Here’s a presentation that Openly Local ‘s Chris Taggart gave during the 2011 Open Government Data Camp in Warsaw. While it’s difficult to understand the full context, it appears Taggart is presenting a hypothetical scenario of what could happen to the open data movement if it doesn’t focus on key areas, such as forming a critical mass and getting Google to [...]

(photo by duluoz cats ) This is old news, and I’ve been meaning to post sooner, but I absolutely love Memphis, so I can’t help myself. Memphis announced it will develop its new website using the open source platform Drupal and OpenPublic. Mediacurrent, Linx Consulting and Phase2 Technology will collaborate on the project. [...]

Open Knowledge Foundation co-founder Rufus Pollock discusses his ideas on scaling an open data ecosystem . Excerpt:

In developing this open data ecosystem there are three key things are needed: material, tools and people. This is a key point: open information without tools and communities to utilise it is not enough, after all, openness isn’t an end itself – open [...]

The British government’s Cabinet Office has published an Open Source Procurement Toolkit as part of its ongoing information and communications strategy . From the site:

The purpose of this toolkit is to ensure that there is a level playing field for open source and proprietary software and that some of the myths associated with open source are dispelled.

Links: All about Open Source [...]

New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg has a blog post on how cities are collaborating to better leverage data analytics and maximize taxpayer return on investment. The post cites examples from major American cities and how they’ve leveraged data, especially 311 logs, to realize efficiencies. Excerpt:

Data-driven analytics is the systematic use of information to find patterns of interest. [...]

Dilbert creator Scott Adams has a great editorial in The Wall Street Journal where he provides serious commentary on government and how civic-focused design would help modernize and better meet citizen expectations. Quotables:

There’s a reason changing our system of government is slow going. I like to think of the government as a big, complicated machine. We citizens are the [...]

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. John Mertens – Art Mapper Erik Michaels-Ober – Adopt-a-Hydrant Anna Bloom – Change By Us Aaron Ogle – ReRoute.it Jeremy Canfield – Open311 Dashboard Max Ogden – DataCouch Michelle Koeth – Civic Commons Legal Guide Karla Macedo – Iconathon Chach Sikes – CityGroups [...]

Switzerland-based RedCut has released Citizen 2.0 , a white paper of case studies that include 17 examples of social media and government innovation. We asked CEO Hadi Barkat to share his methodology and what he learned. What was the impetus for Citizen 2.0 and process for selecting companies featured? The story of this paper is about connecting the dots. Firstly, there [...]

Excellent Civic Startups presentation from Civic Commons Managing Director Nick Grossman . My only comment on the slides is that there tends to be an emphasis on a core group of civic start-ups, which makes it seem as if there’s little momentum in this space. Would be great to see others highlighted beyond these.

I regularly get emails from start-ups, entrepreneurs and developers asking us to feature new products or apps on GovFresh. I’m always happy to support new ventures but, because of resource constraints, am sometimes unable to respond in a timely manner, if at all. To resolve this, here’s a standardized questionnaire for those of you building new, civic-focused [...]

O’Reilly Media’s Alex Howard interviewed musician and tech entrepreneur MC Hammer at the 2011 Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco where, towards the end, Hammer talks about the impact social media, mobile and crowdsourcing have on government. Excerpt:

“Local governments, they’re not good at engaging the public at large. They’re still finding their feet with respect to using these platforms [...]

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.

When I talk to city and local government technology leaders about their challenges and lessons learned, I’m often surprised they don’t openly and regularly share their experiences with the civic technology community or, in general, the citizens they serve. Reasons include time or political constraints or that they don’t have an outlet to do so. There’s either [...]

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.
Video:

Excellent Code for America video featuring the 2011 fellows discussing their work and CfA mission.

Civic mobile app YouTown is now available in the Android Market.
An iPhone app is already available, and YouTown says Blackberry and mobile web versions are coming soon.

Code for America Founder and Executive Director Jennifer Pahlka announced its 2012 fellows today at the Code for America Summit in San Francisco. Twenty-five fellows were selected from more than 550 applicants. “We are honored to have had such an amazing response to our call, and it means that we couldn’t be more proud to name these cities and [...]

In 2007, Robert Vogel and Mike Alvarez Cohen started Peak Democracy to “build public trust in government through online public comment forums that are civil yet meet government freedom-of-speech and transparency laws.” Peak Democracy’s Open Town Hall now serves more than 25 government agencies and elected officials. Vogel and Alvarez share their philosophy and experience building Open Town [...]

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.

Firmstep has launched a new service called AchieveCity, a Web-based government platform powered by the Drupal distribution OpenPublic (developed by Phase2 Technology ) and hosted in the Amazon EC2 environment. Firmstep says five municipalities will go live in August, and those signing up now will launch beginning in September. Founder and CEO Brett Husbands talks with GovFresh about the new service. [...]