New York Turns to Wikis to Encourage Transparency, Engagement – Next American City
Credit: Flickr user justgrimes
Last Tuesday, New York City took a double leap into the future of open government. TheDepartment of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT) released preliminary policies, technical standards and guidelines under the new Local Law 11, which requires city agencies to publish all public data in one online portal in a machine-readable format.
And it did so in the form of a wiki, an interactive document that enables any registered user to add to or amend the draft policies, so the public and city agencies can literally write in their own version of what they think the new rules should be. All revisions are saved under a page’s “history” tab so changes are recorded.
Think of it as Wikipedia for government. As far as anyone can recall, the wiki is the first of its kind for a city administration.
The wiki format, said, DoITT’s director of research and development Andrew Nicklin, “is an attempt to drive things in an interactive and iterative manner. Why pass a Word doc around when we can all make changes collaboratively?” The process also lets the agencies that will be answerable to the new law be a part of the conversation, he said.
The wiki will be open for comments for the next couple of months, at which point DoITT staff will compile the input, review it internally and issue final data standards in September.
Last night, Mayor Bloomberg announced the winners of NYC BigApps 3.0, the third annual competition for software developers and members of the public to create web or mobile applications using official City data. A total of 11 winning applications were selected from a record 96 eligible applications that were submitted for this year’s contest. The NYC BigApps 3.0 winners are:
Best Overall Application
- Grand Prize: NYCFacets - seeks to streamline and simplify the process for accessing, understanding, and utilizing the tremendous amount of data available in City’s NYC Open Data site.
- Second Prize: Work+ - helps New Yorkers who traditionally work from home find nearby locations to work in their communities.
Popular Choice Award
- Grand Prize: New York Trip Builder - a travel site that helps users personalize a trip in just a few quick steps.
- Second Prize: Scene Near Me - provides alerts when users are near legendary New York City movie scenes.
Investor’s Choice Award
- The Funday Genie - an application designed to help users plan a free day in New York City.
Best Mobility App
- Embark NYC - an application designed to make taking the subway simple.
Best Green App
- 596 Acres - a public education project aimed at making communities in Brooklyn aware of the land resources around them.
Best Education App
- Sage: Pre-K and Elementary Schools Search - a mobile application that enables parents to search by location for nearby NYC public Pre-K and elementary schools.
Best Health & Safety App
- TestFlip.com Personal Safety App (Lite) for NYC - a personal emergency web mobile application which helps alert the nearest Police Precinct, provides a custom emergency phone number by SMS or provides a pre-scripted voice message or a custom email by simply pressing one Emergency Button.
Best NYC Mashup
- Work+
Best Student Award
- ParkAlly - an application which simplifies the search for available parking spots and eliminates the inconveniences associated with parking in heavily populated areas.
City Talent Award
- Uhpartments - provides building maintenance reports for those users seeking apartments.
First launched in 2009 as part of the City’s ongoing efforts to increase transparency in government, as well as to improve the quality of life for New Yorkers and visitors, BigApps has grown each year and this year included more than 230 new datasets from more than 60 City agencies, commissions, and Business Improvement Districts, for a total of nearly 750 available data sets for developers.
Check out all the winning apps and read much more in the official press release. Congratulations to all who participated in this year’s competition!
via nycedc:
(via nycdigital)
Thanks in part to ARRA funding, solar energy capacity in New York City has increased 800 percent since 2007, with many more solar installations in the “pipeline.” This increase parallels the quadrupling of solar installation companies now doing business in NYC, demonstrating the economic benefits of enabling the solar market in this city of a million rooftops.
Six years ago, NYC had just one megawatt of installed solar power, and the local solar market faced extensive technical, administrative and policy barriers. A collaborative partnership, led by the City University of New York (CUNY), was formed that includes the Mayor’s Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability and the New York City Economic Development Corporation. Together they are implementing a plan to systematically remove those barriers in order to support large-scale solar energy market growth. The partners have secured three consecutive U.S. Department of Energy grants, including an ARRA grant, that led to the development of five NYC Solar Empowerment Zones, NYC Solar Ombudsman, and the world’s largest LiDAR based map: the NYC Solar Map. The map utilizes 15 billion points of data to estimate the solar energy potential for every building in NYC. Since its launch in June of 2011, the map has received over 150,000 hits, serving as an interactive tool for New Yorkers by educating them about the costs, benefits, and payback periods of investing in solar installations for their properties.
City University of New York, NYC Economic Development Corporation and Mayor’s Office of Long-Term Sustainability, Solar Market Transformation
TEDxSiliconAlley, 2011 - Jack Mason - coFarming and The Garden City (by TEDxTalks)
Astoundingly detailed map of New York City’s total energy consumption by neighborhood.
It’s not surprising that Portland and New York are ranked high in a new report about the best places to get around without your car, but the other bike-friendly destinations may surprise you. Have you tried walking to work in Alaska?
The Best U.S. Cities For Biking And Walking
BigApps: Advice from Previous Winner Aaron Royston
How’s your app coming along? The deadline for NYC BigApps 3.0 submissions is coming up January 25th. For inspiration, we checked in with previous BigApps winners for words of wisdom for this year’s competitors. Read on for insights from Aaron Royston of Sportaneous, which is a location-based…
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Check out photos of NYU-Poly’s new DUMBO Incubator for digital media and tech startups, part of the City’s network of affordable workspaces, where they held an open house last week. Located at 20 Jay Street, the DUMBO Incubator offers more than 30 dedicated work stations and an equal number of flexible access work stations, as well as networking and mentoring opportunities and business assistance for entrepreneurs. Featured speakers at the event included Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, NYCEDC President Seth Pinsky, NYU-Poly President Jerry Hultin, DUMBO Improvement District Executive Director Alexandria Sica, and Two Trees Management Director of Leasing Caroline Pardo.
Read more about the growth of tech startups in DUMBO, Brooklyn in the Wall Street Journal: “DUMBO is Jumbo with Tech”
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Maps of London and New York by ISOTYPE INSTITUTE (1944)
