Sen. Toomey talks to Rep. Paulsen after the press conference. Rep. Meehan in the background.

As if the Obama Administration’s healthcare bill —The Affordable Care Act — wasn’t under enough fire this week with the start of Supreme Court hearings yesterday, medical technology trade organization AdvaMed held a press conference with congressmen from Pennsylvania and Minnesota to call for the repeal of the medical device tax instated by the bill and herald the release of a new report that benchmarks the competitiveness of the medical technology industry in the United States.

U.S. Senator Pat Toomey (PA), U.S. Rep. Jim Gerlach (6th-PA), U.S. Rep. Pat Meehan (7th-PA), Co-chair of the Congressional Med Tech Caucus U.S. Rep. Erik Paulsen (3rd-MN), and U.S. Rep. Charlie Dent (15th-PA) joined the University City Science Center’s Stephen Tang, David Nexon of AdvaMed and other leaders of the Pennsylvania bio tech industry at Quorum to discuss the negative impact the new 2.3 percent tax would have on U.S. competitiveness in the global biotech market.

The tax, which is scheduled to take effect in 2013, could apply to a range of medical devices from retail products like hearing aids to advanced medical technology, like MRIs, according to an AdvaMed press release. AdvaMed estimates the tax could result in the loss of up to 43,ooo jobs across the United States and views the tax as a threat to America’s competitiveness in the global medical technology market.

“Now our tax system is so uncompetitive for high-tech manufacturing industries like ours that the taxes our government applies to activities conducted in the U.S. are two and a half times higher than taxes foreign government levy on those same activities abroad,” said Nexon.

All the congressmen present registered their support of the life sciences industry in Pennsylvania. You can view the each of their remarks below.

Senator Toomey spoke of being more “bullish” about supporting life science and medical technology in Pennsylvania.

“We are poised to dominate this field,” said Senator Toomey.

Representative Gerlach said the work he will do with Representative Paulsen on the Ways and Means Committee will support the life sciences industry.

“We have to make sure that we’re incentivizing the investment in this particular industry, the life science industry,” said Gerlach.

Representative Meehan discussed the importance of life sciences to the Pennsylvania economy and the competitiveness of the medical technology industry on the global market.

“When we talk about the growth of the middle class in India and China, I do not want it to be at the expense of the middle class here,” said Representative Meehan.

Representative Dent discussed the impact of “this really devastating tax” on some of the medical technology companies he works with in his district.

Representative Paulsen, who co-chairs the medical technology caucus, discussed why the medical device tax is a threat to an industry he believes to be an “American success story.”

“There is no doubt that it is a tax on innovation,” said Paulsen.

The full report, “The Economic Impact of the U.S. Advanced Medical Technology Industry,” which was prepared for AdvaMed by the Battelle Technology Partnership Practice, is available here.

• Hack: A Technology Based Design & Art Exhibition, Seeking Funding on Kickstarter [Geekadelphia] “Andrew Zahn Cameron and his team are seeking “a range of works: From 2D to 3D works, applications, wearables, installation, objects, and performances.” Cameron is seeking submissions now through April 6th.
• Penn celebrate 66th anniversary of world’s first computer [Daily Pennsylvanian] “Created in 1946, the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, better known as ENIAC, was the first-ever general-purpose electronic computer.” Last year, for its 65th birthday, we covered the computer extensively.
• Quewey: Turn Business Knowledge into Bucks [Geekadelphia] “Utilizing the LinkedIn API as a method to verify professional standing, Quewey aims to create a business-oriented community that will connect knowledge keepers with knowledge seekers.” Philly Tech News covered the launch, too.

• Yahoo’s Patent Suit Against Facebook Is A ‘Crock Of Shit’ (Plus, It Pulled This Move On Pre-IPO Google) [TechCrunch] Center City lawyer Lenny Kravets makes a clarification about the number of Facebook patents.
• Riding SEPTA? Watch out for your cellphone [Philadelphia Daily News] “Most of last year’s 415 thefts and robberies committed on the Broad Street Line and the Market Frankford El involved smart- phones, e-readers and laptops…”
• Penn Biotech Spinout Receives Support From Science Center New Ventures Program, Takes Office and Lab Space at Port Business Incubator [GlobeNewsWire]
• Workforce growth in Philly? It’s a question of acquisitions [Philly.com]
• Beerjobber Gets Its Irish on for St. Patrick’s Day! [Beerjobber blog] – The online craft beer marketplace is celebrating St. Patrick’s Day
• Maiden Media Selected as Digital Agency for La Yogurt Probiotic [citybizlist]
• Trenton Computer Festival, the early days of computing, and me [ZDNet Blogs via Philly Tech News]
• Fed Up With Your Business Phone System? Alteva Answers the Call with a 35-Seat Communications Makeover in its “My Phone Stinks” Contest [Alteva]
• StarCite, Part of Active Network, and Worldhotels Announce New Partnership [PRNewsWire]
• Councilman W. Wilson Goode, Jr. Discusses Opportunity Legislation [GPCC News]

Tilahun Afessa, the Director for Policy, Planning and Outreach for the Revenue Department of the City of Philadelphia, discussing coming changes in the local tax code, during a session at first-floor storefront in the Indy Hall building.

Talk the specifics of tax reform legislation long enough, and things will probably get confusing. So, attendees of an informational session on the impact of new city tax policy legislation had a lot to process from text-packed slides.

Councilman Bill Green, who co-sponsored one half of the bills and is making this a core tenet of his outspoken plans to run for mayor in 2015, was on-hand to try to make things a little simpler.

“This is really good news,” Green said at the event Tuesday night, hosted by the city’s Office of Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy. “And if we work hard, we’re going to have more of an impact in the future.”

More specifically, of 90,000 licensed businesses in Philadelphia, fully 30,000 would be fully exempt from city business privilege taxes when the reform is fully implemented by 2016, tweeted:

The new policy, which passed committee in October and was approved by Council and the mayor in November, will have a series of steps toward full-implementation, scheduled for 2016, right when Green seems to expect to be settling into his new role of city chief executive.

Below, find video of Green talking about the tax reform legislation, presentation slides detailing the changes and five of the biggest reforms you should know about.

Watch video of Green’s introduction at the event of the tax reform legislation.

For now, the administration, which rejected a 2010 version of the legislation but worked with Green to shape the policy with Chamber of Commerce input, has partnered to organize a series of town halls to try to make sense of these changes for those they’ll most affect.

As many as 30 freelancers, small business owners and others interested in the policy change came out for the event, held in first-floor storefront portion of the building that houses Old City coworking shop Indy Hall, which partnered in organizing the event. Full disclosure: Technically Philly was a media sponsor of the event.

Though there was little question that the event was largely a platform for Green, most of the two-hour session was made of the above Powerpoint presentation from Tilahun Afessa, the Director for Policy, Planning and Outreach for the Revenue Department of the City of Philadelphia.

See the presentation slides from Afessa.

Afessa, a slight man working on 25 years with the city, spoke at length about the changes, which you can see in the above presentation. Here are the five biggest changes you should know:

1. This tax reform comes the way of two bills, both signed into law by Mayor Nutter on Nov. 14, one dubbed ‘Jump Start Philly,’ introduced by Councilman Jim Kenney, and the second, larger one introduced by Green and Councilwoman Maria Quinones Sanchez.
2. Beginning with this tax year, qualifying new businesses will not pay any city business privilege taxes for the first two years. They will need to have at least three employees and not have been previously subject to BPT.
3. Beginning in tax year 2014, there will not be any fees to acquire a business privilege license for any new businesses. This is the $300 lifetime fee that got caught up in the ‘blogger tax’ controversy, which was resolved with a change in June 2011 that allowed ‘hobby’ activities to be exempt from needing the license.
4. Businesses will have taxable net income exempted up to $50,000 in tax year 2014, $75,000 in 2015 and $100,000 in 2016 and beyond.
5. City revenue plans are to lower the net income tax rate to six percent by 2022, an effort that Councilman Green says he wants to speed up.

Other tax reductions in the legislation are focused on companies that produce physical goods, not consultants, so some software and other technology companies may be in something of a gray area, tweeted:

There is considerable more in the legislation, so it is advisable to take a tour through the above presentation and watch Green speak in the above video.

Toward the end of the session, an audience member asked about an easing of the online process to apply for the city business privilege license and other such functions. Though the city unveiled this year a redesigned Phila.gov and its business portal was revamped last year, Councilman Green said the web experience leaves a lot to be desired.

“Let’s just say it looks like it’s going to have to wait until the next administration,” he said.

Before the event began, when Technically Philly asked Green last night about reintroducing his paperless government legislation, he was as direct about his intentions as ever: “I guess I’ll just have to run for mayor,” he said, punctuating it with a confident laugh.

Photo courtesy of Oh's Facebook page

Since January, David Oh has been a hard man to get in touch with.

That’s when he was sworn in as a new Councilman-At-Large along with 5 other new members of Philadelphia City Council, an elected rookie class that meant the departure of six veteran members of the Council’s seventeen seats.

Oh says that life as an attorney at Zarwin Baum DeVito Kaplan Schaer Toddy, P.C. — where he has worked since 2008 when he merged his private practice with the firm — has changed. Though he says he’s been waking at 4:30 in the morning and working as late as 11:00 p.m., he hasn’t been able to practice much law in the courtroom since the election.

Instead, he’s been focused on transitioning to his new role as Councilman.

Oh grew up in Southwest Philadelphia, where he still lives today with his wife and three young children. He says his political aspirations were driven in part from watching his father Reverend Ki Hang Oh found the city’s first Korean-American church in 1953.

“Growing up and living in a poor section of Philadelphia, I was exposed to the problems and issues that people face and ultimately saw many occasions where people who didn’t have much opportunity became successful,” he says. “There was always the question: ‘couldn’t we do something a little better’?

Shortly after starting his new post, Oh helped found and now chairs the new Committee on Global Opportunities and the Creative/Innovative Economy, dedicated to exploring ways to improve Philadelphia’s economy through the those sectors. He also sits on the Committee of Technology and Information Services.

After the jump, Oh talks business taxes, global economy and growth and honest government.

Oh announces his Philadelphia City Council campaign in January 2011.


How has your transition to Council been?

From the start it’s been very demanding. I’m a Councilperson-at-Large, so I cover the whole city. The transition took a little longer this year because we had six new councilpeople coming in, as opposed to the usual two or three. We come in at a difficult time: With Catholic schools in the region looking at being closed, the announcement of closings of other public schools, and much more, it’s pretty challenging.

You were a member of Rendell’s mayoral transition team in 1991. What was that Philadelphia like compared to today? What stands out to you as changed?

The thing that stands out to me that’s positive is that there has been a homegrown change. In some cases, it is brought by people who are very interested in innovation, creativity, technology, who are very interested in transforming Philadelphia into a better city. On the negative side, the job situation is worse for many of the average people living in neighborhoods. The educational system is very strained. While there’s an ongoing effort to make corrections, it has been very challenging. There is a greater divide between those who have opportunities and those who don’t.

How did you become interested in politics?

My father was a pastor who came from a very difficult place: occupied Korea. He came to Philadelphia in 1952 and started his church in 1953. He ended up in Southwest Philadelphia when there was a lot of issues, including racial strife. He dealt with immigrants and all the problems of people who don’t speak the language or understand the culture in a time when society was more discriminatory.

Growing up and living in a poor section of Philadelphia, I was exposed to the problems and issues that people face and ultimately saw many occasions where people who didn’t have much opportunity became successful. Eventually as I was able to get an education and become a professional and serve on different boards, there was always the question: ‘couldn’t we do something a little better’?

You helped create and now chair the Council’s Committee on Global Opportunities and the Creative/Innovative Economy. What are the priorities?

We have to of course be aware of the fact that the city needs revenues. In our current situation, we have to talk about growing the pie more than regulating or doing other things with it. Looking at Philadelphia’s history and where we’ve ended up, we have to look at where our growth is in our region and the world to find out what we could do. What is unique about Philadelphia, and to whom is Philadelphia attractive?

I’m very much focused on making Philadelphia a more global city with a section of the city physically that is accommodating for the type of people that we want: a 24-hour section of our city. We can look at other cities that have turned the entire city into a 24-hour ecosystem and why that was successful. Creative is a wonderful thing: it has self-esteem and self-worth attached to it, which are extremely important especially in declining neighborhoods where people have lost a sense of self-worth. In the case of innovation, the city’s challenge is to really attract and retain all of these innovative people.

We have to translate that vision not so much to your readers but to people who don’t have access to it in neighborhoods. We need these people, and this is an energy that will benefit these people and ultimately the jobs.

We’ve seen a noticeable increase in and action around Open Data in Philadelphia. What is your commitment to open government? What needs to get done?

Greater participation means greater opportunity for success. If we have a more accessible government, you can do all the things you need to do, at any time. It makes government more convenient. But beyond that, if it’s more transparent, then people are more aware and are able to add their opinions, experience and other things.

What will you do tomorrow to improve Open Data initiatives?

There was a bill introduced yesterday [Ed. note: by Councilman Bill Green] that ultimately will have to do with time table and processes of the city’s IT, so that it can make the information within City Hall available for scrutiny.

In addition to that, we can also legislate that data that is user friendly in the sense that people don’t necessarily want to look at a one-inch thick report from a certain department of government. They still want to know how many kids are in school, what’s the budget, how much money goes to classroom education. We need to allow people to participate and understand what government is or is not doing.

Part of your Honest Government platform is to modernize the tools used by civil servants. What are you hoping to achieve there?

I think we have to improve the quality of human interaction in the city, and that’s something that people want to see done. When we talk about honest and transparent government, that means someone who opens a drawer, pulls out a manilla file folder, and says ‘I’m happy to provide that for you’. Access to information and opportunities comes not on the computer right now. We’re dealing with the bureaucratic issues of internal policies, how things are recorded, what’s available.

How do you hope to make Philadelphia more business-friendly?

We probably need to at least take a look at our overall tax strategy. Some taxes are too low, others are too high, some are counter-productive. In this shrinking world, we need to hear form people who we want to be here. We want to make the city business-friendly. If you are a business person, in terms of your desire to take a risk in the city, employ people in the city, pay rent, expand, increase holdings, we want to make sure that this is a city you want to be in.

How would you like to see Philadelphia’s technology get involved with politics and policy?

Communicate. I will say that you’re doing exactly what is the answer to this question. Someone has to communicate that government is important. Part of that depends on people involved in this sector. Understanding what we’re trying to do and finding ways to add opinion or be helpful or critical. I am trying to get a sense of what’s going on, meet with lots of entrepreneurial groups, businesses, developers and investors. We need to have the input and buy-in of the people.

How the City of Philadelphia spends $3.5 billion annually should be better visualized online, we say.

The state-empowered Philadelphia Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority (PICA), which is chaired by investor and former mayoral candidate Sam Katz, released in November a citizen’s guide to the City of Philadelphia General Fund that was full of visualizations — all buried in a PDF.

While we shared the document a few weeks ago, after seeing it on PhillyDeals, it seems that it all passed with too little fanfare. While we at Technically Philly would love to work with PICA to develop a friendlier, more interactive web version of this project, we thought we’d start by sharing our 10 favorite of the many charts and graphs detailing where the city government gets its money and how it’s spent.

In addition to the one above, see our 10 favorites below.

Also see the original PDF here or here (Technically Philly strongly recommends you give the document a look for additional explanation for much of the information below).

REVENUES

Distribution of Fiscal Year 2012 General Fund Revenues

Distribution of Fiscal Year 2012 General Fund TAX Revenues

EMPLOYMENT

How many city employees

Percentage change in city employment by agency

EXPENDITURES

Percent of budget distributed by function

Percent of budget distributed by agency

Comparing the 10 largest U.S. cities by expenditures

TAXES

Tax revenue and rate

Comparing 10 large U.S. cities by state and local tax burden

Comparing 10 large U.S. cities by percentage of tax revenues

If you are wondering which businesses could benefit the most from business privilege tax (BPT) reform measures passed by City Council Thursday, think small. As in small businesses.

MORE

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.

Mike Worth and Lou Tranchitella realized the need for a big-budget video game studio in Philadelphia, and in February, co-founded Play Eternal.

Now they’re just waiting for their big break.

The duo, along with more than a dozen other members of their team, have a prototype in the hands of major publishers to fund what could be on Xbox Live Arcade or the Sony Playstation Network. If that, or another of a handful of major projects come through, a nearly three year effort to build out the city’s video game development culture will reach another height.

There are steps to go, but the movement has inched forward since early 2009.

With the growth of Worth’s Videogame Growth Initiative movement and a local technology community here, along with excellent video game development programs at Drexel and Penn, the absence of a “Hollywood-level quality” shop, called a AAA studio, seemed unwarranted to Worth and Tranchitella.

“There are studios in lots of different states, there’s no reason for it not to happen here. Philadelphia seemed like a great place to do this,” Tranchitella said. “The technology is here.”

For now, the Play Eternal team, which numbers at 17, is working virtually, Worth said.

Their major untitled futuristic action-adventure prototype is, as Worth describes it, “Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light meets Super Metroid in a futuristic, Blade Runner inspired world.” The team is also currently prototyping a mobile and tablet game and in advanced discussions for two work-for-hire development projects that would have production cycles of 14 months and two years respectively, Worth said.

If any of them are funded in a major way, Worth says, he’ll make good on his promise of opening up PlayEternal in Philadelphia. Building that magnet of video game development work, Worth has said, starts with a big AAA studio first. The distinction of a AAA studio is clear.

“What it typically means is that it’s a $50 to $60 game that takes over two years to build. Price is no object. You’ve got dozens of characters or hundreds of weapons. It’s basically the highest level of quality, the largest level of gameplay, they are marketed incredibly heavily, and are marketed like a Hollywood film,” Worth said.

Play Eternal differs from the typical AAA studio in that it aims to produce smaller video games over nine months to a year, available for digital download, as opposed to producing one game for two to three years to be sold in video game stores.

“Our idea was what if you take that AAA idea but break it down to a smaller, bite sized game that might take you five to 10 hours to play, will cost between $10 and $20 and is delivered to you digitally. So, you can download it through Xbox Live Arcade or Play Station Network,” said Tranchitella, the company’s CEO.

Although the two knew that there was not already a AAA studio in Philadelphia, Worth and Tranchitella were not discouraged, and wanted to stay in the city. They turned their efforts away from being service providers to other companies, and focused on starting their own big-budget business.

“Truth be told, it’s like, ‘let’s just do it ourselves and see what happens.’ That’s really how it started,” Tranchitella said.

Both Worth and Tranchitella have high hopes for the company and its success. Worth said he hopes their success will be an example for other studios to start up in Philadelphia, and help the video game community grow. Worth has been involved in lobbying for tax incentives and more to attract a greater development presence here, though other markets battle for those businesses. The Play Eternal team worked with state Sen. Daylin Leach to introduce Senate Bill 700 to offer tax breaks for video game development company, but four months later the bill is still sitting in the senate finance committee [See sidebar].

Although the bill will benefit Play Eternal, being the first studio of its kind in Philadelphia has proved to be a bit challenging.

“When you’re the first, its good and bad. People were really interested in us right away. The bad news is, that because there’s no industry here, nobody knows about the financial and social benefits of it,” Worth said.

Worth stressed because the industry is not as big as some of the current industries, like pharmaceuticals and biotechs, it is harder for people to realize the potential of the video game industry to benefit the capital of the city.

“The hardest thing is educating people about what the game industry actually is. It’s a multi-billion dollar industry. Once you say that to people, their eyes perk up, like, ‘oh, this actually makes money,’” Tranchitella said.

Play Eternal currently employs around 17 people, said Tranchitella, but they hope to grow to around 50 or 60 members over the next two to three years.

“We really want to be involved in the game community in Philadelphia,” he said. “We want to be a studio that people respect and look up to. We want to be a studio that people want to come and work at.”

City Council chambers. Photo by Albert Yee.

A bill that would make changes to the City of Philadelphia’s tax structure was approved Monday by City Council’s Committee on Finance, as the Daily News reported. If passed by Council, the measure would be phased into practice during a three-year period starting in fiscal year 2015.

The bill, introduced by Council members Bill Green and Maria Quiñones Sanchez, as discussed in our Q&A with her Friday, would exempt the first $100,000 in business receipts from both the gross and net income portions, a move aimed at startups and small businesses based in the city.

“This represents a higher tax reduction than [other] plans for a gross receipts reduction,” Sanchez told Technically Philly.

Additionally, to aid exporting businesses, taxes would only be paid on services and products sold within the city. The bill has evolved from earlier legislation put forth by Green and Sanchez that was put through a working group with administration and business community input.

The two bills would eventually amount to $70 million in tax relief, the Inquirer reported.

Another measure that earned committee approval, introduced by Councilman Jim Kenney and supported by Green and Sanhchez, would repeal the city’s business privilege license for businesses starting in fiscal year 2014. A lifetime license is $300 and $50 for a given year.

“This is the biggest impact in tax reforms done in the history of the city of Philadelphia in one single day,” Green told the Daily News.

Two and a half weeks before Election Day, freshman Councilwoman Maria Quiñones Sanchez has effectively already earned a second term.

After soundly beating challenger Dan Savage, who held the seat and lost it to Sanchez,  in an at times bitter primary, the Inquirer-endorsed Sanchez is running unopposed in the general campaign for the seventh council district.

So now she can focus a bit more on her legislative work.

Representing largely poor and blighted neighborhoods like Kensington and portions of North Philadelphia up to Frankford at the foothills of the Northeast, Quiñones Sanchez has taken an interest in digital divide issues and tax reform policy to try to retain what manufacturing remains in the broken heart of the Workshop of the World.

The first Latina on council, Quiñones Sanchez, 42, was born in Puerto Rico but raised in Hunting Park and now lives in Norris Square with her husband and two sons. A Mastbaum High School and Lincoln University alumnae, she worked for council members, including former at-large Councilman Angel Ortiz, and is credited with having brought life back to Latino education-advocacy group Aspira, along with leading other Hispanic-focused community organizations.

In 1999, she lost to incumbent City Councilman Rick Mariano but after he went to federal prison in 2006 and Savage was chosen by ward leaders to replace him, she beat him in the 2007 primary. Full bio here [.doc].

Below, Technically Philly speaks to Quiñones Sanchez about taxes, computer literacy and how city data helped clean up her district.

Photo by April Saul for the Inquirer.

As always, edited for length and clarity.

What is the status of the tax reform legislation from Councilman Green and yourself? We reported earlier this year that it was in a working group.

We have now reintroduced the legislation and are holding a hearing on Monday, Oct. 24 to hear outside perspective on it.

The legislation we introduced this session is a little different than what we have pending. What we have pending is a total transformation, this one [that will be discussed in Monday's hearing] comes from the working group with the administration and the work that has been done over the past couple of years.

There were two items that we thought we had some general agreement about across stakeholders: one was the $100,000 tax exemption, both on the gross and net, for small businesses, and the second is single source piece that would help manufacturers offset their competitiveness [by cutting income tax on products and services sold outside of the city, to help exporting businesses]. We beleive that we can get the support the two pieces, two of the pieces in the bigger piece of legislation.

Has the Chamber of Commerce supported these changes? They’ve been among the most critical of your efforts around tax reform, saying it creates ‘winners and losers.’

We’re going to meet with the Chamber again before the hearing and have met with them before the summer. Bill [Green] and I met with their executive team and heard their concerns around some of the legislation.

I think we can get some support, if not complete support, from the Chamber because this represents a higher tax reduction than plans for a gross receipts reduction. And this is more targeted because the beneficiaries are overwhelming Philadelphia-based businesses.

This represents anywhere from a 12-15 percent tax reduction versus such minor reduction in the mills on the gross receipts.

More than ‘winners and losers,’ Councilman Jim Kenney said the legislation was a ‘dangerous experiment,‘ that wasn’t worth taking. Has he come out to support your changes?

I think this is better. We met with Councilman Kenney. He agreed to support us on this $100k part in a more complete way, so we’re both going to be supportive of some of his legislation and get a hearing ourselves [on the tax reform].

Into the first half of the last century, your district once had one of the densest collections of manufacturing jobs in the world. From the 1950 to 1980, that industrial half of the city lost 300,000 jobs, as the Inquirer reported. So for you, the export help for what remains of manufacturing in Philadelphia matters.

That single source part [where businesses would only pay net income taxes on income derived in the city, not non-City sales] is a little more difficult in that it costs the city a lot more over the five year roll-out plan. That’s what we’re talking to the administration about.

It’s really important though. There are still jobs to lose. I met with two manufactures in my district who were, like, ‘I’m out.’ Now, the [business privilege tax] was one element and storm-water management [fees from the Water Department] was another, and we’re working with them, but I feel very strongly that we have to send a message — even if we postpone implementing that a year away — so at least that manufacturers know some relief is coming.

One part of the problem is keeping what businesses we have, but another part is the training a new workforce. How have you taken on the issue of digital divide in your district?

It’s very challenging, but we’ve done really well. We have close to a dozen of the digital labs through the stimulus package. Just last week, we did a grand opening at Prevention Point, which is my controversial needle exchange program in West Kensington. It’s already heavily used by their clients.

We’ve tried to partner with the city’s IT department and Philly Fight to get to underserved constituents. We’re trying to open one more.

Opening up computer centers in poor communities is a good first step, not a solution. What are you doing to engage these underserved communities?

The way we’ve located the centers and the partners we’ve had are choices to focus on the constituents we’re tring to reach. The homeless man may not go into the library because he doesn’t feel comfortable there, but, because he is a client at Prevention Point, he might get online there. Once there, we’re focusing on real training on computers and use for job searches.

Now, at our library at 6th and Lehigh, we expanded their computer center through one of these grants because of increased volume, but it’s about trying to meet people where they’re at, rather than just having them come to us.

Because libraries are usually small, we try to find new places, and we can interact with new people there too. Some of the steps we need are just education and awareness of what computer services are out there and what you can do with online access.

Is reforming tax policy to retain and attract business and reaching out to the poorest and most vulnerable fellow citizens around technology enough to connect people with jobs in your district and the rest of Philadelphia?

I still believe we have a ways to go to put together a comprehensive workforce strategy in the city. We had hearings a few weeks ago of the [City Council] Committee on Commerce and Economic Development with the Philadelphia Workforce Development Corporation as they merge with the Workforce Investment Board. We’re concerned with what we heard.

What is concerning?

There have been huge cuts at the state level, so I think the city needs to get smarter about how it uses its labor force development money. You’re going to see us, through the Committee of Commerce, more engaged in that public discussion.

What are the drastic cuts at the state level — for the Workforce Development Corporation, they lost 90 employees and are down to 120 staff people — going to do to how we work, how are we engaging employers to get involved in our programs?

The move at the state level is to subsidize private businesses more,. by saying, ‘let people hire them and let the subsidy go to the business.’ It could be helpful if it’s being targeted to the innovative businesses. So part of the discussion is how we make that connection happen.

The Workforce Development Corporation — and I worked there in a previous life — tends to follow kind of the traditional, larger firms. How do we ensure small businesses can tap into that, so those subsidies touch our re-entry community and other places that could be missed?

When I was at Prevention Point, I talked to the clients. Even the hotels ask housekeepers to log into work with handheld computer systems so we need to give our people the basics, just familiarity with computers. Social media has helped tremendously, to get people aware. You may not have a home, but you have an email address. You may not have a home, but you have a Facebook page.

But then taking that to the next level, you need those skills, if you’re a cashier or if you’re a housekeeper. The very basic understanding is important.

With the maturing of the web has come a need for greater performance tracking. While the technology community is embracing the open data movement, an overwhelmed city seems to still be lagging behind. Do you see that? Is it unavoidable?

Part of the challenge in the city is that while we want to embrace transparency, we have not put out the resources necessary at the table. 311 was off the shelf technology. 311 is still operating with Hansen [database system] on one side from L&I and the Streets Department technology on the other. That’s kept them limited, and I know that’s something they’ve looked at.

I know on the capital side, IT has a lot of money, and I think we have been slow – to put it nicely — to utilize those resources to get a more comprehensive 311 PhillyStat program, where the data drives the performance. I think 311 has gotten much better, once it figured out how the data could interface, but we’re still dealing with limited technology. Apparently there is an RFP out and I’m looking forward to seeing talk of its new design.

You’ve taken steps to bring the performance management data into City Council.

One of the things I’ve proposed in Council that didn’t move and hope we can push the new president of City Council to push would be to introduce a CouncilStat like New York, that would allow us to interface with the city’s data through our eyes. One of the things I hear when talking to my colleauges in New York and Chicago and other places is that they really use their CouncilStat to drive their budget conversations.

So that if the Streets Department says ‘We’re going to have the capacity to fill 10,000 potholes,’ but there is a 30,000 pothole backlog, we can say ‘that’s not enough.’ Right now we don’t have that. We are totally beholden to the city on the data.

What I’d like to see in Council — this could be done cheaply, the Council piece in New York, the setup costs were maybe $100,000 to $150,000 and maintaining it was $40,000 a year — is the ability for us to be able to be sure that the departments are dropping the data to us, that we could check in on that and use GPS and other ways to measure success, that’s huge.

Whether that data is being shared publicly and real-time with you, the public or the Managing Director’s office through PhillyStat, there needs to be real buy in. We’ve found the biggest problem is sheer workflow problems, not having the people to get this data secure, stable and out in an API or something like it.

That’s not true. We have deputy commissioners of administration who have fought to give up this territory.

I think the Mayor is creating more political will to say ‘we have to have this call for transparency.’ There’s no reason that we can’t see this data in his next term, and see it in real time. Even if he doesn’t want to see it all out there, to see more of it in a public platform. We need to see in real time that we’re missing our goals in real time.

In the initial conversations about 311, a department can say it’s going to take 72 hours, but there’s no way of knowing if that’s true. Unless it’s a performance management tool, what does it matter? It needs to be real time.

Collecting and sharing data in a real-time fashion, like a dependable API, is an absolute priority, particularly because there are people in the technology community who want to build interesting tools and visualizations on their own with it. There’s some interest but it seems like each agency is waiting for someone else to be the first.

Yes, we haven’t had a lot of progress because we can’t get the departments on board early, because once you put that data out there, they have to stand by it. One of the things I learned very early on is never ask a question you don’t have an answer to. I hate, too, whenever you have to put it on the record for building the record, so I understand, but we all need to do a better job of explaining why this matters.

Things like the OpenDataRace and the recent SEPTA hackathon should help that cause. What helped you see the value of releasing data in malleable formats?

So, we can connect SEPTA routes to the litter index. My litter index — tracked by Neighborhood Services at the Streets Department — has been reduced tremendously in my district.

[We did that with data.]

So we looked when I first started, one of the things I found was that I had 50 public trash cans [in my district], now we’re close to 400. We did an overlay for the placement of trash and bus routes. Where did the most trash happen? In the congruence of bus routes and mass transit. So taking streets data and SEPTA data and learning that can teach us things [to govern better].

From Front to Second Street, we’ve learned that we don’t need a bus stop because we can’t put a trash can there and people can walk that half block either way. If we’re sharing data from all of our agencies, this can happen in more ways. I wouldn’t have been able to see that if I couldn’t ask for and see a combination of data.

We looked at where SEPTA sold tokens, and they didn’t in my poorest communities where people could afford the full price the least. We need to have all these quasi departments and all the agencies offering the ability for us to crunch data and better leverage the limited resources we have. We can get smarter about how we’re doing things.

Lastly, in our redistricting coverage, your district kept being named as among the worst irregular, how do you feel about the change?

The district is going to look a lot better. I think we had some real challenges that the data showed us around the shift of populations,

We saw where the city has to do a more focused job of repopulating the community, and areas where I’m busting at the seems and the Northeast is too. I think we’re at a better place, but I’d like for Council to utilize its ability to redistrict at any time to be willing to shift these lines as necessary.

One thing I told folks is that a more compact district also means a more concentrated district in terms of poverty, so I didn’t get an easier district. As much as the political pundits spoke about getting an easier district, I got a more challenging district.

I looked at the census, and the median income, I’m sure, was reduced. I already had 44 percent of my district under $20,000, and with the loss of the more stable parts of my district, with the demographic shifts — I picked up some large African American communities which was also helpful in the changing areas — this is more work.

…And we learned that with data.

Edited, July 4, 2011, 10:08 a.m.: Carnaroli was elected on June 10, not during the third week of June.

We’re not sure when Craig Carnaroli sleeps.

He’s Executive Vice President of the University of Pennsylvania, he’s Chair of the University City District and he serves on the boards of the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation, Penn Medicine, and The Connelly Foundation.

Whatever free time he might have had will be partially eaten up by his new role as Chairman of the Board of the University City Science Center, after being elected to the position on June 10.

Now, the Wharton alum says that he’s leveraging his roles to strengthen Penn’s relationship to the rest of University City, and helping to create connections across the various institutions.

And a big part of that connection is physical. Carnaroli led the development of Penn Connects master plan, which he says will help bring together the institutions through the built environment of University City and West Philadelphia, with initiatives like Penn Park.

We spoke to Carnaroli by phone to talk about how the built environment can ultimately impact Philadelphia’s technology community, and more, after the jump.

You’ve served on the board of the Science Center since 2005. What have you been up to and what do you want to see change?

One of the important things we’ve achieved over the last 5 years is reconnecting the Science Center to its “shareholder” academic institutions. I particularly want to continue to endorse how we get commercialization opportunities that are worthwhile of incubating, get funding behind them, and as they grow, we have space to help them grow. We’ve seen a number of good examples at the Science Center, like Avid Radiopharmaceuticals.

Avid is a good example because even after investment, it will remain in the city. There was a ChicagoBusiness Crain’s Special Report recently was about how large companies in the suburbs there are wanting, and are, relocating back to the city.

I think it’s something we should strive for. There are challenges with the city’s tax structure. That’s an inhibitor because it’s a challenge that’s not easily rectified. But we need to get away from the tax argument to the benefits we have, like access to post-docs from various academic institutions. Young folks like the urban environment, so how we can take advantage of that? It would be great to build up the city’s tax base.

You serve on a number of boards of directors, including the University City District, PIDC and Penn Medicine. How do these connections help the Science Center?

It’s important [for Penn] as the largest private employer that we’re engaged with partners. One of the things that I see in Philadelphia is great leadership running these organizations. The boards are committed. My work with Science Center is largely around making sure that there is a connection to all of these institutions. Part of it is putting a vision out there, trying to get people to buy into that vision.

You’re often involved with urban development at Penn and in your various board roles. How important is the built environment to the future of University City?

I came to Penn in 2000 in a finance role, and I was later asked to see a broader portfolio—facilities, real estate and other operations. One of the thing they asked me to lead was this campus master plan, Penn Connects. We’re trying to improve our partnerships, like with Brandywine Realty Trust, which has helped to build out some of the eastern edge [of the campus]. Penn Park coming online will be another example of the connectedness.

The Science Center board is an interesting choice for you given your focus on urban development. Why science and technology, too?

If you look at what drives the economy and what will drive innovation, technology is very important. There’s a lot of things to exploit at these institutions. I view my role as a connector of ideas and opportunities, so given that we’ve received the largest amount of research funding of any university in the area, it’s good to have Penn’s presence and involvement there. We also want to make sure that faculty have access to commercialize their discoveries.

We’re increasingly curious about job retention in Philadelphia, and we hate to see a Wharton alum, like yourself, leave the city. How did you end up here, and do you have any thoughts on how to keep talent?

Data is showing that we’re doing a better job retaining grads. In the end, we’re linking people with opportunities for being able to be employed. I had the bug. I went to New York and San Francisco. These are great places to be, with great mentors, but for me, ultimately all roads lead back to Philly. I had a great opportunity at Penn. In terms of retaining people, to be honest, it’s efforts like Technically Philly telling so many great stories out there not being told.

One our students founded a company and was incubated at Science Center. When he needed next round of funding, the investor said ‘we want you to move to Silicon Valley.’ On one hand it’s so great that we produced this guy, but on other hand we’re bummed that he relocated.

Sometimes, the factors aren’t always in our control.