Openness

In our work, openness means several things: public information is freely available and useful; the workings of government are transparent; and public institutions and those working in the public interest nurture what some have called the ‚”new commons‚” – those freely available tools and knowledge that the Internet has enabled. An important thread that connects these various meanings is the idea that by reducing barriers and sharing what we create, government and other systems that we’re a part of will work more efficiently and produce better outcomes. This idea finds expression in areas as disparate as the open source software movement and the decades-long push for better freedom of information laws.

In this way, openness is a basic requirement for the success of much of CfA’s work. Open data and shared tools are necessary to enable the efficiency and participation that we seek to help governments achieve. And without openness in all its forms, the future that we imagine – where it is expected that all parts of our society are able to join with government as co-creators of the civic space will not come to be. Therefore, openness is a core value of Code for America, and promoting it is central to our mission.

Innovative Strategies

Growing a Community of Civic Hackers: The Sunlight Foundation has led the way in terms of creating a space for people with coding skills to work collaboratively on projects that impact government. Their Sunlight Labs initiative provides the basic infrastructure in terms of staff, web-resources and guidance that powers an open community of civic hackers. At Sunlight the focus in on creating applications and interfaces that liberate public data and make it accessible to promote government transparency and accountability. This is a model that Code for America hopes to replicate with our own community of civic hackers, which will have a similar ethos and much camaraderie with our friends at Sunlight, while supporting a different range of projects to benefit municipalities.

Becoming an Open City: In the fall of 2009 the City Council of Portland, Oregon made their city the first in the nation become official “open” when they passed a resolution committing to release the city's public data online and allow open source solutions in government procurement. Near the same time San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom was requiring that his government also put its data online, and adopted a policy that open source options have to get equal consideration when city agencies are making large software purchases. A host of cities including Washington D.C., Chicago and New York are following suit, releasing more and more city data and encouraging the private sector to make productive use of it by hosting city-focused apps and running apps competitions.

Resources