We need a really amazing CTO:  someone who is brilliant, committed, diplomatic, mature and experienced.  Our CTO should be passionate about transforming the business of governing from the bottom up, and want to be visible, serving as a civic innovation rockstar in order to advance the cause.

There are lots of opportunities for skilled developers in the private sector.  Why would someone with the talent to go to a promising startup want to work for a non-profit?  I asked Clay Shirky, one of our advisors, to answer that question, and here’s what he said:

• It’s hard. This isn’t your dad’s CIO job — a lot of this work is conceptually and technologically challenging.
• It matters. Most of us live in cities, and all of us want them to run better than they do.
• It’s powerful. Two enormous changes of the last 30 years — urbanization of the species and digitization of group action – have hardly been combined yet.
• It’s possible to make dramatic progress. Models of civic service haven’t even been dragged into the mid-90s, much less the 21st century.

I founded this organization with Leonard Lin.  When Andrew Greenhill and I first asked the question “Why isn’t there a Teach for America for web developers?” Leonard was the first person I thought of.  He was one of the co-founders of Upcoming, which sold to Yahoo!, and has spent his time since using the Internet to help find Katrina survivors, helping build my.barackobama.com, and generally getting involved in things that help make the world a better place.  Leonard has several projects he’s committed to in addition to Code for America, and while he’ll continue to be heavily involved, providing technical and strategic leadership and serving on the board of directors, we need someone who can dedicate him/herself to the cause full-time.

Code for America’s CTO must hold a vision for technology for cities that helps them become more transparent, participatory and efficient.  He/she must also develop a deep understanding of current municipal IT infrastructure, and become an expert in helping cities implement gov 2.0 in their operations.

We’re looking for someone with a track record of success in the consumer web 2.0 world and a passion for public service who wants to help transform the business of governing from the bottom up.  For more information on the job, visit our posting on Transparency Jobs.

Code for America is only a few months old, and all our outreach has been by word of mouth, so we are very excited to have 11 applications for the first development cycle. The applicants are:

• Hartford, CT
• Boulder, CO
• Boston, MA
• Lansing, MI
• Little Rock, AR
• Philadelphia, PA
• District of Columbia
• Raleigh, NC
• Chicago, IL
• Seattle, WA
• Colorado Government Association of Information Technology, on behalf of cities in Colorado

These cities (and other agencies) were asked to propose up to three projects that the Code for America fellows will build for them, if their city is chosen, in 2011, and the ideas they’ve generated are inspiring.  A sample of the kinds of applications they’ve proposed:

• A mobile public safety application that would allow police officers in the field to access crime data in real time and residents to interact with police officers in their neighborhoods.
• Reporting features for 311 data that would allow residents, via a Web interface, to extract 311 data and analyze that data for their own purposes by using a series of interactive reporting capabilities.
• A centralized, virtual resource center for businesses that provides for real-time tracking of all interactions with the city, including licensing, permitting and incentives.
• A civic engagement portal to help community groups post projects, allow citizens to search for volunteer opportunities, and connect planning and city council decisions to neighborhoods.

What’s next?  Our challenge now is to select three to five of the 11 projects submitted that best fit the goals of Code for America.  In Phase Two of the application process we work with the applicant cities to refine the scope and feasibility of their projects and along with a committee of experts, selected the Code for America 2011 cities.

Thanks to all who applied and all who helped get the word out in such a short time.  We’re excited about what’s to come.

cit⋅i⋅zen⋅ship  [sit-uh-zuhn-ship, -suhn-]
–noun
1. the state of being vested with the rights, privileges, and duties of a citizen.
2. the character of an individual viewed as a member of society; behavior in terms of the duties, obligations, and functions of a citizen: an award for good citizenship.

When we talk about open government or transparency, there’s an assumption the goal is to change the behavior of various actors inside government.  This is true, but transparency on a granular, day-to-day level, has an aspect that is much less discussed: the opportunity to change the perspective of citizens as well.  It’s a chance to build trust, and to help citizens see their individual needs as part of a whole, in the context of a larger society.  Let me explain what I mean by talking about some of the web applications we’d like to build through Code for America.

Today, in most American cities, when you report something that needs to be fixed (say, for instance, a pothole), your request essentially disappears into the machinery of the city administration.  If you’re lucky, when the problem is fixed, there may be a message telling you so (or at least telling you that the city thinks its fixed, because sometimes the information you gave about the problem wasn’t specific enough for the city to know exactly WHICH pothole you meant).  But in between, your request is invisible to you.  The machinery itself is opaque, and obscures the path your request follows as it is routed to the correct department, prioritized, and eventually fixed.  Thus the term transparency; we’re talking about a view into the process.  At Code for America, we envision applications that allow you to see the status of your request at any given time, the same way you can track your Fedex package online in real time.  You should be able to see not only which part of the machinery currently holds your request, but the other requests competing with yours for the scarce resources to fix them.

This transparency makes it possible to track how well the city is keeping up with requests, their performance over time, which neighborhoods are getting help first, etc.  This is a good thing.  But when you see the other requests in the queue and realize that your issue is one of thousands in your community, it’s not just the government who becomes accountable; you start to be held accountable as a citizen as well. At the very least, it can shift your perspective.  It’s easy to complain that a broken light on your street hasn’t been fixed; if you could see a list of all the lights that weren’t fixed in your city, and see that a dozen people had complained that there had been a spike in crime under another broken light in another part of town and that people were really suffering because of it, you might you think to yourself “hey, it’s more important to fix that light than my own.”  This is a moment of citizenship, when the needs of the larger group take precedence over the individual’s needs. It’s also a moment of citizenship if you say to yourself, “hey, the city should know that that light should be their top priority; I wonder if I could help write the software that detects the highest needs.” But whether you’re seeing your place in the larger community or actually trying to help fix the problem, neither is possible if the machinery is opaque.  Governments may be afraid (though fewer and fewer are) to expose the inner workings and the laundry list of outstanding issues, but when they protect their constituents from that knowledge they are also discouraging them from practicing citizenship.

Transparency is a policy issue, but the rubber hits the road in software design. (Perhaps this is what Lawrence Lessig means when he says “code is law.”)  The design of the web applications that connect citizens with government matters. It can promote or frustrate transparency; it can promote or frustrate notions of citizenship. It can also make you feel listened to or ignored.  Think about how you feel when you raise an issue and the person responsible uses active listening to play back what they’ve heard and confirm that they’ve heard it correctly.  Contrast that with curt “okay, thank you, we’ve got it now” response.  The latter shuts the door on you, the former tells you that your input is valuable and further input is invited.  Software that plays back your input to you, and then invites you into the process of resolving your issue, helps you feel like a participant or a partner; it gets to the dual nature of citizenship: you have rights and privileges, but you also have duties.  Transparency functions like a form of active listening, and its subtle effects encouraging citizenship are under-appreciated in the dialogue about government accountability.

The new year marks the official launch of CFA and the approach of some major milestones.  For those of you who’ve been wondering what this is all about, you can finally get a peek at the program on the revamped website.  We’re happily moving out of “mystery mode” and eager to evangelize the program to municipal governments and web 2.0 developers alike.

What is Code for America?
In a nutshell, Code for America is a structured way to bring top web 2.0 talent into city governments to build applications that drive transparency, participation and efficiency for the participating cities, and for every city. The name derives from Teach for America, which serves as part of our inspiration, along with the open data movement, Apps for Democracy, and everyone inside and outside government who is working to transform the business of governing.

CityCamp, January 23 – 24, Chicago
The Code for America team will all be attending (and in some cases helping organize) the first ever unconference on practicing gov 2.0 at the local level. If you’re in municipal government, there are still seats available for you at CityCamp, hosted by the Rockefeller Foundation, where you can learn from your peers about their innovation efforts and connect with the community of civic hackers, data wranglers, journalists, and other technology leaders who want to help transform cities. We reserved half the seats for public sector attendees, so while general attendance is sold out, city employees can still register!  Also, GovLoop is running a contest through the end of this week to give out travel stipends to select municipal employees. Enter your city here.

Deadline for cities February 1!
Our first development cycle, which will involve five cities and 25 fellows, begins January 2011, but interested cities must apply by February 1, 2010 to be considered for the program. If you are in municipal government and would like to hear more about the program before applying, please contact me at jen@codeforamerica.org. For more information, and to apply online, go here.

Tell your representatives about CFA
We hope those of you working directly for city governments are excited about Code for America, but how can you help if you’re not a municipal employee? We’re so glad you asked! Right now, the best way to help is to let the leadership in your city know about the program. The city council person representing your district is a good place to start, but the mayor’s office, city manager, IT director, or anyone else in local government are good contacts as well. You can point them to the Call for Applications, or just write in your own words why you’d like them to apply.

For other ways you can help Code for America, click here.

Funding News
Already in Code for America’s brief existence, we are delighted to have received grants from the Sunlight Foundation, the Case Foundation, and the Louis & Anne Abrons Foundation. We’d like to thank Ellen Miller, Jean Case, and Adam Abrons for their generous support. In addition, the Sunlight Foundation has graciously agreed to serve as our fiscal sponsor while we apply for our 501(c)3 status. This means, among other things, that donations to Code for America are tax-deductible. We don’t have online donations operable yet, so if you’re interesting in helping Code for America and getting a tax write-off, email me for directions on how to contribute.

Media Round Up
Jeff Smith of CivSource gave his readers a great overview of Code for America. Read it here.

Luke Fretwell interviewed me on GovFresh about the new role developers play in democracy and the importance of their involvement. Watch it here.

I gave a five-minute talk on the inspiration for Code for America at Ignite Bay Area. Watch it here.

For more links to CFA media coverage, follow @codeforamerica on Twitter.

What’s ahead?
Our current focus is working with interested cities on their applications and the projects they’d like to have built through the first CFA cycle. We’ll soon be turning to planning a nationwide effort to recruit our fellows: the developers, designers, product managers and other talented web professionals who will bring the CFA vision to life. Let us know any suggestions you have for recruiting both cities and fellows. We’re eager for your thoughts.

Thanks for your support, and all the best for the new year.

Code for America is inspired by many people, but none more than Tim O’Reilly.  I’ve had the pleasure of working with Tim for the past four years, articulating the evolution of the Web 2.0 meme that he, Dale Dougherty, and folks at TechWeb (then MediaLive) launched in 2004.  As fascinating as it’s been to chart the impact of the web as a platform on business, the application of these principles to the business of governing is where the rubber really hits the road.
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