Office of Innovation and Technology to replace Division of Technology at City of Philadelphia

From a City of Philadelphia press release:

Mayor Michael A. Nutter signed an executive order to establish the Office of Innovation and Technology (IT). This Office, which will replace the Division of Technology, will oversee the City’s technology infrastructure and services. The executive order also established the Technology Advisory Committee, an advisory committee chaired by the Managing Director [Rich Negrin], which will prioritize the implementation of proposed technology investments and service upgrades, identify best practices and provide counsel to IT. Last week, Mayor Nutter appointed Adel Ebeid as the Chief Innovation Officer (CIO).

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This is the Advisory Committee that former city CTO Allan Frank will lead from the private sector.

It’s not the first name change for the agency either. Under the Street administration, Dianah Neff was the Chief Information Officer in charge of the Mayor’s Office of Information Services.

Philly 311 web app to be piloted in June, due for public release ‘in next three months’

Screenshots of the 311 app on BlackBerry, featuring the welcome and problem screens. Click to enlarge.

By the summer’s end, Philadelphia 311 will take another big step forward, City Managing Director Rich Negrin announced at the Philly Tech Week Signature Event.

“In the next three months, we’ll see the release of our first 311 [web] app” Negrin told 150 attendees at WHYY, many tweeting the news to a projected Twitterfall, in highlighting what’s new for the non-emergency call center.

The web application represents another, more passive front face to 311, supporting call intake volume — due to surpass three million calls received, Negrin added — and the walk-up service at City Hall.

“It’s not just your granddaddy’s app,” said Rosetta Lue, the director of the non-emergency call center. “You can enter requests, track complaints and have a community calendar with what’s happening. You don’t have to wait for our call center to be open.”

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OpenDataPhilly.org: city data catalog to launch April 25 during Philly Tech Week

The City of Philadelphia already publicly shares a considerable amount of data and information, but there has never been a reliable place to find what’s available, request more and learn what’s coming, says Robert Cheetham. That’s about to change.

As part of Philly Tech Week on April 25, Azavea, the GIS application development company Cheetham founded, will unveil OpenDataPhilly.org. The searchable site will aim to be the resource for all relevant, civic-orientated tools, applications, data and information in the region from both governmental and non-government groups. Technically Philly and WHYY are also partnering on the project, which has the support of the City of Philadelphia’s Division of Technology.

“Philadelphia has had many public data sources for more than 10 years, but there hasn’t been a place to bring it all together,” Cheetham says. “This is intended to do that, thereby making it easier for developers and other people to use that data in useful and inspiring ways.”

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Mayor Nutter on government transparency, city CTO and business retention

Copyright City of Philadelphia. Photograph by Mitchell Leff.

Since we launched a year-and-a-half ago, we’ve not only watched, but followed as closely as we could City of Philadelphia technology policy.

Even in our short tenure covering all that is involved — like municipal information technology, government transparency, citywide broadband network infrastructure, economic policy and much, much more — we’ve been witness to a city intent on finding new ways of utilizing technology and finding better ways of connecting with citizens.

Throughout, we’ve heard repeatedly from leaders that Mayor Michael Nutter understands the value of technology in city government and he is intent on involving Philadelphia’s technology community.

Though we write about these initiatives weekly, nothing was more of a reminder of the Mayor’s commitment to technology than when Nutter announced a $120 million capital investment in the Division of Technology during the pageantry of his budget address to City Council in March.

And with his support, DOT has been steered in a new direction, a Chief Technology Officer appointed to the mayoral cabinet, pilot programs created to attract technology businesses and broadband stimulus dollars and gigabit broadband chased.

So, we had to get the man on the phone to talk tech. Yesterday, we spoke with Mayor Nutter about government transparency, Philadelphia’s tax structure, and about his call to action to Philadelphia’s technology community. Our Q&A with Philadelphia’s Mayor after the jump.

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Where’s the data? A ten year old problem, city CTO says

For all the city information technology issues that Allan Frank addresses daily, its perhaps the availability of transparent city data that plagues him most publicly.

Sure, IT consolidation efforts mandated by mayoral executive order — which have transformed the Division of Technology from an agency once one-fifth the size it is now — have been a priority for Frank, the city’s Chief Technology Officer.

But often, the cry from the city’s industrious technology community has been one caused by a national intrigue in government transparency that tech can facilitate.

Cities like New York — which opened an impressive amount of city datasets for public use, and sponsored a $20,000 contest to attract software developers to create interesting technology applications and web apps — are pressing ahead with new data initiatives.

But Philadelphia lags behind. The city’s first big data win came when SEPTA released raw data around station geolocation and schedules, well after developers took their own stab at collecting data — by scraping HTML pages. Since, we’ve seen little movement from either developers or the city.

When we first covered Frank in May last year, he spoke before a crowd of Refresh Philly attendees and gave them a charge to come up with data they wanted. The effort dwindled, due in part to a lack of movement in the community and too, on actionable steps from the city.

Now, as Frank enters his first fiscal year with a serious $120 million capital investment in city technology, we’re wondering what’s next.

Late last week, we met with the CTO to discuss problems plaguing the department around opening those datasets and followed-up with Frank about how things have been for the last year, his first in public office. After the jump, that conversation.

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Philly Is “Gigabit City” (with or without Google)

Last week, Google thanked the 1,100 applicants who entered its Google Fiber for Communities contest, an initiative to test high-speed, next generation broadband — known as ‘gigabit’ fiber — that is up to 100 times faster than current average household Internet connections. As we’ve written in this column before, Google plans to wire between 50,000 and a half-million households with gigabit, an experiment which could have broad implications for technological innovation and national broadband policy.

The thank-you was but a tease for Philly’s technology community, which, as part of the City’s application to the Google Fiber for Communities contest, created “Gigabit City,” a repository where folks brainstorm specific projects that may be possible with gigabit technology. Like everyone else, they’ll have to wait until Google announces the winners in the fall, but City of Philadelphia Chief Technology Officer Allan Frank isn’t sitting around. He’s turned the city’s application into an opportunity to engage Philadelphia around next-generation broadband policy.

In the process, he’s been able to push the city’s telecommunication heavies  — Comcast and Verizon — to consider Philadelphia’s future.

Read the full story over at Philly Mag’s Philly post.

City CTO explains why 311 iPhone app is two months late

Last week, we wrote that Philadelphia’s planned 311 iPhone app — which would allow folks to submit complaints and ask questions to the city’s citizen-serving 311 agency — was two months late.

In a conversation last week, city Chief Technology Officer Allan Frank responded to some of the specifics of the article, which posited alternatives to in-house development of the application and challenged the city to take advantage of free app technologies and to turn to Philadelphia’s talented and civic-focused developers for help.

Frank said that contrary to statements in the article, the application hasn’t cost taxpayers anything — it’s been a labor of love for several employees in the department — and that the city did research low-cost and free, third-party options but found that its solution was the strongest.

So, then, why is it two months late?

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Broadband stimulus grant to provide $6.4 million for public computer centers

Federal broadband stimulus dollars will bring 800 new public computers to Philadelphia, the same number currently available throughout the Free Library‘s 54 regional branches.

On Friday the Division of Technology announced that it will receive $6.4 million in federal dollars to fund public computer centers, new and old, throughout the city, according to a press release.

Twenty-five existing computer centers will be improved and 48 centers created at anchor institutions that include city recreation centers, homeless shelters, public housing and community-based organizations. Hours of access at the existing public centers will also be increased, providing for 14,000 more people per week.

The project—led by DOT—includes partnerships with the Department of Parks and Recreation and the Free Library of Philadelphia. Philadelphia FIGHT, the People’s Emergency Center, Philadlephia OIC and Media Mobilizing Project will also be involved.

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City to release free 311 iPhone application

The City of Philadelphia will release a free iPhone app for its 311 non-emergency call hotline as soon as next month, reports the Inquirer.

City Technology Chief Allan Frank is painting a bold picture for the application, which he tells the Inqy will let users “log requests for city services and track them from their phones.”

“Anything you can do with 311 when you call, you’ll be able to do on your iPhone, and then some. OK, you can take a picture of, say, the illegal dump with the iPhone, and you can geo-locate it for us with the iPhone. All that fancy stuff,” Frank said.

Frank says future edition will become more sophisticated, trumping other cities that have already released similar apps.

City Council bill would make IT permanent part of city government

Councilman Bill Green and five members of City Council have co-sponsored legisilation that would create a permanent Charter position for a Chief Information Officer and would consolidate all of the city’s Information Technology resources under the Division of Technology.

The legislation would require the CIO to report directly to the Mayor and to create an annual IT strategic plan that includes productivity enhancements to help the city utilize paperless services. It also gives the CIO more oversight over city department technology appropriations.

“When they wrote the Charter in 1952, no one imagined there could be a paperless system,” Green told Technically Philly during a telephone interview this morning. “[The legislation would] make investment in and continual upgrade of our technology a permanent part of city government.”

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