Over time, I have come to believe that our inability to attract mass usage for our products is, in part, due to a willful ignorance of how users are motivated to civic action. To build the technologies that will transform government and governance, we need to do a better job of designing and building tools for real world users.
by Eric Hysen
...let’s stop focusing on the next killer app, but instead on building healthy ecosystems.
by Jake Solomon
So there I was: In San Francisco — one of the greatest and most prosperous cities in our country — watching a man on his knees, struggling to hear through bullet proof glass, trying to access nutrition assistance from our Federal government.
In order for us to achieve our mission we have to focus just as much on organizing the community to participate as we do on creating capacity inside city hall, especially those who have traditionally been left out of the public decision-making process.
by Molly McLeod
Over the following few weeks, a team of like-minded individuals assembled to plan a civic hackathon for Western Mass. We were web developers, organizers, and designers with a shared interest in creating community and empowering citizens through the creative use of technology. None of us knew each other well beforehand, but our commitment to the idea focused our work and created strong and lasting bonds. This was a microcosm of what would later happen at the hackathon.
by Derek Eder
Have you ever used a government website and had a not-so-awesome experience? In our slick 2014 world of Google, Twitter and Facebook, why does government tech feel like it’s stuck in the 1990s?