Tune-in to Design Beyond the Past: people, paper and city government. In this podcast 2012 CfA Fellow Alicia Rouault comments on the challenges facing city governments in introducing some “Bay Area” innovation. “While cities have the will to innovate, legacy systems are holding them back.” – Alicia Rouault Design Beyond the Past by Code forRead… Read more »
Each Wednesday we are going to post our favorite stories of the week to this blog. Today, August 1, 2012 is our inaugural edition. Denver Mayor releases 80 GIS datasets for Colorado Code for Communities Brigade event Brigade member, Denver captain, and Colorado Code for Communities organizer Jason Lally reported in the forum that theRead… Read more »
Over the last year, Civic Commons has grown from an experimental idea to a core resource for open innovation in government — a first stop for city officials, community leaders, and civic hackers who want to find out what civic technologies are working, where. In the nine months since the product launched at last year’sRead… Read more »
Joel brings Monster downstairs so we have enough computers. Eddie installs a 30 day trial version of Adobe Illustrator on his machine so we have enough computers running Illustrator. Youth Radio arrives. Youth Radio has started a branch that is trying to teach young people how to design Apps. Their first App is called ForageRead… Read more »
With the recent announcement of 311 Labs and Code for America’s recent podcast featuring me talking about my perspective on Open311, this write-up about Open311Status is probably long overdue. Open311Status—still a work in progress–polls Open311 servers in 30 cities and aggregates configuration, performance and utilization statistics about those Open311 endpoints. I built Open311Status for twoRead… Read more »
“Impatient with how America works, but sleeves are rolled all the way up.” – 2012 Fellow Michelle Lee’s Twitter bio Why Code for America? In this question, code is a verb. It’s not “why does Code for America exist?” but rather “why do people code for the public good?” With just three days left toRead… Read more »
Folks convinced that the emerging generation will usher in the end of Western Civilization have enjoyed a reverberant echo chamber recently: Millennials allegedly don’t value recorded music, cheat on tests, are akin to untrained puppies in the workplace, and lack faith in government. Judging from the pronouncements reblogged across the controversy-nourished social web, the emergingRead… Read more »
“Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like [citizens], undergo the fatigue of supporting it.” ~ Thomas Paine: Patriot, Founding Father, Data Liberation Rockstar A couple of weeks ago, to celebrate Independence Day, we launched Open Impact — a campaign at Code for America to encourage and enable municipal governments to declareRead… Read more »
We’re on to something big. Engaged citizens around the country are waking up to the fact that they don’t have to wait around for a web-enabled government. They’re making apps to better understand the landscape of crime in their neighborhoods. They’re organizing their communities to bring apps to their cities by joining a Code forRead… Read more »
We spend a lot of time at Code for America, well…coding. This is based on our belief that writing software is a more direct path to change than writing white papers. But we also understand that our apps are likely to fade away over time, and that the lasting effects of our work might beRead… Read more »