Ever since the the highly-publicized failure of Healthcare.gov, the news has been full of government technology horror stories — overdue contracts, bloated budgets, broken bidding processes, and malfunctioning software. While such cases are not infrequent in government IT, they are not the whole story. As a recent NPR report pointed out, a small but growingRead… Read more »
Last night more than 40 people gathered at the Code for America office to kick off planning for a one or two day Civic Design Camp in March (date and location to be announced soon!) and to start building the strength and reach of our subcommunity of civic hackers. City employees from both San FranciscoRead… Read more »
Several months ago I left my position of three years in pursuit of new challenges. In the past I’ve worked in tech journalism, publishing, public affairs, environmental health, and anti-poverty advocacy. Each of these positions have been wonderful learning experiences and each have made me who I am as a marketer. I joined Code forRead… Read more »
Code for America has lots of projects. These projects are written in different languages, hosted in different places, and have different levels of complexity. When I joined CfA in October, a few of these apps used New Relic and a couple were monitored via Pingdom. It important for us to have a basic view ofRead… Read more »
Code for America is thrilled to be one of the first non-profits featured by Omakase, a new organization making charitable giving easy. Today Theresa Preston-Werner, founder of Omakase, posts about her strategy to encourage the tech community to give back. From the moment I began floating around the idea of creating a company that connectedRead… Read more »
Mark Leech (@LeechMT) is the Application Development Manager for the City of Albuquerque, N.M. He’s been leading the City’s open data initiative, ABQ Data. Since launching in June 2012, the city has released 38 high-value datasets prioritized by citizen demand. By focusing on these high-value datasets, the City has seen great ROI on their openRead… Read more »
Our Fellowship team, the Bourbon Planners, built a Jail Population Management Dashboard for the city of Louisville, Ken. This dashboard lets decision makers in Louisville’s criminal justice system visualize and analyze the population in various corrections programs. For reasons of privacy it became necessary to restrict access to the dashboard to certain people. These peopleRead… Read more »
Thanksgiving is almost here–a day which for many of us means a carousel of turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, and pie. Before you sit down to dinner this year, here are five ways you can help others access food and services. 1) Spread the word about SnapFresh SnapFresh is a text-message and mobile web app thatRead… Read more »
Today we wrap up the 2013 Fellowship year at Code for America. Over the past two weeks, we have transitioned apps, transitioned partner relationships, and celebrated accomplishments. We have reflected on the year, on the program and on the lasting impacts that the Fellows have had on local government. Now it is time to sayRead… Read more »
“People do not come with standardized circumstances,” a librarian shared with me during my research in Applied Anthropology prior to starting the Code for America Fellowship. At that time, I was documenting how Floridians experience the design of an online application process for Medicaid and Food Stamps (now called “SNAP”). The librarian’s statement speaks toRead… Read more »