PublicStuff: NYC firm with Philly ties wins long-delayed city 311 app contract, due Labor Day, with real-time API

The City of Philadelphia has chosen New York City-based PublicStuff as the vendor to produce its long-delayed 311 mobile application, and its release will include a real-time API.

The deal is a $18,000 one-year contract and is scheduled for an initial release by Labor Day.

Why choose a NYC shop for a Philadelphia project? Two reasons, says city 311 project manager Tim Wisniewski: PublicStuff, which has a client list of more than 110 smaller cities, “provides the most intuitive user experience of all the apps we tested” and no Philadelphia firm applied.

“The company was chosen through a competitive process by a working group comprised of representatives from the Office of Innovation and Technology, 311 and the Managing Director’s Office,” said a city press release, noting that four proposals were originally received. Typically, all city contract work must be posted online, though if no local firm applied, a hole in communication between the city and a technology community may be gaping.

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Use this web app to see what city properties are tax delinquent: PlanPhilly and Inquirer project

Philadelphia has the worst property tax delinquency problem among big cities in the country.

That’s what freelance journalist and former Inquirer City Hall reporter Patrick Kerkstra told an audience of about 60 people who gathered at WHYY as he demonstrated the tax delinquency web application he helped create to document the issue. He says there are more than 100,000 records of tax delinquent properties.

“There are many blocks in the city where the vast majority of properties are tax delinquent,” Kerkstra said, at the Philly Tech Week event, which included a panel discussion.

Visit the application here.

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10 takeaways from new City of Philadelphia Open Data Policy

Michael Nutter in May 2007 celebrating a primary election victory. Photo lovingly stolen from PHLMetropolis.com.

As first reported by Technically Philly, Mayor Nutter signed yesterday an Executive Order pledging greater transparency through data releases.

Executive Orders are good at making clear top-level goals, but the hard work is left to be implemented: namely entrenching departmental workflows to ensure its objectives.

Read the full text of the Executive Order here, but first, here are 10 items that caught Technically Philly’s attention.

(Also, NBC 10 coverage here, Metro coverage here and the official press release here.)

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Full text of City of Philadelphia Open Data and Social Media Policy signed by Mayor Nutter

This is the full text of the City of Philadelphia Open Data and Social Media policy signed by Mayor Nutter Thursday.

Read 10 highlights with Technically Philly reaction to the full, 1,400-word Executive Order here.

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Open Data Policy: Mayor Nutter to sign Executive Order pledging data releases

Mayor Nutter is due to sign an Executive Order this afternoon establishing an Open Data Policy.

Updated: Read the full-text of the Executive Order and read insight on the effort here.

Mayor Nutter will sign today an Executive Order to establish an Open Data Policy for the City of Philadelphia, according to internal staff with knowledge of the effort.

The announcement comes during the second annual Philly Tech Week presented by AT&T.

The Executive Order had been long rumored and follows the more than year-long growth of a public-private coalition pushing for a clearer strategy on using data to make government more transparent and efficient.

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The city app debate: Councilman Bobby Henon plans to launch CityHall App before Philly 311

Photo credit: Councilman Bobby Henon's official web site.

A public, Philly 311 mobile app to supplement the city’s non-emergency call center was last week again pledged to Philadelphians by summer, two years after first missing a deadline.

New sixth district City Councilman Bobby Henon is promising a similar tool dubbed cleverly-enough the CityHall iPhone app as soon as next week, as the Daily News first reported.

With Philly 311 possibly dropping this summer and online reporting service SeeClickFix, it’s legitimate to ask whether the CityHall App is redundant.

On his Twitter feed Henon refutes that possibility, tweeting: ” Our goal was to create a framework that will allow us to eventually add more services not provided by other apps.”

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Philly 311 mobile app pledged by this summer: two-year-old project has missed city deadlines before

Screenshots of the Philly 311 Blackberry app, as provided by the city in March 2011.

The City of Philadelphia is promising to ship a public mobile application to supplement its non-emergency 311 call enter. Again.

“We’re absolutely going to have one,” said Managing Director Rich Negrin during a budget hearing last week, as first reported by the Daily News. Pledged by this summer, the tool would give citizens another pipeline to register complaints for things like potholes and dangerous sidewalks.

But haven’t we heard this before, Technically Philly asked Negrin, reminding him that last year was the second, major missed deadline on a project that has lingered for no fewer than two years?

“You got that wrong,” Negrin told Technically Philly. “We delivered an app last year for limited use by our PhillyRising team. Last year’s effort was limited to Blackberry because that is what we issue employees so that made sense.”

That much appears to be true. City Chief Innovation Officer Adel Ebeid confirms the August 2011 deployment of a private, internal Blackberry focused service — not a native application — that was shared across relevant city-issued devices. (Just two months late on that original internal goal).

The last eight months have been pure, sweet user feedback, says Ebeid, who took over in August from interim CTO Tommy Jones, who transitioned out of city government earlier this year. Why should anyone think this deadline is any different?

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Code for America hires local #opengov hacker Mark Headd, one-man Philly office

Mark Headd, a former #opengov evangelist for Voxeo, will lead government relations for Code for America, while being based in Philadelphia.

Code for America isn’t yet halfway through its second fellowship year, but, as of today, Philadelphia now already has a direct stake in its third year and beyond.

The much celebrated program that puts technologists in year-long partnerships with city governments has hired Mark Headd, the good government hacker and former Voxeo #opengov evangelist, to lead its government relations efforts. Headd, a Wilmington, Del. resident whose projects we have covered before, will have office space in or near to Center City.

“Code for America has already had an impact, and I’m excited to help that cause,” said Headd, 43, on a recent walk with Technically Philly in University City. Though Philly is a clear partner, his role will involve extensive travel, he said.

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OpenDataPhilly: new updates include bicycle rack data, Septa API, city spatial data [UPDATED]

A map of bicycle rack locations, as provided by developer Mark Headd.

Several new data sets, including bicycle rack locations, have been added to OpenDataPhilly in recent months, says Deb Boyer, the Azavea project manager at the GIS development shop Azavea that built the searchable resource of civic data.

Some of the updates were motivated by requests sent into the OpenDataRace, which Technically Philly covered previously and, full disclosure, helped launch.

Here are some of the most recent updates:

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Second generation Code for America fellows benefit from example set by predecessors

The 2012 Philadelphia Code for America fellows: Michelle Lee, Alex Yule and Liz Hunt

For the second straight February, a pack of Code for America fellows is making its presence known throughout civic life in Philadelphia, particularly around technology, in a very simple way: showing up, a lot.

The three 2012 fellows dedicated to the City of Philadelphia — Michelle Lee, Alex Yule and Liz Hunt — only have a week left to learn the ins and outs of this local government and its citizen allies before they return to San Francisco for the rest of their fellowship, but lucky for them, their path has been paved before.

Philadelphia is the only city to host two generations of CfA fellows and so far, and the new fellows think the lineage has been an asset.

“Having an understanding of the players and bringing them into the same room has been an advantage as a second year city.” said Lee, who had lived in Philadelphia prior to becoming a fellow.

In Philadelphia, a city notorious for fierce loyalty to its own, that’s no surprise.

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