1. Code for America Summit 2015

30 September, 2015 - Oakland, CA

Attended by Colin Powell, CfM Delivery Lead and Ben Sprague, Bangor City Councilor

1.1. Jennifer Pahlka’s Welcome

  • Organizational structure not setup to account for user experience when you write law and legistlation
  • Prototypes, tested with users
  • Not just immigration, college-readiness that needs new tech approach
  • START WITH USERS, not just how we should be making technology, how we should be making government
  • Go out, talk to people, ask if things are really as they seem
  • How we should work in local gov, not done for the people, done by the people
  • Cultivate the Karass – Jake Brewer

1.2. Libby Schaff, Mayor of the City of Oakland

  • Create an opportunity pipeline
  • Provide the opportunities of technology to those who need it
  • Government has not always served people equally, now we have the tools to improve
  • Mission-driven
  • #techquity
  • Properity of the technology age has to be shared equitiably

1.3. Jake Solomon, Health Project Manager at CfA

  • Delivery, continual process of understanding and meeting user needs
  • CfA has spent the year to learn how to deliver SNAP

1.4. Harlan Weber, Brigade Captain, Code for Boston

  • equal parts: Mission-drive startup, Advocacy group, Tech meetup, Social club
  • Worked with problem owners to develop their problems over two meetings

1.5. Karen Boyd, City of Oakland

  • Equity, Simplicity and Trust
  • Equity means reaching ALL people
  • Simplicity means providing simple instructions in plain English
  • Trust means making sure employees and citizens trust the government
  • Oakland has a “Digital by Default” strategy
  • Opening a Civic Design Lab space
  • Process provides an open data policy and digital standards
  • The Digital Front Door project

1.6. Panel: Building a 21st Century Transporation Network

  • Transporation is a land-use issue, not just movement
  • Land isn’t free, public pays for access to the road, and companies that make money need to trade equitibly

1.7. 21st Century Tools

  • SimpliCity product, provide answers to common questions
  • CityVoice app to solicite feedback with phone numbers and signs
  • Understanding your users

1.8. Building Data Standards on Github

  • Mark Headd, Philip Ashlock, and Renata Maziarz
  • Not a compliance exercise, about making data more accessible, not just for public, but also decision makers
  • Better Data, Better Decisions, Better Government
  • Machine read-able, platform independent
  • Who are thes stakeholders?
  • Maziarz: Be open by default
  • Have a plan for responding to feedback
  • Got criticism about lack of response to responses ... need handlers/people responsible
  • Don’t get cold feet
  • Ashlock:

1.9. Ideas from 2015 CfA Summit

  • Improving food stamp process
  • Mapping pedestrian and bike traffic
  • Providing a digital front door for users to get off on the right foot
  • Find simple ways to answer user questions (first need the data)
  • Look into what it would take to implement CityVoice in Bangor and Portland