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#civictech

15 posts15 participants1 post today
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James Turk

I'm working with a few people hoping to put together a small cohort of (paid) civic/public interest fellowships this summer.

If you work with an org/project that could use the help, or might be interested in mentoring/donating, please take a few minutes to fill out this form for them:

docs.google.com/forms/d/1WsyaK

Google DocsSummer of Civic Hacking Interest FormWe are hoping to put together a small coalition of organizations to take on fellows to work on public-facing civic technology projects. This short survey will help us evaluate if we'll be able to do so for this summer. The ideal organization has an existing project that could use a junior dev/experienced student contributor, and would be able to offer a dedicated mentor available for regular checkins throughout the summer. If your organization has a project but no mentor available, or you/your organization are available to mentor but do not have a project in mind, we still welcome you to fill out this form as we are trying to decide if it will be possible to provide assistance.
#civictech#opensource
Public
Joshua Kaden

I just added a colorful feature to my free NYC buildings app: a kind of noiseometer! Each building has one of 10 colors, according to how many 311 Noise complaints were submitted in the last 12 months. There’s also a setting for Heat/Hot Water complaints.

My thought is that this might be useful for someone looking to move in the five boroughs. In any case, this update gives the app some much-needed color!
apps.apple.com/us/app/gotham-e

A screenshot of an iPad app showing a colorful map of an NYC neighborhood. Each building has one of 10 colors, according to how many 311 Noise complaints were submitted in the last 12 months. 0-1 is given green; 2-3 is given a lighter green, and the colors proceed to get warmer by sets of 2, until we we reach the tenth color, dark purple, which represents 18 or more.
Public
PROJEKT CH+

Wenn man sich selbst belügt, um nicht zuzugeben, dass man falsch lag, nennt man das kognitive Dissonanz. Kognitive Dissonanz ist ein starker Grund, weshalb Menschen Fakten ablehnen und sich radikalisieren.

Fehler einzugestehen, ist unangenehm, aber notwendig – für persönliches Wachstum und eine funktionierende Demokratie. Wer sich irrt und es zugibt, zeigt Stärke. 🔄

#politik#_politik#politics
Public
Hugh

Hi folks! It’s time for me to find a new job. I’m excited about things like “making (or improving) your websites and web apps”, “collaborating on your developer relations strategy” and “building fun and engaging prototypes and demos”. I’m particularly interested in #civictech and #musictech. I live in rural NL, so remote is strongly preferred. I have about 10 YOE at some recognizable companies, and am excited about building strong positive teams #getfedihired

Public
Civic Innovations

Accountability and the Challenge of Government Technology Reform

In his book “The Unaccountability Machine”, author Dan Davies introduces the idea of an “accountability sink” — a construct where responsibility is deliberately diluted or dispersed so that no single person can easily be blamed for a decision that gets made. This concept can be a useful lens for understanding some of the biggest challenges facing government reform efforts advocated for by those in civic tech – changes that will enable governments to adopt new technologies more quickly and more efficiently.

Intuitively, we understand that accountability is an essential concept for how governments works. But It’s also sometimes why governments can not work so well. A number of key government processes are deliberately engineered to distribute or insulate accountability, as an attempt to protect against bias, favoritism, or potential corruption. But in doing so, these same processes can also create barriers to speed, flexibility, and innovation.

Government procurement processes are often criticized for being labyrinthine, cumbersome, and poorly suited to selecting the best technology partners. And this is fair criticism—these processes often result in outcomes that seem arbitrary or unreasonable. But that’s largely by design. The procurement process is an accountability sink—intentionally so. Its structure is meant to minimize the role of individual discretion in awarding contracts, ensuring selection through formal evaluations of documented past performance, capabilities statements, and structured steps like coding challenges. People often rightly point out that government procurement processes are not set up well to identify talented vendor partners to support government agencies. But they often miss that they are intentionally set up in a way that is meant to be fair and even handed – a structure that reduces individual accountability, and also individual discretion.

Another favorite whipping boy of the civic tech community is the Authority to Operate (ATO) process. This process is structured the way it is for the exact opposite reason—not to dilute accountability, but to pinpoint it. ATO’s ensure that there is a clearly identified individual (the authorizing official) who formally accepts the risk of launching a new system into production. It’s precisely because the ATO process concentrates accountability so sharply that it tends to move so slowly. Authorizing officials have strong incentives to demand detailed documentation of new systems, thorough (sometimes lengthy) reviews, and careful assurances from system owners before signing off. They know that if something goes wrong, they are the ones that will be held accountable.

Both of these examples show how the idea of an accountability sink can help explain why some government processes often seem illogical (or broken, to use a common refrain from the world of civic tech) when viewed purely through the lens of efficiency or innovation. These processes weren’t designed to move fast. They were designed to manage risk, to try and ensure fairness, and provide clear lines of responsibility — critical values in delivering public services.

That’s why reforming these processes can be so hard. It’s not enough to simply make them faster or more streamlined. Any effort to reform these processes must grapple with the fact that these systems are designed intentionally to dilute or concentrate accountability. The difficult, often overlooked part of any reform effort isn’t just simplifying the process. It’s building new processes that maintain the balance of accountability that the old processes were designed with.

Government processes often move slowly, and this can often impact the way in which new digital solutions are adopted by government agencies. However, understanding why processes are structured the way they are is critical if we are going to reform them.  It isn’t accurate to view these processes as “broken,“ they were designed with intention and they work largely as designed.

#AI#CivicTech#government
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