open government

Today, the US House of Representatives is hosting a 2-day conference about how they can be more open and transparent about what they do under the dome. They are exploring ideas and recommendations on how to create transparency » Read more

How does someone new to the open government movement know where to start? Where can they can get involved and align their interests and passions with a community already hard at work?

There are myriad open government communities, ranging from Code for America to The Sunlight Foundation, GovLoop to CityCamp, and everything in between. Where is the list of organizations that are working specifically on government transparency, collaboration, participation, and open data? Until recently, I'm not sure one existed. » Read more

For a 24 hour period, on January 20-21, 2012, starting at 5 p.m., a mix of programmers and entrepreneurs--partnered with City and County of Honolulu officials and armed with an broad array of government data--will come together to develop applications designed to improve the day-to-day lives of Honolulu residents. » Read more

What qualities make a city open source? Is it technology, government policies, or businesses? No. It's the mindset of the people. It's the philosophy and the culture.

About a year ago, I started trying to define an open source city.  I'm very interested in seeing my own city (Raleigh, NC) become a hub for open source and a leader in open government.  With Red Hat's announcement to stay headquartered in Raleigh earlier this month, the City of Raleigh appears poised to "establish a growing ecosystem of partners and providers around the open source leader and to bolster Raleigh’s reputation as a leading open source community."

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In a previous post I discussed how Faith Gordon requested the City Council in Lackawanna, NY to make available to the public copies of the entire Council meeting agenda not just a summary. Ms. Gordon requested that the entire City Council meeting agenda including resolutions, memos etc. be put on-line, so that the public can see what the Councilmembers see when voting at a meeting.

The response Ms. Gordon received from one Councilmember was, » Read more

Does your city need to solve a big civic problem? Cities across the United States can now submit their Code for America applications for 2013. Boston, Philadelphia, and Seattle have just wrapped up their 2011 projects. We're eager to see what happens in Austin, Detroit, Chicago, Honolulu, Macon, New Orleans, Philadelphia, and Santa Cruz in 2012. The application process opened on January 9, and applicants have until the end of March to complete their submissions.

What problems can your city tackle with help from Code for America? How can your city build on other open source projects to make your government more accessible, more efficient, and more engaged with citizens? » Read more

Joining the open source (and CityCamp) movement has been one of the best experiences of my life. I've been involved with open source for over a decade, but I never got involved in a community project in any significant way--until I found CityCamp. I haven't submitted a single line of code, but I'm able to bring my project management and community-building skills to the table. That's important because it highlights the fact that there is more to open source contributions than writing code. » Read more

According to a computing.co.uk article entitled Open Source: The government's commitment so far, most of the IT technology used in the UK government is still proprietary and comes from single vendors.

Open source adoption by government agencies in the UK is progressing, but is still being hindered by a focus on "free as in gratis." Decisions based on cost-of-acquisition alone ignore the other real and more important values offered by open source, which are derived from "free as in freedom." » Read more

2011 was a great year for open government. Whether you're at the grassroots level in your community or battling political red tape and changing or creating policies, a lot happened in 2011 to advance open government. As we did last year, we wanted to take a moment and reflect on what's happened this year.

We've seen a lot in 2011: CityCamps, Hackathons, and other events where people come together and make progress. They open data, create applications, form communities of purpose, and hold our governments accountable and make them more accessible. » Read more

Saturday December 3, CityCamp Honolulu packed the student center at the University of Hawaii. The one-day event brought together nearly 150 locals to discuss and plan for updating the interface for Honolulu’s city services. Forest Frizzell, director of the City’s department of information technology and Burt Lum, a local activist and the man behind ByteMarks Cafe, a Hawaii Public radio show, are responsible for hosting this important event. Burt emceed the event, and moderated the two panels that discussed everything from current city initiatives and records requests to the forthcoming 2012 Code for America fellowship program. » Read more