Exiting the Trader Joe’s near my home in Cambridge recently, I was approached by an intense man who asked: “Are you a registered voter in Cambridge?” He was collecting signatures for a petition that would put a recent zoning amendment adopted by the City Council on the ballot for a referendum. The City Council was […]
Public Sector Crowdsourcing: What’s Possible?
Lately I’ve been involved in a lot of conversations about crowdsourcing in the public sector. Although they’re sometimes confused, in general I think there are two types we can talk about: crowdsourcing policy (or ideas) and public goods (tangible work or services). This is a topic included in my Open Government Strategy for the City […]
Creating the Open City: Part One
This post is the first of a two part series on my work creating an open government strategy for the City of Boston this past summer. During his campaign for the presidency, Barack Obama often mentioned expanding civic participation. Solving our toughest problems, he argued, would require action by both government and regular citizens. “The […]
Can We Implement O’Reilly’s ‘Government as a Platform’?
One of the most visible supporters of technical innovation in government recently has been Tim O’Reilly. Perhaps best known for popularizing the term “Web 2.0,†O’Reilly’s media company publishes popular software manuals and organizes industry-leading conferences for Internet entrepreneurs. In the past few years, he’s increasingly turned his attention to applying innovative internet technology to government, […]
Could the Big Dig Have Cost Less?
As the parks it created finally fill with activity and the project fades from newspaper headlines, Boston’s Big Dig is subtly slipping into the city’s history. Officially known as the Central Artery Bridge/Tunnel Project, the Big Dig buried an elevated freeway in downtown Boston and added a new freeway tunnel under Boston Harbor connecting Logan […]
Lights Out For Free Public Goods?
Most American local governments and transit agencies are struggling to balance their finances. In addition to the economic downturn, revenues are often limited by property tax limits or political resistance to tax or fee increases. Meanwhile, costs have been ballooning. Many fixed costs, such as the price of energy, health care, and other employee benefits […]
What Government Data Should be Transparent?
At an event I attended in March, Massachusetts’ Chief Information Officer Ann Marguiles raised a simple yet profound issue. Although they’re committed to open data, the Commonwealth was still to figure out which datasets to post online through their new data portal mass.gov/data. Plenty of transparency advocates would say the answer should be “all of […]