Philadelphia residents prepare for a basic computing class at VICA Technologies LLC at 42nd Street and Lancaster Avenue in West Philadelphia.

The following is a report done in partnership with Temple University’s Philadelphia Neighborhoods program, the capstone class for the Temple’s Department of Journalism.

Elaine Skoczylas said she knows how to type. It’s just the other things that are tricky.

“I’ve never really learned Microsoft Office. I don’t have a computer at home, but I had one in my job that I was using, I really didn’t need to know that other stuff,” Skoczylas said. “I knew how to type on our own system, so I got let go and now I’m trying to apply for jobs and I haven’t applied for jobs in 39 years.”

She’s trying to find a job now and has realized that just knowing how to type isn’t going to be enough.

“That’s why I’m trying to learn this.” she added.

To try and rectify her situation, Skoczylas signed up for a free Microsoft Office training course at VICA Technologies LLC, which is located near 42nd Street and Lancaster Avenue. She was able to take part in the class thanks to the Freedom Rings Partnership, a collaboration between 16 different community organizations, nonprofits, universities and city government officials charged with the mission of giving Philadelphians access to computer technology and the Internet while also training them in its use.

Below, watch a video on the partnership.

“The Freedom Rings project is actually the leveraging of two different federal grants as part of the federal stimulus funding package the City of Philadelphia competed for and won,” said Ashley Del Bianco, a program manager from the city’s Office of Innovation and Technology. “It’s two grants used for providing broadband technology opportunities to Philadelphia and they’re mostly focused on access and adoption.

The question is being posed: can we tackle poverty here through technology?

“Of the two grants, one is held by the City of Philadelphia, which is the lead partner and the other is held by Urban Affairs Coalition, which is a large nonprofit in the city,” Del Bianco said. “Between those two grants are a lot of key nonprofit partners and those nonprofit partners are really the strength of the partnership, which is the way we’re going to implement and enact this.”

Using the stimulus grants that total out at $11.8 million, Freedom Rings will open 77 public computing centers, provide 200,000 hours of training, distribute 5,000 computers to public housing residents, generate 5,000 broadband home subscribers and 50 small business subscribers. All the above implementations will be done through various local nonprofits and other entities. The centers are spread around Center City, North, South and West Philadelphia, and they vary from being housed at community centers to existing training centers like VICA to homeless facilities. Four of the centers rotate locations, opening at certain facilities certain days and moving elsewhere other times.

Comcast’s newly announced Internet Essential program is a supplement to the partnership, members say.

A computing class agenda is written on the board at VICA Technologies LLC.

“The interesting thing that we’ve done with this and the city has done well is to build an external base of stakeholders or partners, so when we wrote the grant, it was written in conjunction with the Urban Affairs Colition on the adoption side of the grant, so we wrote the grant so that they would appear linked but were careful not to link them so closely that if one got funding and the other didn’t, it would be useless,” said Andrew Buss, the director of public programs from the city’s Office of Innovation and Technology.

The partnership has attracted other attention, like funding from IBM. The issue of access is core to the city’s broad Digital Philadelphia initiative, and the public-private partnership model was an accomplishment touted by former city Chief Technology Officer Allan Frank.

“There are some other cities that have a similar model that they’ve received public computing center stream of funding as well as the broadband stream, however I think this model is somewhat unique in its structure of utilizing the community base of nonprofit organizations as the means to make this work,” said Lindsey Keck, a program manager from the city’s Office of Innovation and Technology.

Since winning the grants in September 2010 and centers have started becoming operational, a common type of clientele has begun to emerge: the job seekers.

“I guess it’s fair to say that among the adults, a lot of them have been focused on workforce development, and they want to come in and develop their resumes and so on and so forth, but also just learning how to use the technology,” Del Bianco said. “In many cases, they didn’t have access to it earlier in their lives and in school, so they’re just interested in learning the basics.”

What has provided Freedom Rings a foundation to grow on is the strength of its partnerships, Del Bianco said. Because community members are already familiar with many of the participating nonprofit facilities that the computing centers occupy, they are more inclined to use the centers.

“People will go to these centers because they’re already a known and trusted place to them,” Del Bianco said.

“I think one of the challenges is having this initial client base with some of these organizations. After you run through those people, how do you build the population of the people that you’re serving through the grant?” Buss said. “It’s about reaching that next group of people.”

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.”

Dozens of initial data sets, APIs and data centric mobile and web-based applications will be initially included, with more to be added, Cheetham says.

One such example is GIS shape files of city property parcels that are generated and maintained when homes, buildings and land is sold, Cheetham says. These and other shape files have long been made available, through initiatives like the Pennsylvania Spatial Data Access clearinghouse, but never in one place. With property parcel shape files, developers could create tools that work with information from the city Board of Revision of Taxes and online zoning maps from the Planning Commission to track development opportunities, Cheetham says.

“This is a huge opportunity to show how many people are involved in making Philadelphia better with technology,” City of Philadelphia Division of Technology Chief of Staff Jeff Friedman recently told Technically Philly. In outlining his priorities, Friedman’s boss, City CTO Tommy Jones, has expressed concern that limited staff capacity would continue to slow data release projects.

“We are eager to work with others to get things done,” Friedman has said.

Azavea is leading the actual construction of the portal and its design pro bono, though the current OpenDataPhilly branding came from Indy Hall regular Johnny Bilotta and an existing @OpenDataPhilly Twitter account has been maintained by TEDx organizer Roz Duffy.

Technically Philly will help grow use of the data catalog, from hosting events (like this one), covering data usage and lobbying for new data. In addition to being the official headquarters for Philly Tech Week and hosting this unveiling, WHYY will partner in supporting and growing the catalog and its utility. Additionally, last summer, WHYY funded an Azavea survey of existing data in the region, a project aiding the OpenDataPhilly catalog launch.

On Saturday April 30 of Philly Tech Week, BarCamp NewsInnovation at Temple University will feature an Open Gov Hackathon presented by Tropo, relying prominently on the new data catalog. Register here for that FREE event.

Azavea is building the data catalog as a pro bono project, with the blessing — but no funding — from the City of Philadelphia and its Division of Technology. No previously unavailable city data will be included to start, though that may quickly change, Friedman has said. Future ownership and control of the data portal is still uncertain.

Despite heavy outside involvement, the OpenDataPhilly catalog may prove a major initiative of Open Access Philly, one of the three major components of the city’s Digital Philadelphia vision.

Cheetham says, OpenDataPhilly’s goals are to:

• Improve access to data about Philadelphia
• Increase government transparency and accountability
• Drive and encourage innovative uses of the data
• Inform citizens about our region’s trends

OpenDataPhilly is committed to seeing other public sector organizations release their data too, Cheetham says, but releasing data is only half the battle.

“Raw data often doesn’t tell anything until it has been presented in a meaningful way. We want to encourage citizens to transform rows of text, numbers and shapes into apps and visualizations that people find useful and meaningful,” Azavea said in a release.

The catalog will not be limited to city and other government data, but rather a clearinghouse for meaningful, relevant, actionable data and information. Cheetham says the following data categories will available to start:

• Arts and Culture
• Economy
• Education
• Elections and Politics
• Environment
• Food
• Human Services
• Parks and Recreation
• Public Safety
• Real Estate and Land Records
• Religion
• Transportation

“Over the last five years, there has been increasing attention to the availability of open and freely-accessible data sets about our communities,” Cheetham says. “Government is one of the most important sources, but nonprofits, universities and other organizations are increasingly also offering information that can help us to visualize phenomenon in our society and build tools to improve our lives.”

Nearly half a million dollars in consulting and technology support from IBM that yesterday were pledged to the City of Philadelphia are more about education than gadgets.

The Smarter Cities Challenge, announced fall 2010, is a three-year initiative from IBM that will spread $50 million in services and tools to 100 city governments in the world. In the next six months, a half dozen consultants from IBM will start landing in Philadelphia and 23 other cities in this the first year of the Smarter Cities Challenge. Philadelphia is the largest of eight U.S. cities chosen in this round.

“I want to thank IBM for the opportunity to help us work smarter and more strategically about how we tackle the many challenges that face this great city,” Nutter said a small press gathering Wednesday. “This will lay the groundwork to create a citywide strategy that uses technology to support literacy and workforce development programs.”

IBM President of Corporate Citizenship Stan Litow was on hand, along with stakeholders from the Philadelphia Freedom Rings Partnership, a consortium of public and private entities led by the Urban Affairs Coalition and a centerpiece of the city’s Digital Philadelphia strategy. Two core reasons for Philadelphia’s application being chosen were, Litlow said, seeming buy in from the mayor and a clear proposal that fit into other city objectives. Philadelphia will receive between $400,000 and $450,000 in services and technology, Litlow said.

Once arrived, the IBM team will pore over available demographic, education, jobs and other available data, information and analysis, said Litlow, to make recommendations about investment and direction for Philadelphia’s workforce development. Put simply, the City of Philadelphia has won outside help in knowing how to better help prepare its residents for future employment.

The Freedom Rings coalition won an $11.8 million federal stimulus grant to increase internet, computer and media literacy access for low-income Philadelphians. The IBM grant can further the Freedom Rings coalition movement, said Urban Affairs Coalition President and CEO Sharmain Matlock-Turner.

“Having this kind of technical support will not only make sure what we’re doing now can be successful,” Matlock-Turner said, “it also helps us plan for the future.”

Two years ago this May, the City’s Digital Philadelphia initiative bore public birth. Some movement has been made and details secured, but what can we expect to come?

In front of 75 people at a Refresh Philly gathering in May 2009, then City of Philadelphia Chief Information Officer Allan Frank introduced an IT overhaul plan that would receive unprecedented city funding. The specifics were fuzzy then, but that summer Mayor Nutter signed an executive order that put Frank in charge of every piece of IT in the city’s gaze and there were growing budget plans, including the six-year $120 million IT capital budget authorized that year.

“My goal is for Philadelphia to be ground zero for the road map of moving an industrial city to the knowledge economy,” Frank told Technically Philly before leaving office.

What was meant to follow the incomplete Wireless Philadelphia initiative, became a platform on which Frank could fawn over the biggest and boldest plans. Those plans became the foundation of his legacy, the public face of on-going internal IT upgrade needs. By November 2010, weeks before his announced resignation, during public appearances Frank had his Digital Philadelphia pitch down pat, in three neat categories:

1. OpenAccessPhilly (Citizen Engagement) — While this topic responds broadly to interaction with Philadelphians, this has focused squarely on the release of data. Last July Frank expressed concern about city IT needs that held back data releases,  so private efforts, including projects by Technically Philly, Code for America and other as yet un-detailed projects, have moved forward on the subject.
2. PhillyConnects (Digital Inclusion) — This is likely the most successful of the three initiatives, and something Frank highlighted as something he took pride in. To start, the Division of Technology worked with various outside parties to bring in federal broadband stimulus money, including $6.4 million for public computer centers. As part of the city’s Freedom Rings program, hundreds of additional computer were refurbished for under-served Philadelphians. This has been the only issue of the three about which Nutter has made regular mention.
3. Gigabit City (Business Development) — While other initiatives around the development of tech-focused business with city input have been conceived, most have stalled, most notably the  Google-inspired Gigabit Philly turned Gigabit City initiative meant to empower ideas for building new innovation business hubs. Frank did suggest the quiet December 2009 city acquisition of shuttered Wireless Philadelphia infrastructure could help fuel these and other plans. Additionally, current interim city CTO Tommy Jones listed rebuilding Phila.gov as a major priority of his, with a focus on business utility.

So what now?

Impact has been had with PhillyConnects and wrinkles of movement — albeit with major volunteer, private support — are beginning to show in regards to OpenAccessPhilly, but the Gigabit City portion is noticeably dead — for now.

More than rebuilding Phila.gov, current interim CTO Jones says his top two priorities are about as important as they are unlikely to thrill: improve internal city IT ‘customer service’ and improve and stabilize the city network.

So while Digital Philadelphia was all about the big picture, in truth, city officials say much of the money and staff capacity at the Division of Technology still has to be focused on the basics.

Of that $120 million billed-as-unprecedented city IT budget, the first portion, $25 million, flows this year. What hasn’t already come will be in DOT’s coffers by May, but as Frank told Technically Philly before leaving, much of that is dedicated to replacing more than 1,000 city switches,  the mechanisms that move information across the city’s major network.

“With the capital that we had last year, I bought [major commercial] switches, bought hundreds of them, and now we’ll buy more,” Frank told Technically Philly in late January while still in office. “The cost of turning on the network is going up by a factor of two to three. You were running 1.3 megabits, now we’re going up to a minimum of 10 megabits [of network capacity]. The ability to increase the speed of the network has to go up when we can afford the higher bandwidth.”

The plan he was recommending to Jones was to not finalize that full switch conversion before July 1 — the start of a new budget cycle — but there was real concern about budget impact from Frank. Switches affecting public safety communication were the first priority, Frank said, and the police department had theirs turned over last spring.

“Our goal is to have, let’s just say, most, if not all, the switches replaced for, well, our goal was June 30, end of the fiscal year. We’re also implementing electronic medical records across the city — all health centers and the prisons — so in implementing electronic medical records which is state of the art [we need to do them second]. So police first, second is upgrading these facilities so that [electronic medical records] can work. The next will be fire and other public safety and then we’re moving to just kind of department by department, including City Hall,” Frank said. “My gut feeling is we’re probably 30 to 40 percent of the way there.”

Increasing the city’s network bandwidth would come next, hence the July 1 goal, Frank said.

Frank and Jones have always made clear that, like any city agency, they have to be able to manage multiple priorities. More specifically, Jones told Technically Philly that Digital Philadelphia remains as important to him as it did to Frank.

“The plans in place now aren’t just Allan’s plans, they are our plans,” said Jones. “Ninety-eight percent of what is there, I was a part of and agree with.”

For his part, Frank has remained obstinate in his interest to stay involved now that he’s out of government and about the need to get other stakeholders on board.

“This Digital Philadelphia plan is not going away. I can now make a bigger impact as a business leader on the outside who knows city government much better,” Frank said. “I also know now how much more we have to work with outside partners.”

Code for America fellow Matt Lewis leads a brainstorming session on what data residents would want to see. Photo by Sean Blanda.

City government collects the people”s data, and the people need to take it back.

That proved something of a theme of Wednesday night’s Digital Philadelphia Open Data event sponsored by Young Involved Philadelphia and Technically Philly.

Held in the beautiful third-floor theater of the Gershman Hall thanks to the Corzo Center of the University of the Arts, more than 50 interested residents and technologists came for a half-hour panel discussion followed by brainstorming sessions on what types of government information Philadelphians might most want.

Find photos of the event by John Mertens here.

“We need to tell the City that we can be better participants in our government if we can access our data,” said Aaron Ogle, a former Azavea developer and current Code for America Philadelphia team lead.

Code for America fellow Pete Fecteau sharing his group's brainstorming on desired data. Photo by Christopher Wink.

Moderated by this reporter, Ogle was joined on the panel by Division of Technology Chief of Staff Jeff Friedman, DOT software development manager Clinton Johnson, P’unk Ave founder Geoff DiMasi, who was on Mayor Nutter’s 2007 branding transition team, and Pete Fecteau, another of the seven Code for America Philly fellows.

The panel was meant to make clearer still what makes data so desired.

“It’s to hold processes accountable,” said Fecteau, the CFA fellow in the khaki sports coat and Buddy Holly glasses.

“But it has to be data that can be used, not just data for data’s sake,” DOT Chief of Staff Friedman added.

In their own way, the panelists each described the need for city government to create processes to document and share standards-based data that can be used to create tools and applications that community leaders, residents, journalists and others can employ for making government more transparent and efficient.

“There’s lots of information the city has, but we’re not set up, the business architecture just doesn’t exist yet to share this data in the right way, the right formats, regularly and accurately,” said Johnson, the DOT software developer.

He said there is little true philosophical push back from city leadership anymore for releasing data but rather concerns about staff capacity. Friedman, who also spent time in the Rendell and Street mayoral administrations, said there is true change in ethics and transparency interest under Nutter and the desire is there.

Staffing and prioritization is not yet.

“The hope for the future is the people in this room, people saying ‘Give us the data that is ours,’ and then building tools with that data,” said Ogle, the CFA fellow.

Open source public intellectual Tim O’Reilly has said that government needs to be seen more as platform, Ogle said, than a vending machine to be shook when what you ordered doesn’t get delivered.

For that, Ogle added, meaningful, accurate, updated data is an essential part.

Event Panel members from left: Pete Fecteau, Clinton Johnson, Aaron Ogle, Geoff DiMasi, this reporter, and Jeff Friedman at the podium. Photo by Sean Blanda.

Ultimately, data and the tools and applications that can be created with it should propel forward citizen action, said P’unk Ave founder DiMasi, dressed in his signature hooded sweatshirt.

DiMasi, who started the Passyunk Square Civic Association [Watch video of DiMasi discussing conflict he found from city political leadership] in the 1990s, said: “Data should empower residents to make their communities better.”

Video highlights by Sean Blanda.

Chief Technology Officer Allan Frank listens to remarks during the Information Technology Opportunity Summit. Copyright City of Philadelphia. Photograph by Mitchell Leff.

The first consolidated leader of IT in City of Philadelphia history stepped down earlier this month after two and a half years at the helm. While we covered Allan Frank’s legacy and interviewed his interim successor Tommy Jones, much was left unsaid.

Frank, who wants to be ‘the Pat Croce of technology,’ says his tenure as Chief Technology Officer has connected him to Philadelphia in a special way. He says he’s set the stage for a renaissance to come and is keeping his Overbrook Farms home so he can watch it all come about.

Below, in his own words, Technically Philly talks to Frank about how he wants to be remembered and what is next for him.

As always, edited for length and clarity.

What do we need to know to understand your tenure?

It’s important to know that I played two roles here. One was inside, running the railroad, using the information technology that makes the city run, some of which the residents see, like how every traffic light home runs to a computer within the city. [The second was working with the public.]

The number one gotcha of why I came into the city, in talking to the Mayor and that whole thing, is that technology cuts across all the Mayor’s goals. I see this role of looking at the role of technology from everything from economic development to the digital divide. What does the City of Philadelphia look like, how will we change Philly from a manufacturing base to the knowledge economy?

How will people look back on Allan Frank’s tenure as the City of Philadelphia CTO?

On the inside, I would have to say that even with me leaving, the city is on a path to understanding. First, they know what they don’t know. They know the gaps, the size of the investment required, the prioritization issues. We have more work to do than we have money, so, one, we know what has to get done.

I’ve laid out a high level strategy.

I was under no illusion that [I was going to be here forever]. I’m an entrepreneur, I’ve run tech consulting global firms, and I’ve done this for a couple years to satisfy my passion and to give something back, and it was an incredible thing to do. I can’t afford to do it. I don’t have a pension with the city. I have to eat, and I have children [Though Frank said he took a significant pay cut from the private sector, he was the city’s second-highest paid employee, at $209,000 annually, as the Inquirer reported].

This was never a long term. Someone can come and say that that [idea] should be green not blue, but the essence of my strategy, I feel good about. There is a sense that the sooner we can move, we’ll improve efficiency, so you can snap your fingers. It’s going to, frankly, take several years. With the $120 million [IT budget], well, how much can you really get done? I think we’ve set the stage.

Secondly, internally, I’ve brought in new leadership and identified new roles. We’ve created a new operating model, consolidating 100 percent of the people….

Third, the long term application needs… over the next year or two, the whole idea of how IT works needs to solidify around a new way of doing business… As people retire, it’s a great way to get from old to new. That’s heavy lifting. I estimate, and this is just Allan here, $150 to $200 million in remedial application refresh needs [in the city], so the $120 million is just a down payment. There is only so much you can do. It’s going to take 10 years [to play catch up].

I’m happy with the culture. The Jello isn’t entirely set, but the IT leaders are certainly better than it was… I think I’ve brought in 44 new pieces of talent in the city.

I didn’t need the job. I did it to get somewhere [with city IT]. I wish I could have gotten further, but it is what it is.

What are you proudest of in your time?

The public side I hope to be my true legacy. IT will come and go in the city and the city is on the path. There is no quick fix. I’m down in the basement here, and they want rockets. We’re looking at every piece of the website, the ingredients are on the table, but the baking is taking longer than I hoped.

I want to be the jawboner, the Pat Croce of technology…. for the region. We brought in about $18 million [in federal broadband stimulus funding] and $11.8 million is going to truly great nonprofits and institutions. We pulled it off.

Philadelphia will become Digital Philadelphia because we came together, not because of the city.

What was your greatest challenge in the CTO role?

The number one issue was attracting top talent. Finding four top X programmers that know Y who live in the city — because we have residency [requirements] — is very hard.

Now contractors, yes, but they cost more and might not live in the city, and I have 100 to 150 people leaving the city in the next four or five years [because of retirement]. My real disappointment is my inability to create more magic quickly.

Do you have lessons for others who might come from the private sector into City work?

I pride myself in dealing with the biggest, most complex companies and issues. We pooh pooh government, but if you want to deal with complex issues, spend one month as CTO in this government or any government.

If I’m talking to people from the commercial space, [I'll say] ‘Do not expect the world to be the same. The customer is the citizen and the taxpayer. It’s a pure model. This is the hardest thing you’re ever going to do.’

Now… regardless of newspaper editorials on city workers, I’ve gone native. I’m proud of the people we have [in city IT roles]. It’s not about making money, it’s about improving people’s lives. It’s different.

I think I was naive about how hard it is to move the mountain. I think I moved the mountain farther in two and a half years than anyone. My hair is grayer. I’ve made friends and some not-friends. If there aren’t more people like me, who will take skills and come to government and apply them. … then [our communities will miss out.]

When we interviewed your interim successor Tommy Jones, whom you recruited from D.C., he talked a lot about needing to focus on fewer priorities. Do you wish you had focused more?

Unfortunately we have to do too many things in parallel. I’m sorry, I’m really sorry I have to replace $100 to $200 million in apps that are so creaky. Basically, I don’t think that anyone could have done any better.

I could have a 1967 Chevy that is all shiny and new but the inside is all rusted, and now I have to turn this thing into a Humvee, and you are waiting for the outside to look like a Humvee, but the car is moving.

There is an expectation of instantaneous, and I don’t think a lot of what we’ve done is readily visible, It’s foundational.

If we can’t fix a [city employee] Blackberry on time, then who cares? Which is why one of the first things I worked on was the help desk. We improved it. Now when things are creaky, you might not like the answer, but it’s improved… and so we had to deal with those smaller priorities and [change the culture with a lot of big plans].

What is next for you?

…I’ll be working with the Fox School of Business [at Temple], working on an institute on a city digital urban transition.

More personally, and maybe this isn’t the time to talk about it, but I have other plans.

[In 2008], I raised private equity to build another business, then the recession hit and I came in the city. I’m going to build another business… I can’t do work for the city for a year, but I’m here for free to advise the city [as chair of the newly formed Mayor’s Advisory Board on Technology].

The impact of Digital Philadelphia really hit me. I intend to make a gigantic impact around transforming urban centers. I’m changing a part of my business plan, so I can create jobs in Philadelphia to create something that can be replicated in other cities. I’ll have an intellectual platform at Temple, [a strategic one with the advisory board and a business one].

I will promise you some very interesting things. What I’m trying to say is, ‘Allan Frank is not leaving.’

After nearly a year of research and development, the Commonwealth has launched an interactive map to detail broadband access across the state in an effort to support broadand stimulus projects.

Mapping was part of $7.3 million federal broadband stimulus grant to show wireline, cable and wireless networks and to identify anchor institutions like schools, hospitals and government buildings, as we reported in January.

The information will be used to help business owners and residents identify places to locate their operations or families, according to a press release. It will also be used in a national map to be launched in February, which will additionally serve to inform broadband accessibility projects funded by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration.

The maps compliment unreleased prelimary documentation efforts performed by the City of Philadelphia when it applied for several broadband grants last year, a process we detailed in our Digital Philadelphia series.

The City applied for more than $35 million in federal opportunities, as we reported last September.

In July, the City was awarded a $6.4 million grant to fund public computer centers in the city, which will bring 800 new computers to 48 centers at city rec centers, homeless shelters, public housing and community-based organizations.

In coming months, Technically Philly will be investigating the economic impact of broadband accessibility in three distinct Philadelphia neighborhoods, as a winner of a grant provided by J-Lab’s Enterprise Reporting Fund, a William Penn Foundation-funded endeavor.

Aneesh Chopra, the first Chief Technology Officer of the United States addresses the Chamber of Commerce event at the Cira Center.

If you think Philadelphia is mired in debt and inefficiency, try wading through the federal government.

The nation’s first Chief Technology Officer, Aneesh Chopra, offered a peak this morning inside the Obama administration’s use of cloud computing and crowdsourcing to help streamline the inner-workings of the federal government and overcome a culture of bulky IT budgets and lack of accountability.

With a bustling 30th Street Station as a backdrop, a room full of business leaders listened to Chopra outline the inefficiencies of the old way government was conducting business in an event hosted by the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce. He said that the president wanted to add transparency, collaboration and smart investment to help government be more accountable and effective.

Sound familiar?

As Philadelphia struggles with the fate of the Board of Revision of Taxes, the DROP pension program and its plans for a Digital Philadelphia there may be lessons to learn in some of the government’s efforts:

• Chopra said that every government department’s CIO must update the progress of their IT investments to display the information on the government’s IT dashboard. The site offers a graphical way for citizens and government officials to assess which investments are going to waste.
• While the city grapples with the ghosts of Wireless Philadelphia and the technology community pushes for gigabit broadband in the city, Cleveland has already begun rolling out gigabit connections to some of its poorest neighborhoods. Chopra said that the efforts took some philanthropy from technology companies and told of how one sick resident uses the connection to video chat with a doctor that specializes in the resident’s illness.
• Chopra said that a priority was taking government data and making it more accessible to programmers and the average citizen. He pointed to Health and Human Services data that was turned into a card game. In a city that guards voting records and only tuned SEPTA data after the iSEPTA guys took it by brute force, maybe we could learn a thing or two.
• The Department of Veterans Affairs often frustrates its constituents with long delays in processing requests for soldiers returning from war. The government used a Get Satisfaction-like voting system to help crowdsource the best ideas from the department’s frontline employees. They then created a business plan competition out of the top ten ideas and implemented them. A handful of which, says Chopra, came at no cost. “If you embrace openness internally you can get tremendous value,” he said, “so imagine what you can do externally.”

Chopra said that the federal government spends $76 billion on information technology each year, $19 billion of which is invested in infrastructure. While the city certainly doesn’t have resources of that magnitude, it does have an entrepreneurial community like ones that the government has tapped elsewhere to help speed along policy changes. It also has many of the same problems of waste and lack of transparency that the government is trying to solve.

So Technically Philly has to dig up an old Philly standby: Why Cant Us?

It’s not often that one is monetarily rewarded simply for an idea. But the prospect of Google building its ultra-high speed broadband Internet here is raising the stakes.

This morning, Philly Startup Leaders announced that it will award a prize of $5,000 - donated from the organization’s own coffer – for the best idea submitted to Gigabit Philly supporting the city’s grassroots effort to convince Google to build ultra-high speed fiber in Philadelphia.

In a matter of hours, six individuals and organizations have pledged to donate to the prize offering, bringing the award to more than $8,000, Startup Leaders founder Blake Jennelle told Technically Philly in a phone interview this morning. Startup Leaders hopes that the prize will continue to increase as Google’s deadline on Mar. 26 quickly approaches.

“We’ll consider this a victory if it shines a light on the grassroots movement in Philadelphia. We take things into our hands, step up to the plate, move quickly and rally together,” Jennelle says.

Only ideas submitted at GigabitPhilly.com will be included in the contest. Organizers are urging folks to spread the word on Twitter with the hashtag #gigabitphilly.

The City of Philadelphia announced its intent to apply for Google’s pilot program two weeks ago, as we reported. City officials are positioning Philadelphia’s strengths, like its wireless network infrastructure, and say that the technology would spur job creation and economic development from a potential influx of technology firms.

Councilman Bill Green and city Chief Technology Officer Allan Frank have worked together on the application, turning to members of the community for advice and support, like coworking space Independents Hall, which hosted a hackday to create Gigabit Philly’s Web presence to market the pitch to the broader community.

But support has been slow compared to other cities, says Jennelle, who participated with the Hackday. “When I looked at the numbers a week ago, we had a few dozen [submissions] and a lot of them were from the people that built the Web site.”

Last night, Frank presented his vision for bringing Google fiber to the city at a Philly Startup Leaders fishbowl, a monthly event that lets businesses vet ideas before a group of entrepreneurs. It was there, frustrated by the city’s lack of action, that Jennelle posited the idea of the contest.

“[Frank] has been helpful and is certainly trying to get Google here, but he doesn’t seem to have the power to get the city to commit to anything big on its own,” he says. “We’d love to see the city step up and use its marketing muscle and its money to make some noise about it.”

“We have eight days to turn this campaign around. That’s what we hope this is going to do,” he says.

That said, there’s some great opportunities here in Philadelphia, too. Join Microsoft’s Malvern branch for its CloudCamp unconference to discuss the growing cloud computing industry and Philly Startup Leaders hosts a fishbowl of City of Philadelphia’s Digital Philadelphia vision with city officials.

All events listed on the event calendar are free to attend. Be sure to check our complete calendar for more.

Tuesday, March 16th: Microsoft’s Philly campus is hosting CloudCamp, an unconference for cloud computing technologies. The group already has a handful of attendees for the free event. We’d like to think Steve Balmer will show up to talk about that Sidekick data loss incident, but our eight ball says “doubtful.” 5:00 p.m. Malvern. RSVP. [view more events]

Wednesday, March 17th: Philly Startup Leaders will host a fishbowl with the City of Philadelphia’s Chief Technology Officer Allan Frank to discuss the city’s network infrastructure and economic plans to create a growing technology ecosystem. This one’s not to be missed if you’re concerned about Philadelphia’s tech future. 7:00 p.m. Center City. RSVP. [view more events]

Wednesday, March 17: Also on Wednesday, the Entrepreneurs Forum of Greater Philadelphia hosts an introduction to Cleantech companies, like Finite Carbon, Hydrogen Odorization Technology and Momentum Dynamics. If you’re looking to use your brainy technology abilities in a new industry, look no further. 5:30 p.m. City Line Avenue. RSVP. [view more events]

If you have an event that you think we should be listing, email us or fill out our submission form for best results. We promise that no submission falls in to the contact form netherworld.