open gov

Meet Kris Trujillo, Senior Software Architect at Accela. I met Trujillo at last year's CityCamp Colorado and was curious about how Accela is advancing the open government movement with their software. I was impressed to learn about some of their solutions aimed at government agencies and how those solutions help to provide transparency into government processes and civic information. » Read more

Rock the Vote needed a way to manage the fast growth of the data handled by its Web-based voter registration application. The organization turned to GlusterFS replicated volumes to allow for filesystem size upgrades on its virtualized hosting infrastructure without incurring downtime.

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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

The PA Times, published by the American Society of Public Administration, issued a special edition called "From Bureaucratic to Cool: A Call for Public Service." My article on “Crowdsourced Ideas Make Participating in Government Cool Again” describes how government agencies on all levels are turning to Open Innovation platforms to collect the wisdom of the crowds either from their employees or from the public in general. They are closing an important gap that social media platforms so far were not able to address: open innovation platforms are proving a mechanism for targeted knowledge sourcing and knowledge incubation. Innovative ideas and knowledge are not hidden among thousands of comments on Facebook or retweets on Twitter. One of the most prominent examples is Challenge.gov run by GSA – that has just celebrated its first anniversary.

Here is the full reference: » Read more

State legislatures around the United States have been going through a redistricting process where they are updating the electoral boundaries that will impact future elections. Do you think the open source way could play a role in this process? » Read more

Creative Commons recently launched their 2011 Creative Commons annual campaign: You are the power of open. Creative Commons has a significant influence on open government efforts, at all levels of government, worldwide. » Read more

What is the state of the open data movement? During my opening keynote at the Open Government Data Camp (held this year in Warsaw, Poland) I sought to follow up on my talk from last year's conference. Here's my take of where we are today. » Read more

Last week, the Iceland Constitutional Council, made up of 25 Icelandic citizens, presented a bill to their parliament outlining a new constitution. The bill contains 114 articles in nine chapters, and includes elements for a more open government. It appears that the population will be given the chance to vote on the new constitution after the Alþingi (national parliament) reviews the draft.

In April 2011, Iceland decided to rewrite their constitution by crowdsourcing ideas and suggestions from the Internet. We've taken a look at the draft constitution and there are several articles that create a more open government for Iceland. » Read more

A case study for municipal open data.

The heat is scorching! Residents across Ontario, Quebec and parts of the US are trying to stay cool. Many seek out public swimming pools and splash-pads, and turn to their municipalities for information. Others, like the Canadian 'hacktivists' Joey Coleman of OpenHamilton and yours truly of OpenHalton seek out ways to make that information more accessible.

Hamilton 's Dowsing and Milton Splash are two of the most recent examples of what is possible with open data. They represent a real-life case study of how open data can help keep us cooler, while also helping cities provide a better service at a lower cost.

This is how: » Read more

I get it. Anything the Democrats want, Republicans oppose. If Democrats make concessions toward Republicans, Republicans reject the concessions and make new demands.

But this is absurd. » Read more