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.

Our community wants to understand why Philadelphia is so far behind when it comes to the availability of transparent city data for use by third-party developers.

It’s pretty hard to give you access to data if I don’t have a platform to give you data on, if I don’t have the infrastructure. Of the [$120 million in IT capital], one big chunk of it is to completely rebuild Phila.gov, and on the inside, the city’s intranet Citynet. Really, at its core, build a whole new kind of web platform that both sides use. Underneath it, we’re plugging in architecturally how we’re going to provide access transparently to city data.

We have such a large amount of remedial work to do and I feel through large measure, we’re catching up over a 10-year period. We have so much legacy [infrastructure]. It doesn’t do me any good if data is in Access databases. It’s not shareable. I’m not converting every database in the city. It’s not uncommon — I won’t name specific departments — to have 500 or 1,000 Access database datasets. What do you do with that? My point about infrastructure, I really need to create an environment that’s leveragable.

Everybody is like ‘why cant we do it yet?’ Besides that there so many moving parts, now there is an interesting set of questions we are asking ourselves. How do we leverage the broader volunteer web and open-source community to give us the best ideas around Phila.gov and how we make it accessible to our citizens. Now that I have the capital and I’m building the back-end stuff, I can now work with an open-source group to say, ‘what standards? How do we want to do this?’

What’s the timeline for this?

Now that I’m in fiscal year 2011, we have a whole separate group which is rearchitecting the application and data infrastructure for the city. Right now, we’re writing RFPs and doing things we need to do around actually standing up and building components of the architecture. We’re settling on our technology architecture for the web—I plan on using Alfresco for content store. We have Sharepoint we’re leveraging for a .NET framework and we’re connecting the two. We’re building a data engine that can be used both fo the public web and intranet.

Of the city’s 52 agencies, who’s on board? Who has data that is already accessible?

What I want to do is target low-hanging fruit first and say ‘what are the data sets that we can make available now.’ We’re looking at building a generic engine we can use for data access, but that doesn’t mean we cant do a one-off pilot with a specific data set so we can start experimenting.

When will we see the first dataset available to the public?

My goal would be over the next six months. Only reason I say six months is because I’m focused on building an engine and focusing on the intranet side of the data. Over the next month, I’m going to be booting up the [web community] group, to help me define input from the outside. Inside, the internal data group, I think the goals are different.

Congratulations on landing $6.4 million in broadband stimulus funding for public computer centers. A year ago, you were applying for the first round, and ultimately lost. What made this round work?

[After the first round], we went to the state and we got their input. And this time, DOT supported the submission of three proposals again, but it was really just this one that the city was [helping author]. The public computer center piece was something that as I got input from the last round, I got a sense that we would have strength. Second, it really addresses the issue of digital divide.

It’s been a little more than a year since we started covering you. How are you gauging your success and failure?

I think about that constantly. I came into city government bright-eyed, let’s call it naïve. I had never been a part of city government, having been involved in the private sector. I’ve done consulting to government but there’s nothing like being in the middle. You have to say, that in many ways, it’s taking longer to accomplish certain things that I took for granted. When I talk about building those databases, I’m very frustrated with the progress of being able to roll out a core platform. Now I think I’ve got there.

But it’s also a great accomplishment that the mayor now has fully embraced a major technology investment in the city. He fully gets it.

I would have to say I’m dissapointed in not being able to create more magic sooner. My impacts aren’t as readily visibile as I’d like to see, to have to come in and take the little money we had during the budget crisis. Remember, we now are merged. Before, I was less than one-fifth of the total IT in the city, so my ability to get things done has increased. So the ability to get $120 million and to be able to reinvest my savings into IT and create a whole new governing structure, I give myself pretty good grades on that, an “A” or an “A-minus.”

How would you grade your progress on other fronts?

I would have to say that in being able to develop external applications and things like that, I would give myself, if I was allowed to curve it, I give myself a “B.” You just can’t move as quickly as a the city. But, our business services portal is moving and as we get through this calendar year, I expect to be able to do full online licences and permits. We’re building a whole new paradigm for how you do business.

How have your conversations with the mayoral cabinet changed over the last year?

Being at the table has proved the point. There’s a voice at the table that sees the world with technology glasses on. Whether we like it or not, [technology] has a tremendous societal impact.

Every Friday, Technically Philly brings you an interview with a leader or innovator in Philadelphia s technology community. See others here.

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.

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?

What started as a front-end application to serve citizens has been transformed into a cross-departmental project, Frank says, tieing the app’s complaints into 311′s queue system, so that the same moderation process involved with the department’s standard customer service is integrated across the platforms.

“I had the front-end done overnight,” he says. “The reason I don’t have it out today is because of the desire on [311's] end to have it entered into their work management system.”

And as for a release date? Frank was mum on a hard date. “I’ve asked them, I’ve given you enough time, I’m committed to the citizens, now I’m pushing it, I’ve given you a month or two, now let’s make it happen,” he said.

Frank also voiced some opposition to Councilman Bill Green‘s belief that the Division of Technology should spend more time focusing on citizens and less time concerned managing servers.

“I wish i could spend all my time focusing on citizens,” Frank said. “Unfortunately, in a city that has somewhere between 800 and 1000 servers, 52 agencies, 19 data rooms, 300 network locations, I have to manage servers. I have to build a protected stable environment to handle an online world.”

See our Q&A with Frank this Friday for more details and a full-length interview with the CTO, a conversation that covers the city’s plans to release data to thid-party developers, consolidation of city information technology, and how Frank grades his tenure in office with 10 months remaining until the mayoral primary.

Last week, while the City of Philadelphia was busy celebrating the country’s 234th birthday, another anniversary passed by with little fanfare. July 5 marked three months since the city announced it was developing its own 311 iPhone application to allow citizens to access city data on the go. It also marked the day the application was two months late.

In an April 5 announcement, Division of Technology chief Allan Frank said the application would be available in May, yet there’s still no sign of it on the city’s 311 site or in the App Store.

While we’re certainly on board with city government embracing new technologies, there were several alternatives to the city developing the application itself that would have sped up its development and saved precious taxpayer dollars.

Read more at Philly Mag’s Philly Post.

Early this week, Councilman Bill Green and five members of City Council introduced legislation that would change Philadelphia’s Charter to include a permanent Chief Information Officer.

As we reported, the bill would continue consolidation of the city’s Information Technology resources and it would require that the CIO develop annually a 5-year technology strategy, among other changes.

We spoke with Green on Monday to put into perspective the reason for the legislation and whether or not the bill represents concern for current Chief Technology Officer Allan Frank’s leadership. Green’s answers, after the jump.

Councilman Bill Green

This emphasis on reforming technology in city government – and ultimately, cutting city expenses by going paperless – has been your plan since your campaign [PDF]. What does this legislation mean for those ends?

Essentially, I’m trying to put in place a permanent structure that will make investment in technology and continual upgrade of our technology a permanent part of city government. I think Nutter has a great guy in [Chief Technology Officer Allan] Frank. I’d like to look at 5-year planning, with a specific emphasis on paperless government and improving efficiency of the workforce. Ultimately, my goal is to save $200 million a year, once the concept and plan are fully implemented. That will take 5 to 8 years.

What specifically does the bill bring to the city’s technology strategy?

We should constantly plan ahead, look at what’s available, look at how private industry does it, and make a long range plan as we implement technology. Specifically, [the Chief Information Officer] would have to submit a 5-year plan] to the Mayor and City Council a week after the budget address, so there can be consistency in planning with respect to technology. The plan must include productivity enhancements and how we’re going to eventually go paperless. In 1952 when they wrote the [Home Rule Charter [PDF]], no one imagined there would be a paperless system. Many other cities are doing a permanent CIO by ordinance, but we can’t do that here because of the Charter.

What do you think is the most important value of having the CIO create an annual technology plan?

If you force all future administrations to put together a 5-year plan, someone’s going to be thoughtful about it. You cant do long-term investments and you can’t achieve productivity increases unless you lay out something for the long-range.

How does this legislation differ from the executive order last year placing then CIO Allan Frank in the role of CTO on the Mayor’s cabinet?

It differs because [the CIO would] report to the Mayor, not Managing Director. It also moves all the employees into a single department with one budget. I understand why they chose to do the executive order, but department heads aren’t giving up their IT portion of budget easily.

Do you think CTO Allan Frank been as affective as he can be?

I’m not at all concerned with Frank, but I’d like to see us start implementing things. It’s been two years into the administration and we haven’t made any serious technology implementations. The sooner we invest the dollars, the sooner we’ll have the savings. The Mayor mayor could [appoint] another CTO, but I certainly would expect that he would choose Allan Frank.

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.”

Last July, Mayor Nutter issued an executive order to reorganize the city’s Division of Technology, placing then CIO Allan Frank in charge of the city’s entire IT system, including 520 employees. The new role, Chief Technology Officer, placed Frank on the mayoral cabinent.

Though Green backs the work Frank has been doing as CTO, he says he’d like to see some changes. Department heads aren’t easily giving up the IT portion of their budgets, he says, a problem his legislation could solve. Green says that it is paramount that the city starts addressing tech issues like these immediately. “It’s been two years into the administration and we haven’t made any serious technology implementations,” he says.

If the bill�backed by Councilmembers Blondell Reynolds Brown, Curtis Jones, Jr., Jack Kelly, W. Wilson Goode, Jr. and Maria Qui�ones-S�nchez�passes Council and the ballot referundum is approved by voters on May 18, the legisilation would immediately go into effect.

Green expects that Nutter would appoint Frank to the CIO position should the legislation pass.

Philly Rocket Man Allan Frank has gone from Philadelphia’s chief information officer to chief technology officer and the staff he oversees has more than tripled to 520.

The reorganization of the city’s Division of Technology comes with Mayor Michael Nutter’s ninth executive order of the year, as reported by Marcia Gelbert on the Inquirer’s Heard in the Hall city government blog.

Sure doesn’t seem like the city wanted anyone to know about it though.

No press release or media advisory was dispatched or placed on the mayor office’s sleek Web site for which your tax dollars paid. Frank wasn’t immediately available for comment.

The details are below.

In addition to changing Frank’s mayoral cabinet position title — and forcing the printing of a few thousand new business cards — the move will likely be heralded for centralizing the city’s entire IT system, from equipment to personnel. Because the servers, hardware and technical staff from all 33 city departments will now be housed under Frank’s technology division, an additional 360 more workers will ultimately report to the self-proclaimed Rocket Man, who started his job last September.

The Division of Technology’s predecessor Office of Information Services was launched in 1993, and Nutter rebranded it the DOT last year. Frank, who has gotten buzz for a vaguely detailed and broadly designed Digital Philadelphia, was brought into the city government after 35 years in the private sector.

Frank tweets as Philly Rocket Man for the city and, uhm, for some reason has a personal Twitter account that seems to have no difference whatsoever in content.

Media Mobilizing Project founding member Todd Wolfson is interested in the role that media and communications can play in helping build movements to end poverty.

He hasn’t been the only one.

In 2007, MMP was awarded a $150,000 grant from the Knight News Foundation. With that money, the media organization has been helping other organizations use journalism to further their cause.

Since then, Wolfson and his team have helped create a network of 10 groups, like the Philadelphia Student Union, Pennsylvania Head Start Association, Casino-Free Philadelphia, Taxi Workers Alliance of PA and other service sector unions.

MMP’s aim is straight forward enough: teach the basics of new media concepts in order to help those groups get the good word out.

The grant helped MMP maintain a staff, create six six-week workshops to train organization leaders in Web, video and basic computer skills and purchase equipment and computers for each group’s respective community.

Now, Media Mobilizing is shifting gears.

Since its grant ended in March, it is trying to develop a business plan to generate revenue by creating video for nonprofits not in its current network. It’s also working with other groups, like the Philadelphia Department of Technology, to see what kind of opportunities can come through collaboration.

The future of Media Mobilzing seems uncertain, but strong. The organization just moved into a new office in West Philadelphia, and it seems that Wolfson has learned more than a media mogul about the future of journalism.

Still, Wolfson would probably be the first to tell you that sometimes, things just aren’t as they seem.

Rewind to 2005 when the city first unveiled its Wireless Philadelphia plan, when it hoped to provide Internet for every city resident.

It was a perfect opportunity for Media Mobilizing. Wolfson said that several aspects of its original grant application made reference to the possibilities that a wireless network could provide for a project like MMP.

Which is exactly why when Wireless Philadelphia began folding in 2008, it was a serious detriment to MMP, Wolfson says. So he took action.

“We were so excited about the technology and what it was promising. When the hopes and expectations didn’t come through and no one was holding Earthlink, the city and Wireless Philadelphia to account, we felt we needed to,” he says.

Wolfson helps organize the Philadelphia Digital Justice Coalition, a group of 30 organizations that put pressure on the city to save the Wireless Philadelphia and is currently helping shape Philadelphia’s Department of Technology’s $100 million Digital Philadelphia vision, which we reported on in May.

“We’re trying to think how the broadband stimulus package could be a part of this plan and how we need to marshall it in, in [Philadelphia Chief Information Officer Allan Frank]‘s terms, to create an information technology economy,” Wolfson says.

“But also, we need to think about digital human capital: how to make sure that all of Philadelphia has the skill sets to utilize and take advantage of the Internet.”

Wolfson thinks that 50 percent of the city’s population isn’t online, but says that the research is incomplete, and he hopes that the Department of Technology will compile a study to have a better idea.

“We have no idea what the digital divide in the city looks like,” he says. It’s something that Wolfson has devoted himself to fixing for the past 5 years.

“Watching a bunch of students in high school doing interviews with taxi drivers suffering because of a [limitation the Philadelphia Parking Authority has maintained], and watching the students grow by doing the research and journalism to understand this story is really beautiful,” he says.

Every Monday, Technically Not Tech will feature people, projects, and businesses that are involved with Philly�s tech scene, but aren�t necessarily technology focused. See others here.

Much like the state’s stimulus accountability Web site announced in March, the city will identify projects and initiatives that it is potentially eligible for, keep citizens informed with news and publicly post how money is being spent.

“We are committed to making all recovery information available on this Web site so that you can follow exactly how we are using every dollar of this unprecedented investment,” Mayor Michael Nutter said in an embedded YouTube video.

Watch Mayor Nutter’s announcement and learn about some of the 29 federal funding opportunities being planned by the city – including CIO Allan Frank’s $100 million Digital Philadelphia broadband initiative after the jump.

Though content on the site is so far sparse, the site lists in PDF format 29 federal funding opportunities in areas including economic development, energy, health and social services, public safety, transportation and infrastructure.

Many of the “shovel-ready” projects are detailed in our original coverage of Philadelphia’s bailout tech proposals as submitted to the U.S. Conference of Mayors in February.

It shouldn’t be a surprise to our regular readers to see broadband expansion plans on the list Technically Philly broke the news of the city’s $100 million Digital Philadelphia plan, detailed by city CIO Allan Frank last week. The Department of Technology is currently assembling a stakeholder coalition and is awaiting application details from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration in June before it organizes priorities for the project.

The administration is moving forward on several other projects detailed in the “shovel-ready” report.

The purchase of 40 hybrid SEPTA buses and the installation of LED lamps in signalized intersections are still planned proposals. While the city is planning to apply for $13.5 million for a “real-time crime center,” and other projects in public safety, it is not known whether or not it plans to apply for upgrades to digital public radio systems.

Electronic health records across prison and linked health systems, a $15 million project, and $115 million in upgrades and expansion to the Central Library, both included in the original proposal, are absent from the city’s current federal funding plans. [Hat tip to Phillyist]

Allan Frank, city CIO

Here’s a test.

Just how innovative and influential, forward-thinking yet practical is the technology community in Philadelphia? Because you’re being challenged.

We’re still reeling from a presentation that Allan Frank, the city’s chief information officer, gave at a meeting of Refresh Philly Monday night.

The Nutter administration is investing $100 million during the next four years into city technology, including a complete overhaul of Phila.gov, as he told 75 mostly professional, tech-savvy 30 and 40-somethings in a modern, white-walled conference room on the 45th floor of the Comcast Center yesterday.

How best to do it, he isn’t sure, admitted the former corporate careerist with a beard that could double for Wolf Blitzer’s. So, the next step, he said, could be a meeting with five or 10 members of Philadelphia’s tech community whom he’d like to bring suggestions for the future of the city’s technology infrastructure.

But, it was less a detailed plan than an open invitation. So will the vanguard of our tech community do something about it?

“It is incredible I found this group,” Frank said last night of the six-month old Refresh Philly. Why not make him realize just how powerful Refresh and all the other parts of our community can be?

Because he came to Refresh, we implore leaders like Roz Duffy, whom we’ve interviewed, and others to coalesce such a small group, reflective as it can be of the community.

It’s worth creating a real dialogue because Frank’s heady suggestions of a city with high-tech enterprise zones and complete broadband coverage were as grandiose as they are indefinite. Indeed his lofty hypotheticals seemed impractical without hard details.

But, gosh, we sure like the sounds of them, and, to be fair, Frank made clear that most of what he addressed was nothing more than dream-sourcing.

He should be commended for answering frankly — with no’s — to many audience questions directed at the city’s level of planning, even when they seemed to come from listeners unknowing of the vagaries of local government.

His request for direction and interest from the disparate factions of tech seems dangerously broad. His August federal stimulus deadline is for broadband only, but plans in Philadelphia seem to linger, fade and die, especially without explicit deadlines. Keep in mind that his big boss Michael Nutter seeks reelection in 2011 and will have to start much earlier if the economy continues to cannibalize city services.

So, does Frank just want broad ideas for a better functioning Phila.gov, or ways to span the digital divide or does he want to fight for technology that cuts bureaucratic waste — like supporting paperless government legislation and creating more user-friendly methods for paying parking tickets, requesting permits and other reasons people go into the city’s Municipal Services building and never come out. Maybe he wants less, or more?

We must keep in mind that the city is much bigger and more diverse — racially, socioeconomically, even politically — than the tech community. There are Internet stars in North Philadelphia, but in neighborhoods along North Broad Street and in West Philadelphia, the working class communities of South Philly and the Northeast are unlikely to have laptops or iPhones, to be on Twitter or using e-commerce.

The future of our city — how it is seen, how it treats us and how we interact with it — must be inclusive and fair-minded, but mindful of the future.

Can our community of innovators follow through to create sensible, responsible and possible steps — targeted, prioritized and agreed upon as necessary — and ship them to Frank?

What should the plan look like? Can a collection of Philadelphia’s tech leaders appoint five to hold Frank and the Nutter administration to the promise of a more tech friendly city?

So often technology communities speak of how rarely those in real power give them an ear. Here is one. This is a time for our community to shine.

“Philadelphia has a heck of an inferiority complex sometimes,” said Frank, who grew up in Allentown and has been in the Philly region since 1977. “But all it takes are passionate people and we can make anything.”

Who are those passionate people who will carry a sensible and possible message of innovation from our tech community to city government?