Archive of posts filed under the Technology category.

Urbanflow’s view of a touchscreen-filled data-driven city – Video Wednesday

This week’s video is a fun one; it’s a concept video about Urbanflow, a collaboration between a NYC-based design company Urbanscale and Finnish designers Nordkapp. They want touchscreens everywhere in Helsinki, so the public can access maps and transit info, interact with each other, and report municipal concerns like potholes. John Pavlus has raised some concerns about their …

Continue reading ‘Urbanflow’s view of a touchscreen-filled data-driven city – Video Wednesday’ »

Featured Website: Random Hacks of Kindness and Sheltr

Today I want to highlight a great project that showcases the potential for technology to change city life for the better. Random Hacks of Kindness (or RHoK) is as an initiative started in 2009 by Microsoft, Google, Yahoo!, NASA, and the World Bank that hosts app contests aimed at the more social-justice side of open data. (It was originally aimed …

Continue reading ‘Featured Website: Random Hacks of Kindness and Sheltr’ »

Are cities America’s greatest laboratories of government innovation?

In 1932 Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis famously wrote, “It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.” And indeed, the States remain a …

Continue reading ‘Are cities America’s greatest laboratories of government innovation?’ »

Featured App: OkCopay

Wanted to highlight an app from last year’s Apps for Metro Chicago competition called OkCopay. The app compares the cash price of medical services. It’s primary for people to shop around for those services not covered by insurance. It also compares other variables, such as years of experience and distance from your geographic area, though, …

Continue reading ‘Featured App: OkCopay’ »

Reducing inmates, saving money – plans for America’s largest jail

The Cook County jail is currently the largest single-site jail in the nation. (Jails, as opposed to prisons, house inmates sentenced to less than a year imprisonment or who are awaiting trial, which can last for multiple years.) The Cook County jail can house nearly 10,000 inmates at a time and holds about 100,000 annually. …

Continue reading ‘Reducing inmates, saving money – plans for America’s largest jail’ »

Chief Digital Officer for NYC – Roadmap to a Digital City – Video Wednesday

Here is Rachel Sterne, NYC’s Chief Digital Officer, discussing a four-point plan for advancing technology in NYC. The four points—which are useful for any city government—are as follows: Access to technology, e.g., expanding the access to wireless Internet Open government, e.g., sharing more information with developers Engagement, e.g., using more social media, specifically Twitter, Youtube, and …

Continue reading ‘Chief Digital Officer for NYC – Roadmap to a Digital City – Video Wednesday’ »

Featured Website: OpenPlans

OpenPlans.org is a nonprofit organization generating open-source software designed to use data to improve city transportation, among other things. It has received quite a bit of media attention recently, including this recent article by Arianna Huffington, spotlighting the organization’s efforts to equip NYC with a real-time-tracking system for city buses. But as the group points …

Continue reading ‘Featured Website: OpenPlans’ »

Code for America 2012 annual report – Heroes of Gov. 2.0

Today, I want to feature the annual report for Code for America, an amazing new program (modeled after Teach for America) that gives $35,000 to programmers willing to spend a year working on projects for a particular metro area. Tim O’Reilly has called these programmers the heroes of the new data-driven government movement. The report …

Continue reading ‘Code for America 2012 annual report – Heroes of Gov. 2.0’ »

NASCIO Tech Innovation Award Videos

Today’s Wednesday Video is a promotion video done by Oregon about their open-data website for the 2011 National Association of State Chief Information Officers Technology Innovation Awards. I think that it rightly celebrates the advances they’ve made, highlighting the praise its received from Oregon residents and outside groups (particularly transparency advocates). It also highlights many of the popular datasets available. …

Continue reading ‘NASCIO Tech Innovation Award Videos’ »