Over the past few months, we’ve sat down with both civic and industry leaders to learn more about how technology can be used to make cities work better. In our conversations with Mark Zuckerberg, Aneesh Chopra, and many others, we recognized not only a common desire for change in government, but also a sense of optimism in the CfA Fellowship. They believed in our cause to code government for the 21st century, and they all were eager to know, “What if…?”

Their responses inspired us, so we put this video together to share their inspiration with you:

If you’re ready to see what’ll happen when the talent of the tech industry goes to work innovating city government, join us and apply to be a Code for America Fellow: http://codeforamerica.org/fellows

Today is a big day for Code for America. It’s the first day the organization will have a full-time employee besides myself, because Alissa Black starts as our City Program Director today. Don’t get me wrong, this has been a huge collective effort so far. We’ve been blessed with talented and generous volunteers (of whom Alissa has been one), skilled part-timers, and an active board of directors (a big shout out here to Tim O’Reilly, who has been a tireless and hugely effective advocate for our efforts, and without whom we would not be where we are today). But in terms of full-time staff, it’s been just me until today.

You may already know what a big fan I am of Alissa’s from my Ada Lovelace Day post, and I am thrilled that the cities working with us on our first cycle will be in her capable hands. The even better news is that Alissa is joined later this week by an equally talented third CfA employee, Dan Melton, our new technical director. You may recall us recruiting for this position; how could we have known what a perfect candidate awaited us. With a doctorate in Public Affairs and Economics, a passion for cities, civic action, and open data, and a list of projects that could not be more relevant to CfA if we designed them for ourselves, he’s a perfect fit, and we’re eager to welcome him to the Bay Area. He’ll be moving from Kansas City in the coming months.

I can’t talk about the CfA team without a huge public thanks to our summer “intern” Abhi Nemani. Intern is in quotes there because while Abhi has certainly done his share of moving furniture, shopping for equipment, and cleaning whiteboards (he taught me how to erase dry-erase ink that’s been there for more than a decade: first, you write over it with new ink –genius!), he’s so on target, so perceptive and creative, and has such capacity that I’d happily work for him. If only he weren’t going to Google in September. In the meantime, we have him to thank for our online donation set up, our fellows pages on the website, our binary art t-shirts and posters, some patriotic inspiration, two almost clean whiteboards, and so much more. I can’t wait to see Abhi as part of our team as it evolves, and hope that we can benefit from his 20% of his talents when Google gets him. Lucky Google.

We have a few more hires to make, but I’m thrilled about the talent we’ve attracted and excited to see this team deliver on the promises we’ve made.  There’s an enormous amount of work to do, but we have a clean slate, a clear mission, enormous support from across the country, and now the right team to make it all happen. Let the fun begin.

We are at a wonderful cultural moment, when the concept of big government is getting batted around, pulled apart and reconstructed in terribly useful ways.  I recently tweeted this refreshing article from Dan Palotta, eloquently giving “big government” new meaning as a vehicle for tackling the big challenges of our day and meeting ambitious, visionary goals.

Code for America was itself inspired in part by my mentor Tim O’Reilly exhorting us all to attempt bigger, harder, more important problems; this theme in his work came first as a call to hackers to “work on stuff that matters” and more poetically to “being defeated, decisively, by constantly greater beings” in his ETech keynote in 2008.  More recently he took up that theme in a government context, reminding the audience at the Gov 2.0 Expo last month that the outcomes worth fighting for may not be achieved on Internet time.  I found that talk well worth watching, so I’m including it below.

But I’m equally interested in the small of government, the daily care and feeding that makes a community work.  I spent last week in Tishomingo, Oklahoma, population 3200, staying at the home of the mayor and his family. (They are family friends I’ve known my whole life, what we call “framily.”)  This was my second trip since Lewis had become mayor in his retirement, and I was struck by how much time he spent on his cell phone, dealing with the day to day issues of a community, from signing loan documents for an upgrade to the waste water systems to dealing with a stray dog in the road.  For a job that pays $27.50 every three months (yes, that’s not a typo!), it looks like a 24-hour gig. Continue Reading »

Yesterday we honored those who paid the highest price in service to their country.  Today Code for America begins recruiting for another form of service.  We each have something unique to offer in the work of fixing our country, and if you have a talent for using technology to really engage people, this fellowship may be the best way for you to make a real difference.  You won’t risk your life, but it will be challenging, it will push your limits and give you new skills and perspective, and it will be hugely rewarding.  To borrow from the Peace Corps, it will be the toughest job you’ll ever love.

Our 2011 Fellows Application is available here.  Applications are due August 15th at 9am pacific time, but don’t wait until then to apply.  We may ask you for additional information once we see your application, and the more time  you give us, the better your chances of being selected.  Folks selected for interviews will be contacted by September 1.

Who are we looking for?  Anyone with the skills and passion to make cities work better using technology.  Many of you will be starting your careers, but others of you will have been working on the web for years and just want a chance to do something important and altruistic.  All of you will want to see your work make a difference to cities and change how government works.

We are building small project teams here, so we’re not just looking for developers.  We need designers, product managers, and researchers.  We need folks who can bring new technologies into city governments and help spread change.  We need passionate, smart, diplomatic people who get how it could work better, and can convince others of the value of trying something new.

Please help spread the word about the fellows program to anyone you think may be interested.  Information on the program is here, but check back for updates as we are working on several enhancements the program.  This is the first year for Code for America so we don’t have all the answers yet, but we’re working hard to put all the pieces together.  But no piece is more important than getting the right people to raise their hands and say “I’m in. I want to help.”  Can I see a few hands?

We had planned to announce the cities chosen for the first Code for America cycle this week, but Jolie O’Dell over at Mashable beat us to it. We’re at Web 2.0 Expo this week and Jolie got the scoop visiting our booth. In any case, we’re excited to have chosen five cities whose applications reflect a deep understanding of the power the web as a platform can bring to cities.  Each of these applicants demonstrated not only cutting-edge thinking and a willingness to invest in long-term change, but also a fantastic idea for a web app that will make their city (and any other city who wants to use it) more efficient, transparent and participatory.

The cities chosen for the first Code for America cycle are:

• Boston, MA
• Philadelphia, PA
• District of Columbia
• Seattle, WA
• Boulder, CO

What’s next for the cities chosen?  Well, we have a lot of work to accomplish between now and the time the fellows will come on board in January 2011. Part of the promise of CfA is to bring the best thinking from the web industry together with the best thinking from cities, and as part of that agenda we will be planning brainstorm days with each city, when we invite web industry innovators and thought leaders to meet with the key stakeholders inside city hall and further develop the opportunities inherent in the projects they’ve proposed. We’ll be documenting this process and blogging about it here, so stand by for more detail on these cities projects as they evolve over the coming months.

In the meantime, we extend both our congratulations and our gratitude to all the cities who applied, and look forward to working with these five bold, innovative civic leaders over the next year and a half.

I’m on vacation this week, but I didn’t want Ada Lovelace Day to pass without a shout out to a very cool woman in technology: Alissa Black.  Alissa is the Business Analyst Supervisor for the City and County of San Francisco, and most recently she’s been instrumental in the launch of the Open311 API.  It’s hard to explain why this is a big deal, both to folks in government who aren’t technical, and potentially to folks in technology, to whom APIs are everyday things, but it is a concrete and significant step towards “government as a platform” (to use Tim O’Reilly’s apt term).  And getting something like this to actually happen, especially with a broad base of support including other cities and an open source community, takes real skill, a lot of work, and a commitment to a vision.

Speaking of vision, one self-serving reason I’m such a fan of Alissa’s is that she immediately understood the vision of Code for America and has been instrumental in bringing it to life.  It’s a wonderful experience when someone not only gets what you’re trying to achieve and believes in it, but actually understands it better than you do, and adds to and refines that vision every time she engages with it.  Alissa’s background has informed her ideas of where cities can go: she was a project team manager for New York City’s 3-1-1 from 2004 to 2006, during which time that system grew and evolved dramatically.  Then, after a year in the private sector, she landed in San Francisco, where she works with city departments to understand how technology can help them, and now supervises the team of business analysts doing just that.  I can tell you from experience that she’s a great listener (listening being one of the truly undervalued skills of our time) and so understands issues to a great depth. She works through obstacles skillfully and patiently, and most importantly, she understands how technology can make society a better place.  She holds the big picture firmly in view while she sweats the small stuff with grace.

In addition to her work with San Francisco, Alissa has driving a business analysis process for the cities who’ve applied for the first cycle of Code for America.  This means that when we choose the cities who will be involved the first year, we’ll have a strong understanding of what we’re getting into, and what the Fellows are going to need to do to be successful.  Her generosity is matched only by her professionalism, and we’d be dead in the water without her.

Ada Lovelace Day is intended to honor women in technology, and like last year, when I wrote about Carolyn Lawson (who is now doing even more cool things at the state level—look for news there soon), I’m choosing to honor women in government technology because I believe this is where we’ll see the biggest impact on our lives in the next five years.  I’ve also chosen both women because they are real unsung heroes.  Thank you for all that you do!

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.