We like campaigns at Code for America. Campaigns provide us motivation, inspiration, and support for reaching shared objectives and goals. Each of our Brigade campaigns is designed to direct energy in support one of our five activities. Each of those activities advances our strategic outcomes. Our summer campaign, Open Impact, was about advocating for changesRead… Read more »
It’s an interesting time to be at Code for America right now. November marks the formal beginning of the “transition” phase for the 2012 Fellowship Program. Fellows are hard at work transitioning their applications, transitioning the relationships they’ve established in City Hall and in their communities – and transitioning themselves into exciting new chapters inRead… Read more »
Turn Around, Don’t Drown Low water crossings aren’t something we get a lot of here in San Francisco, but many Austinites are intimately familiar with them. Flash floods and sudden high-volume rain cause runoff and will quickly fill or overflow riverbeds and low lying areas and cause low water crossings to close, making streets impassable.Read… Read more »
Much has been said about one of last year’s application, Adopt-a-Hydrant, a web app designed by 2011 fellows, Erik Michaels-Ober, enabling citizens to claim responsibility for civic infrastructure. Now generally referred to as, “Adopta,” the tool has been repurposed to apply to city property ranging from storm sirens to sidewalks. We’ve selected Adopta as featuredRead… Read more »
Tuesday our founder Jennifer Pahlka kicked off Accelerator Demo Day by sharing why there’s a demand for startups that build tools to help government work better. There’s been staggering advances in consumer technology, but government has too often been left behind the technology innovation curve. Ron Bouganim, Accelerator director, explained the market demand for theRead… Read more »
Recovers is one of the seven civic startups in the inaugural class of the CfA Accelerator. I am what some would call a non-technical founder. I spoke Russian, not Ruby. I studied government, not the software that supported it. Sure, I knew my way around a computer, but I did not build the tools IRead… Read more »
Assimilating Innovation When the first computers began to make their way into classrooms back in the early 1980‘s, there was great hope and excitement that their introduction would revolutionize education. A similar excitement came in the 2000’s as we began to wire classrooms for access to the Internet. Today it’s the promise of social, mobile,Read… Read more »
Sometimes bad things happen to good people. Ever had someone in your family find out they had cancer? A car accident? Or is unemployed for a long time? Have you ever helped this person fill out a Medicaid form (Government Health Insurance) or apply for Social Security Disability payments? Have you ever driven across townRead… Read more »
Revelstone is one of the seven civic startups in the inaugural class of the CfA Accelerator. I’ve spent my entire career understanding data. Looking deep into the numbers to figure out what decision would be best. This started when I was consulting with Arthur Andersen and continued throughout the years working with private sector companies,Read… Read more »
Captricity is one of the seven civic startups in the inaugural class of the CfA Accelerator. I was sure my little dream of starting a side-project, small business were going to die. Looking at a multicolor zoning map and trying to make sense of the regulatory leagalease, I was getting no where close to aRead… Read more »