Welcome to my website, where you can find articles and presentations about civic tech, digital transformation, grassroots humanitarian aid and other topics.
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Does Mayor Adams Know How to Reform the City’s Troubled IT Bureaucracy? MyCity Shows He Doesn’t
This article was originally published on Gotham Gazette on April 17, 2023 When Bill de Blasio took office as Mayor in 2014, everyone knew government information technology agencies needed significant reform but didn’t know how exactly to do it. His predecessor, Mayor Bloomberg, was a venerated technology executive who had a hugely embarrassing software development fiasco called City […]
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Better Late Than Never: Time for the Public Advocate to Convene COPIC
This article was originally published on Gotham Gazette on July 18, 2022 Now that New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams’ long-shot campaign for New York Governor is over, he presumably has more time to focus on performing the functions that the New York City Charter assigns to his elected office. One function he has yet to […]
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An Early Test of The Adams Administration’s Values and Tech Prowess
This article was originally published on Gotham Gazette on April 11, 2022 In 2019, New Yorkers voted overwhelmingly in favor of establishing a Civic Engagement Commission that would modernize how the city and its residents worked together to identify and solve problems at the most local levels. That commission hasn’t been earning itself many headlines, but the […]
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Who is NYC Chief Technology Officer Matthew Fraser and Will He Deliver What’s Desperately Needed?
This article was originally published on Gotham Gazette on January 24, 2022 The de Blasio administration acknowledged that New York City desperately needs a Digital Service Organization (DSO) when it announced less than a month before the mayor left office that it wants to hire people for a new “NYC Digital Services” unit that would apply best practices in […]
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De Blasio Administration Announces Long-Sought ‘NYC Digital Service’ Just Days Before Adams Takes Over
This article was originally published on Gotham Gazette on December 15, 2021 New York City’s civic technology community has for many years been calling on city government to establish a Digital Service Organization (DSO). DSOs are technology groups organized within government agenies that use open source software to create their own technology solutions instead of buying proprietary services […]
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“What is WeGovNYC?”, presented online for NYC Open Data Week 2021
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Going from Spreadsheets to Airtable to Apps presented online for NYC Open Data Week 2021
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New Yorkers Must Break Free From Our Stockholm Syndrome
This article was originally published on Gotham Gazette on June 16, 2020 When it became clear to Jan-Erik Olsson that he wouldn’t be able to flee the bank he was attempting to rob, he decided to take hostages. For six days in August of 1973, the four hostages and their captor got to know each other, and […]
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Buildings Apps “With Not For” presented at School of Data event in New York City on March 7th, 2020
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Community WiFi is Already Here, Now It’s Time to Expand It
This article was originally published on Gotham Gazette on September 13, 2019 While politicians and industry focus on 5G wireless, the democratization of more common wireless technology has quietly made community-run wifi networks faster, better and cheaper than cable. Look for wifi anywhere in New York City and you’ll likely find dozens of locked networks, each of […]
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