Tag: Code for America

Watch: Building a Better Government for the 21st Century

Posted on by robbie

Jennifer Pahlka, founder and executive director of Code for America, a non-partisan group that works to bridge the gap between public and private usage of technology, looks at government as a platform in need of a relaunch.

At SXSW Interactive in Austin, Texas, Pahlka held a session called “How Government Fails and How You Can Fix It.” She and Mikey Dickerson, who left Google to save the day at the White House, explained, for example, how the U.S. Digital Service changed millions of lives by addressing the problems that plagued the Healthcare.gov launch.

Code for America “believes government can work for the people, by the people in the 21st century.” Through its fellowship — a service year model — the nonprofit organization places designers and developers within local governments to apply their problem solving and app building skills to make government work.

The group brought its message on why government must become competent, or even excellent, at digital to SXSW, with Code for America designers leading a separate SXSW session on urban planning tools.

Pahlka, a former U.S. Deputy Chief Technology Officer, recently left the beltway and returned to the Bay Area, where she is working to figure out what is next for this “Peace Corps for geeks.” SXSW provided a preview of what’s to come, but to learn more, watch our Google Hangout on Air to continue the conversation with Code for America. This is part of a series of live interviews featuring service opportunities — a way to raise awareness to the mission of the Franklin Project at the Aspen Institute, which is to mobilize a million young people to serve.

The video interview features Molly McLeod, who describes herself as a graphic designer and civic hacker who saves “good causes from bad design,” Alex Soble, who led digital projects at Chicago Public Schools before working with the city of Somerville, Mass., on education, and Nicole Neditch, Code for America fellowship director.

Tune in by watching the video above then click the Take Action button to learn how you can join NationSwell and The Franklin Project to spread the word on service year opportunities.

How a Childhood Skill Can Help Local Governments Save Money

Posted on by robbie

During this rise of successful startups like AirBnB and Uber, government agencies have become a barrier rather than a boon to the share economy.
But in an attempt to make peer-to-peer sharing more attractive to government officials, a Michigan-based startup is enlisting local municipalities to explore the concept for themselves. MuniRent, created by developer and entrepreneur Alan Mond, enables towns to rent equipment from one another at reduced rates. School districts, road commissions and counties are among some of the targeted groups encouraged to rent anything from tractors to textbooks.
“Our vision is to be the hub for collaborative government,” Mond told Fast Company.
MuniRent is aiming to coordinate the gap between large and small municipalities, according to MLive.com. Larger organizations buy equipment they may not regularly use while smaller operations may rent tools that sometimes can be costly. Since they’re government organizations, they’re not in competition with each other, Mond explains, which is why a share economy makes sense when it comes to towns.
“If you have two construction companies, one of them may not want to rent a crane to the other one. Governments are all trying to do sewer maintenance on reduced budgets. They’re not competing. They just happen to be in different jurisdictions,” Mond said.
The online platform lets users reserve equipment for a period of time, pay a fee — of which includes 20 percent rental cost for MuniRent — and coordinate a pickup and return date. Mond estimates municipalities within a 30-mile proximity can share.
MuniRent is one of five startups recently accepted to Code for America’s new civic technology accelerator. The incubator provided MuniRent with $25,000 to get started and mentors, as well as Code for America’s government resources.
While Mond is getting MuniRent off the ground in Michigan (two cities have already signed on), he expects to expand the program nationwide — perhaps soon in Oregon.
“The Oregon Department of Transportation has had me out and they want to use MuniRent to better organize their system,” Mond said. “As it stands, their catalogue doesn’t work in a way that is useful or efficient, and a lot of municipalities have trouble booking equipment.”
With dwindling funds and shrinking budgets, it’s important to see inter-municipal tools like MuniRent provide an innovative solution to government efficiency.
MORE: The 7 Smartest Uses of Technology in Government Today

Breaking The Digital Divide: Online Tools Every Community Should Use

Posted on by robbie

We’ve all heard about the growing economic divide in this country. But now, there’s a technology divide occurring as well.
Larger cities like Chicago, San Francisco and New York continue to innovate civic technology and bridge the divide between citizens and government, while this progress is leaving small communities behind.
Without digital tools, staff or infrastructure in place to bring basic services online, small local governments and their citizens are suffering from a digital divide. But one Silicon Valley mind is determined to break that barrier and help smaller cities understand how they can join the digital movement.
All it took for Abhi Nemani to realize the vast difference between small and large cities was a visit to his hometown of Centralia, Illinois. The former acting co-executive director of civic tech nonprofit Code for America used to spend his days creating digital engagement tools and improving city websites across the country while living in San Francisco. But when he returned home to his rural town of 13,000, he realized that it was missing out on those same services.
“Our cities are more independent and muscular, number in the tens of thousands, and hold responsibility for core service delivery,” Nemani writes in a Medium piece. “Then there are our harsh fiscal realities: small towns, particularly ones with shrinking economic bases, struggle just to maintain current services levels, while citizen demands increase, let alone build out modern technology teams.”
Nemani has been working with the Open Government Foundation to become more familiar with government services like local bills and municipal code to better understand the process of transforming them digitally. He’s also created a Digital Services Center, a draft of a simple mapping component that he hopes to further develop for cities to use as basic infrastructure to house these digital tools.
Instead of thinking of creating the services from a developer’s vantage point, Nemani explains, we need to be thinking about it from a city’s perspective and present it in an easy-to-understand manner. To get started, Nemani contends that any civic technology should include the following eight tools:
Bullets: Crime-related data that give residents a sense of how safety is handled in the city.
Examples: CrimeAround.Us, Crime in Chicago, Oakland Crimespotting
Bills: Providing citizens with more transparency around legislative data.
Examples: OpenGov’s AmericaDecoded, MySociety’s SayIt, Councilmatic
Budget: Making public finances and city spending available online.
Examples: OpenGov.com, OpenSpending, Look at Cook
Buses: Transportation tools to help residents with schedules, planning, etc.
Examples: OpenTripPlanner, OneBusAway
Data: Open, organized, municipal information.
Examples: Socrata, NuData, CKAN, OpenDataCatalog, Junar
411: An online information hotline used in the same regard as the phone version.
Examples: CityAnswers, MindMixer, OSQA
311: Non-emergency online assistance including reporting things like road repairs.
Examples: SeeClickFix, PublicStuff, Connected Bits, Service Tracker, Open311Mobile
211:  A social services hotline for services including health, jobs training and housing.
Examples: Aunt Bertha, Purple Binder, Connect Chicago
“The opportunity is that we have the chance to take all of these components that are being built as open-source tools and turn them into companies that offer them to cities as hosted platforms,” Nemani told Next City. “Even a 10-person shop can put in a credit card number and pay a hundred dollars a month for one of these tools.”
While Nemani admits each city will be different — some places are too small for transportation components — working towards a template is critical to make civic technology accessible for everyone. But by focusing on these eight tools, any town is off to a great start.
“We as a civic technology ecosystem need to move towards building the technology we have in a way that lets it get to scale. And we have to put things out there in a way that makes sense to people.”
MORE: Can Big Data Reshape City Governments?

Ever Wonder Why Nobody Goes to Town Council Meetings? Meet the Folks Who Are Changing That.

Posted on by robbie

About the last thing you’d expect to find among the refurbished brick factories and warehouses that stretch north of downtown Omaha, Neb., is a picket-fenced front porch. Especially when it’s inside. And most especially when what it’s inside is the office of a tech startup.
The porch gets plenty of use. People who want to get away from their desks tote their laptops, plunk down in a rocking chair, and enjoy the added amusement of watching their colleagues at work around them. On Friday afternoons, as the workweek ends, they relax with Mason jars of beer before heading home.
It’s a cute addition to office life, but it’s not some ironic 20-something wink at a bygone era. It’s a very earnest wink. And in its own quiet, Midwestern way, it represents a game-changer. Continue reading “Ever Wonder Why Nobody Goes to Town Council Meetings? Meet the Folks Who Are Changing That.”