Blake Jennelle, receiving the oath of his 'urban cowboy' office from City Councilman Bill Green in front of a City Hall that is, by our best estimation, entirely unrelated to Philadelphia. Screenshot via a video from Revzilla

No one can be sure about the accuracy of Blake Jennelle‘s stereotype of a cowboy. Or how authentically the Philly Startup Leaders co-founder says ‘howdy.’

But what Jennelle has done is made a pledge, donned a Western hat and begun a month of wandering Philadelphia as an urban cowboy, the pledge he made as part of myDunkTank, the new experimental fundraising website launched last month by Jennelle and partner Chap Ambrose.

To participate in the site, individuals promise to do acts of personal humiliation if pledge goals for charities of their choice are met. The thought is that the more embarrassing, the more successful the fundraising effort.

Jennelle raised $2,095 for youth social business incubator Startup Corps, according to a post on his blog. To follow through with his pledge, Jennelle will spend 30 days parading through the city in denim, boots and a beard. He’ll be chronicling his adventures on the site’s blog.

Below, watch a spoof video from motorcycle retailer RevZilla that chronicles Jennelle’s ‘transformation’ into the myDunkTank cowboy, including a cameo from City Councilman Bil Green.

Watch Jennelle speaking at a recent PSL event — in cowboy garb.

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 Quiñones-Sánchez—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.

SEPTA passengers and city programmers alike have reason to celebrate.

The region’s transportation organization announced today that it has integrated its trip planning services with Google Transit and that it will give third-party developers access to location and scheduling data, as reported earlier.

The first phase of SEPTA’s Google Transit offering provides route planning automated by Google for its Regional Rail, Market Frankford El, trolley routes and Norristown high-speed services. Users can enter a start point and a destination and are quickly returned directions that utilize Philadelphia’s public transportation system.

“Google Transit will help us introduce SEPTA and the convenience of using public transit when visiting our destinations in the city and the region,” SEPTA General Manager Joe Casey told members of the press on the Mezzanine level of SEPTA headquarters on East Market Street earlier today.

SEPTA plans to integrate the city’s sprawling bus lines in a second phase launch later this year, after it geo-maps 15,000 route locations. It hopes to become the first U.S. transit agency to make all of its methods of transportation available on Transit.

The developer specifications, formatted in Google’s open location and scheduling standard Google Transit Feed Specification, are already available at http://septa.org/developer.

SEPTA spokesman Brian Anderson told Technically Philly that for now, only a download is available.

“We don’t have the resources to create a developer community,” he said. An RSS feed on the developer site will keep coders up-to-date with new offerings, including the second phase bus data.

In addition to the Google Transit service, SEPTA will unveil real-time travel advisory alerts powered by Twitter later this week, and a real-time schedule building tool for Regional Rail riders in “several weeks.” That service, called “Next to Arrive,” will allow users to enter a train station and see the next four scheduled trains and their real-time travel status.

Google Transit integration was completed free of cost with the collaboration of Google and will work in conjunction with SEPTA’s current Trip Planner offering.

City Councilman Bill Green demonstrated the new service on his black iPhone 3G in front of onlookers at the media event. “It tells me what buses to take to what trains to what trolleys. I just follow those directions and I get there quickly and efficiently,” he said.

Green said this is only the beginning of city initiatives that are part of an effort to attract broadband stimulus grants that will make government data available to developers to create applications.

“SEPTA is getting there first,” he quipped.