The Shifting Landscape of Cities and Technology For years it has been obvious that digital technologies have become deeply embedded in cities, but it has been difficult to conceptualize this change. My scholarly career has seen a revolving door of buzzwords and concepts surrounding technology in cities, like open data, open government, gov 2.0, civic […]
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, […]
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 […]
RSVP Now for Government 2.0 Camp New England
Registration just opened for Gov 2.0 Camp New England, a one-day unconference I’m helping to plan. It will be held Saturday, March 6th at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government in Harvard Square. The others involved in planning are Yasmin Fodil (KSG), Laurel Ruma (O’Reilly Media) and Sarah Bourne and Jessica Weiss (Commonwealth of MA). […]