City CIO’s $100 million Digital Philadelphia vision

PhillyCHI chair Dave Cooksey and human-computer interaction PhD holder Kellie Rae Carter open Refresh Philly session before city CIO Allan Frank takes the stage.

The Nutter administration will invest $100 million during the next four years in city technology, according to plans unveiled tonight by Philadelphia Chief Information Officer Allan Frank.

How they will is far less clear.

Frank unveiled his vision for a Digital Philadelphia Monday evening in front of a crowd of more than 75 members of the Refresh Philly design and developer community, as rain mist drifted past wall-length windows on the 45th floor of the Comcast Center.

The CIO hopes to employ a strategy that would procure federal broadband stimulus dollars to fund a longterm initiative overhauling the city’s technology infrastructure and its Phila.gov Web site.

“I basically want to blow the damn thing up,” he said to members as they clapped in support.

Frank said he’ll be open to input from the Philadelphia tech community leading up to a rough deadline to submit a proposal for federal stimulus dollars on August 15.

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Events highlights for the week of May 4 – May 11, 2009

Can you be in ten different places at once on Tuesday to celebrate Cinco de Mayo?

Sure you can.

While this week’s events are weighted on Tuesday when ten local tech organizations will celebrate the Mexican holiday, there’s some exciting things happening the rest of the week.

Don’t miss the city’s Chief Information Officer Allan Frank tonight at Refresh Philly. While we know philly.gov phila.gov has a few, uhm, design issues, take it easy on Mr. Frank. He has feelings too, you know.

Tuesday’s a mouthful. Say it with me now: PANMA, Philly ALT.NET, Philly PRSSA, Philly Net Tuesday, Ideablob, Philadelphia SPIN, Central New Jersey Drupal meetup, Philadelphia Standards Organization. Phew! That’s a lot of Philly (and a little bit of Jerz).

Tinker with the Hacktory‘s Open Hack! on Saturday or learn a little Cocoa with the launch of IndyHall-U. While we don’t normally include paid events on our calendar, Technically Philly is watching the launch IndyHall’s new education center.

All this week’s eventy-goodness, after the jump.

All events listed on the event calendar are free to attend. Be sure to check our complete calendar for more information, or follow us past the jump.
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