As significant as the revisions to San Francisco’s open data policy may prove to be, city officials and civic startups alike emphasize that it’s people are fundamental to sustained improvements in governance and city life. “Open data would not exist without our community,” said Jay Nath, the city’s first chief innovation officer, this Monday at [...]
Last week, the Library of Congress launched Congress.gov in beta, its vision of the next generation of THOMAS, the online repository of the nation’s legislative data. The site features a “most viewed bills” list that lets visitors to the site see at a glance what laws or proposals are gathering interest the site. The most [...]
Mike Bracken, U.K. government’s executive director of digital, talks with the Wall Street Journal about how new technologies and approaches can reduce one of the biggest issues in government IT: expensive government IT projects that run long. For more perspective on what Bracken is talking about, read about how GOV.UK is redefining the online government [...]
Earlier today, the White House announced the first class of Presidential Innovation Fellows. Following is the story you might have missed on the Twitter backchannel, followed by a NodeX graph of the tweets around #InnovateGov. [View the story "When #innovategov gets hot, will policy debates follow?" on Storify] In the network graph below, you’ll see [...]
“…armed with low-cost phones and an Internet connection, people are using civic-minded apps like ForageCity to tackle everything from public safety to potholes. The question is whether the technology will have the long-term effect that some foresee, or whether the “commons 2.0″ and “participatory urbanism” will become empty marketing slogans.” -Angela Woodall, writing in the [...]
Back in January, Govfresh founder wrote about how San Francisco can “get its Gov 2.0 groove back,” offering six recommendations to the city government to use technology better. When asked for comment, San Francisco chief innovation officer Jay Nath (@Jay_Nath) responded to Fretwell’s suggestions via email. While I’ll be sharing more from Nath and SF [...]
Yesterday, I published an interview with Michael Flowers, New York City’s director of analytics for the Office of Policy and Strategic Planning in Mayor Bloomberg’s office. In the interview, “Predictive data analytics is saving lives and taxpayer dollars in New York City,” Flowers talks about how his team of 5 is applying data analysis on [...]
Up in the currently not-so-frozen north, the City of Quebec has stood up an open data directory online. There are currently 26 datasets listed, spanning a variety of data formats, from .CSV to .XML to .XLS to to .KML to .SHP. (The latter two are GIS files, of interest to folks who like to make [...]
Last year, Chicago-based open data wranglers Open City set a high bar for open government data visualizations and transparency websites. Today, Open City launched a new civic Web app at CrimeInChicago.org, adding to their growing portfolio of projects. Derek Eder, one of the co-founders of Open City, emailed in this morning to share news of [...]
The 2012 Civic Media Conference featured two full days of conversations about (what else?) the future of civic media and democracy. One conversation is particularly worth calling out and sharing with the Govfresh audience: a panel assessing what’s gone wrong and what’s gone right with open government in the United States over the past three [...]
Alexander B. Howard is Radar's Government 2.0 Correspondent for O’Reilly Media, where he reports on technology, open government and online civics.
