PublicStuff: NYC firm with Philly ties wins long-delayed city 311 app contract, due Labor Day, with real-time API

The City of Philadelphia has chosen New York City-based PublicStuff as the vendor to produce its long-delayed 311 mobile application, and its release will include a real-time API.

The deal is a $18,000 one-year contract and is scheduled for an initial release by Labor Day.

Why choose a NYC shop for a Philadelphia project? Two reasons, says city 311 project manager Tim Wisniewski: PublicStuff, which has a client list of more than 110 smaller cities, “provides the most intuitive user experience of all the apps we tested” and no Philadelphia firm applied.

“The company was chosen through a competitive process by a working group comprised of representatives from the Office of Innovation and Technology, 311 and the Managing Director’s Office,” said a city press release, noting that four proposals were originally received. Typically, all city contract work must be posted online, though if no local firm applied, a hole in communication between the city and a technology community may be gaping.

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Use this web app to see what city properties are tax delinquent: PlanPhilly and Inquirer project

Philadelphia has the worst property tax delinquency problem among big cities in the country.

That’s what freelance journalist and former Inquirer City Hall reporter Patrick Kerkstra told an audience of about 60 people who gathered at WHYY as he demonstrated the tax delinquency web application he helped create to document the issue. He says there are more than 100,000 records of tax delinquent properties.

“There are many blocks in the city where the vast majority of properties are tax delinquent,” Kerkstra said, at the Philly Tech Week event, which included a panel discussion.

Visit the application here.

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10 takeaways from new City of Philadelphia Open Data Policy

Michael Nutter in May 2007 celebrating a primary election victory. Photo lovingly stolen from PHLMetropolis.com.

As first reported by Technically Philly, Mayor Nutter signed yesterday an Executive Order pledging greater transparency through data releases.

Executive Orders are good at making clear top-level goals, but the hard work is left to be implemented: namely entrenching departmental workflows to ensure its objectives.

Read the full text of the Executive Order here, but first, here are 10 items that caught Technically Philly’s attention.

(Also, NBC 10 coverage here, Metro coverage here and the official press release here.)

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Full text of City of Philadelphia Open Data and Social Media Policy signed by Mayor Nutter

This is the full text of the City of Philadelphia Open Data and Social Media policy signed by Mayor Nutter Thursday.

Read 10 highlights with Technically Philly reaction to the full, 1,400-word Executive Order here.

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Open Data Policy: Mayor Nutter to sign Executive Order pledging data releases

Mayor Nutter is due to sign an Executive Order this afternoon establishing an Open Data Policy.

Updated: Read the full-text of the Executive Order and read insight on the effort here.

Mayor Nutter will sign today an Executive Order to establish an Open Data Policy for the City of Philadelphia, according to internal staff with knowledge of the effort.

The announcement comes during the second annual Philly Tech Week presented by AT&T.

The Executive Order had been long rumored and follows the more than year-long growth of a public-private coalition pushing for a clearer strategy on using data to make government more transparent and efficient.

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Who owns OpenDataPhilly.org?

The OpenDataPhilly.org unveiling during the first Philly Tech Week in April 2011.

OpenDataPhilly.org, the civic-orientated directory of information, tools and apps that launched during last year’s Philly Tech Week, will mark a year in existence later this month. In that time, dozens of new data-infused items have been added, thousands of developers and hobbyists have visited and a local network of hackathons have embraced it as the natural starting point for projects.

The only trouble might be that no one is quite sure who owns it, a strange hiccup in what may have been among the first and largest municipal data portals created outside of city staff.

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The city app debate: Councilman Bobby Henon plans to launch CityHall App before Philly 311

Photo credit: Councilman Bobby Henon's official web site.

A public, Philly 311 mobile app to supplement the city’s non-emergency call center was last week again pledged to Philadelphians by summer, two years after first missing a deadline.

New sixth district City Councilman Bobby Henon is promising a similar tool dubbed cleverly-enough the CityHall iPhone app as soon as next week, as the Daily News first reported.

With Philly 311 possibly dropping this summer and online reporting service SeeClickFix, it’s legitimate to ask whether the CityHall App is redundant.

On his Twitter feed Henon refutes that possibility, tweeting: ” Our goal was to create a framework that will allow us to eventually add more services not provided by other apps.”

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Philly 311 mobile app pledged by this summer: two-year-old project has missed city deadlines before

Screenshots of the Philly 311 Blackberry app, as provided by the city in March 2011.

The City of Philadelphia is promising to ship a public mobile application to supplement its non-emergency 311 call enter. Again.

“We’re absolutely going to have one,” said Managing Director Rich Negrin during a budget hearing last week, as first reported by the Daily News. Pledged by this summer, the tool would give citizens another pipeline to register complaints for things like potholes and dangerous sidewalks.

But haven’t we heard this before, Technically Philly asked Negrin, reminding him that last year was the second, major missed deadline on a project that has lingered for no fewer than two years?

“You got that wrong,” Negrin told Technically Philly. “We delivered an app last year for limited use by our PhillyRising team. Last year’s effort was limited to Blackberry because that is what we issue employees so that made sense.”

That much appears to be true. City Chief Innovation Officer Adel Ebeid confirms the August 2011 deployment of a private, internal Blackberry focused service — not a native application — that was shared across relevant city-issued devices. (Just two months late on that original internal goal).

The last eight months have been pure, sweet user feedback, says Ebeid, who took over in August from interim CTO Tommy Jones, who transitioned out of city government earlier this year. Why should anyone think this deadline is any different?

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Code for America hires local #opengov hacker Mark Headd, one-man Philly office

Mark Headd, a former #opengov evangelist for Voxeo, will lead government relations for Code for America, while being based in Philadelphia.

Code for America isn’t yet halfway through its second fellowship year, but, as of today, Philadelphia now already has a direct stake in its third year and beyond.

The much celebrated program that puts technologists in year-long partnerships with city governments has hired Mark Headd, the good government hacker and former Voxeo #opengov evangelist, to lead its government relations efforts. Headd, a Wilmington, Del. resident whose projects we have covered before, will have office space in or near to Center City.

“Code for America has already had an impact, and I’m excited to help that cause,” said Headd, 43, on a recent walk with Technically Philly in University City. Though Philly is a clear partner, his role will involve extensive travel, he said.

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Open San Diego: open data catalog for California city uses OpenDataPhilly source code from Azavea

Azavea’s OpenDataPhilly.org open source code has popped up in an open data catalog at Open San Diego, which launched in beta last week.

In November 2011, Open Chattanooga built a similar catalog using the code, as Technically Philly reported. OpenDataPhilly was first unveiled at last year’s Philly Tech Week and the latest news on the local data catalog will be shared at the OpenAccessPhilly Showcase during the second annual Philly Tech Week presented by AT&T next month.

The new San Diego catalog, which is currently being tested by participants in the San Diego Apps Challenge, simply directs users to data from a variety of San Diego government agencies, which Open San Diego founder and organizer Jed Sundwall says the city freely provides. Beyond that, he says the organization hasn’t had had the resources to seek out additional datasets.

“We’re still not clear on which datasets are most valuable to open up,” Sundwall said. “We want to figure out the best way to organize and present a wide variety of datasets first – Azavea’s work has really helped us with that.”

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