Boulder County is committed to the idea that “Every Door is the Right Door”: when residents need assistance, they should have direct access to vital local governmental services. To realize that public service goal, the county, in collaboration with area municipalities, is partnering with Code for America to build a one-stop interactive hub for citizens to learn about, help improve, and request county and local services.

Excited by this project? Good. Because we need you to make it happen. It’ll be up to the Code for America Fellows to translate this concept into a reality in 11 short months, which will include everything from researching county services and working with local officials to designing the user experience and coding the application. As a CfA Fellow, this will be your start-up.

If you’re interested in helping with this project, join our corp of volunteers and stay informed about opportunities to get involved.

Your Challenge

• Make it easier and more convenient for the 300,000 citizens of the Boulder area to receive services from their county and local governments by creating a new avenue of communication.
• Build a web app that facilitates openness and collaboration across governmental departments and improves responsiveness to citizen requests.
• Untangle the multitude of current workflows required to route inquiries and requests to the correct servicing department, decreasing response time and increasing efficiency.
• Survey the existing open source landscape to determine how to re-use, re-mix, and develop the product as efficiently as possible.
• Create and document a product so that is easily reusable by other municipalities.

In tackling this project, you’ll have to answer difficult questions, only some of which we know about now, so we want to open that conversation to everyone. What are the tough issues and questions fellows in Boulder will have to grapple with, what are some other challenges for this project, and what else will we need to figure out?