Institute for the Future will host Connected Citizens, a 24-hour collective forecasting game to “to rethink and reprogram government services for a complex and connected world.”
Crowdfunding government (VIDEO)
Citizinvestor co-founder Jordan Raynor discusses the rise of the ‘micro-philanthropist’ and how digital tools are empowering citizens to help crowdfund public projects.
‘Hack City’ (VIDEO)
Great video highlighting what a civic hackathon is and how it works via a re-cap of GreenBiz’s recent three-day ‘Hack City.’
Building civic ‘Startup Communities’
I’ve been thinking a lot about the importance of a more structured approach to community with respect to the civic technology movement, which is why I picked up Brad Feld’s ‘Startup Communities: Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Your City.’
Open source democracy
Great Clay Shirky TED Talk on how distributed version control and “having access to all the source code all of the time” will one day change the way government works.
Civic skunkworks and Moneyballing New York City
New York City’s Michael Flowers gives an overview of how the city leverages data analytics to solve problems and better serve citizens.
‘We see this digital space of empowering our citizens as the next generation of city government.’
Great “Connected Empowerment” video featuring San Francisco Chief Innovation Officer Jay Nath and civic action platform, Neighborland.
City participatory budgeting takes its first steps
This past September Vallejo, Ca., began the United States’ first citywide venture in participatory budgeting, allowing residents to directly decide how $3.4 million dollars of public money would be spent.
How to join (or start) a civic tech movement where you live
For those of you interested in starting or joining the civic technology movement where you live, watch Code for America Brigade program director Kevin Curry discuss how designers and developers are doing just this everywhere across the United States.
SF tech icons make smarter civic technology pitch
sf.citi brings out the the tech heavyweights for a new video imagining what civic technology could do for a “smarter San Francisco.”
Chicago and Open 311 (VIDEO)
Great video from the Chicago mayor’s office on their Open 311 deployment.
How the Internet is changing who runs for local office and how they will lead differently
South Orange, New Jersey, mayor Alex Torpey has a great speech from Personal Democracy Forum 2012, where he discussed how the Internet is changing the way politicians learn, listen and engage with citizens, as well as the changing dynamic of who will seek elected office in the future.
Palo Alto CIO on building the ‘digital city’
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.
America’s coolest mayor
This is the first time I’ve heard of Harvard-educated, professional wrestler look-alike and Braddock, Pennsylvania, mayor John Fetterman, featured in this episode of Hulu’s “A Day In The Life” series.
Pahlka: ‘Government really is the way we do things collectively that we can’t do individually’
Great TEDxPhilly talk by Code for America Founder and Executive Director Jen Pahlka. Really inspiring to see Jen articulate what’s happening around city and local government beyond the tech talk people like me are so in the weeds on.
How the UK is raising the open government bar and setting a new standard
I’ve been collecting links (below) from the UK’s Government Digital Service blog for a while wondering when they’ll stop executing their great “beta” work on GOV.UK, but they continue to outdo themselves.
How Joomla is powering government
We’ve heard a lot about Drupal and WordPress in government, but not much about the open source platform Joomla. We asked Joomla External Communications Lead Sandra Ordonez to share how government is using it, its key features, how it compares to Drupal and WordPress and what governments are using it.
How government can empower citizens in the redistricting process
In January 2011, Michael McDonald and Micah Altman founded the Public Mapping Project and began building the open source platform DistrictBuilder to give citizens more of a say in the redistricting process.
Trust the vote: How open source will change our elections
After watching the documentary Hacking Democracy, I started researching how government uses voting technology to conduct elections. That’s how I learned about the work of Open Source Digital Voting Foundation.
How government can share and re-purpose open source civic software
Civic Commons Director Nick Grossman and 2011 Code for America Fellow Jeremy Canfield give an overview of the new Civic Commons Marketplace, a repository and apps showcase for open source civic and government development projects.
A city as a computing platform
Temple University Director of the Center for Design+Innovation Youngjin Yoo has an excellent “A city as a computing platform” talk from TEDxPhilly held November 8, 2011.
Open source government
San Francisco Director of Innovation Jay Nath’s TEDxSoMa talk from earlier this year:
Build a better civic hackathon: lessons from Education Hack Day
ShineOn Storytelling created an excellent video overview of Education Hack Day, held November 12 and 13 in Baltimore.
Scaling the open data ecosystem
Open Knowledge Foundation co-founder Rufus Pollock discusses his ideas on scaling an open data ecosystem.
13 ways citizen developers are coding a better America
Code for America has published videos of CfA Fellows demoing their apps during the Code for America Summit held October 13-14 in San Francisco.
SF Mayor Ed Lee at 2011 Web 2.0 Summit (VIDEO)
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.
GovFreshTV: Q&A with Chicago CTO John Tolva
During last week’s Code for America 2011 Summit, I sat down with Chicago Chief Technology Officer John Tolva and asked him about his current IT initiatives, challenges and lessons learned.
Code for America: ‘In our own words’ (VIDEO)
Excellent Code for America video featuring the 2011 fellows discussing their work and CfA mission.
This week on Gov2 TV: OGP, ‘open government is dead’ debate
This week’s Gov2 TV discusses the international Open Government Partnership, the “open gov is dead” debate and the latest government 2.0 news and trends with O’Reilly Media Government 2.0 Washington Correspondent Alex Howard and host Walter Schwabe.
How open government is changing NYC
New York City Chief Digital Officer Rachel Sterne’s Strata New York 2011 presentation is a great overview of the city’s open government work.
Reno readies for world’s biggest little hackathon
The world’s biggest little city is about to get its code on.
Government sharing is government caring
Just discovered this MESH Government to the Rescue TEDxGotham talk by former New York State Senate Chief Information Officer Andrew Hoppin.
FutureGov founder Dominic Campbell on ‘Networking Government’
Excellent TEDxLondonBusinessSchool talk on open government by FutureGov founder Dominic Campbell.
2011 SF Mayoral Candidate Dennis Herrera on the role of meetups in civic engagement
2011 SF Mayoral Candidate Dennis Herrera on the role of meetups in civic engagement.
2011 SF Mayoral Candidate Joanna Rees on the role of meetups in civic engagement
2011 SF Mayoral Candidate Joanna Rees on the role of meetups in civic engagement.
Adriel Hampton on the success of CityCampSF
CityCampSF founder, NationBuilder Chief Organizer and Gov 2.0 Host Adriel Hampton on CityCampSF.
CityCamp founder Kevin Curry on CityCampSF
CityCamp founder Kevin Curry on how CityCamp San Francisco fits in and stands out.
SF Director of Innovation Jay Nath on the value of a city innovation officer
City of San Francisco’s Department of Technology Jay Nath on why government should have an innovation officer.
Tropo’s Mark Headd on hackathons and open government
Tropo’s Mark Headd discusses the impact of hackathons on the open government movement and how developers can get involved.
SFOpen 2011: Phil Ting
San Francisco mayoral candidate Phil Ting discusses his ideas on open government and Government 2.0.
Missouri town uses YouTube to re-define public access television
The city council of St. Charles, Missouri has launched Discover St. Charles, a YouTube channel that delivers department updates to citizens using short video clips.
SFOpen 2011: Tony Hall
San Francisco mayoral candidate Tony Hall discusses his ideas on open government and Government 2.0.