civic commons

With civic engagement becoming an increasingly critical component of successful governance in the 21st century, cities around the world are seeking to leverage technology as a tool for citizen participation, but civic leaders face real challenges finding, evaluating, and deploying the right tools in the absence of good information.That’s why earlier this year, we announced our plans to build Engagement Commons: a comprehensive and dynamic catalog of the tools available for civic engagement and the real-world stories of their deployments. » Read more

As we turn the calendar to the new year, we'd like to take a moment to reflect on what we've done here at Civic Commons over the past year, what we've learned, and where we're planning on heading next.

It's been a busy year for us. While the Civic Commons initiative began, slowly, as an informal partnership between Code for America and OpenPlans in early 2010, we really began working in earnest last May, thanks to generous startup support from the Omidyar Network, the MacArthur Foundation, and the Knight Foundation.

Since then, we've accelerated our work towards our broad goal: » Read more

Amid the last two decades' astounding advances in consumer and enterprise technologies, governments at the city and county level—ones that are responsible for delivering public services every day—have largely been standing on the sidelines. Civic Commons is a new non-profit initiative that’s dedicated to helping government embrace the transformative potential of shared technologies and collaborative development techniques that have been pioneered and proven in the private sector. » Read more

Today, we're excited to announce that our Civic Commons team, working with the White House and the Federal CIO, has made the cost-saving IT Dashboard, the technology behind IT.USAspending.gov, freely available for any government entity to use and customize. This development is the latest in a growing movement to cut government IT spending by sharing reusable technology, thereby reducing redundant development costs and encouraging cooperation between multiple branches and levels of government. » Read more

Over the last couple years, many of us involved with open source in government have had discussions about what it means for citizen coders to become involved in state, local and federal efforts. There are all kinds of legal, ethical, and logistics questions that haven't been answered. Everyone seems to be solving them individually, but it's not well-coordinated. This means that agencies who want to engage developers are wasting valuable time trying to figure out the "right way" to work with the public. » Read more