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CityCamp (Main site)

CityCampLDN (London)

CityCampSF (San Francisco)

CityCampCO (Colorado)

In a recent post from Coder-in-Chief Clay Johnson, Clay outlines several reasons why developers should run for Congress. Among them:

• They’re under-represented as a profession.
• Government’s problems are becoming increasingly technical.
• Great developers are systems fixers and systems hackers.
• Developers are great digital communicators.

Despite the argument we should keep developers out of politics, Microsoft’s Howard Dierking’s Engineering Good Government suggests the Constitutional framers were in fact the nation’s first patriot programmers:

Modern software design deals with the complexities of creating systems composed of innumerable components that must be stable, reliable, efficient, and adaptable over time. A language has emerged over the past several years to capture and describe both practices to follow and practices to avoid when designing software. These are known as patterns and antipatterns. This chapter will explore known software design patterns and antipatterns in context of the U.S. Constitution and will hopefully encourage further application of software design principles as a metaphor for describing and modeling the complex dynamics of government in the future.

If the developer community is serious about building a more concerted effort around changing the way Washington works, here are some recommendations:

Find the founders

It’s not enough to say ‘if you’re a developer — consider a run!’ Developers with civic passion need to step up and show it can be done. The movement needs real faces, real leaders that will walk the walk. Tech leaders already at the intersection of government and technology like Clay Johnson (yes you, Clay), Jim Gilliam or tech publisher Tim O’Reilly, can show firsthand you can change government from the inside.

Build a coalition

Create a sense of unity. A well-labeled coalition would allow candidates to better affiliate themselves with a movement and simplify their message. It doesn’t have to be a new iParty, just something that unifies the platform, much the way the Blue Dog Democrats have done. Ultimately, when these candidates are elected, they could build their own official caucus with a more formal, long-standing impact.

Build an ‘Operating System for America’ platform

Much like Newt Gingrich did with ‘Contract for America,’ developers need to present their case in a concise manner. Create specific objectives as to how the work on Congress needs to change and tie in the spirit of innovation, technology so that it will resonate with citizens. More importantly, the objectives need to be defined outside of standard political issues.

Establish a support network

Most professions have a supporting political organization that provides resources, networking and fundraising opportunities for members running for office. A ‘Coders for America’ organization doesn’t have to be a formal 501c organization, but there does need to be a foundational support network that can help developers better understand the campaign process and better access resources.

Make geek chic

We’re all too familiar with the stereotype that developers are introverts or think they’re smarter than everyone else. The iParty needs to be more iPhone, less Android, so to speak. Love him or hate him, Steve Jobs has perfected the art of making geek chic. Tech-centric political candidates would do well to take a page from his book (or iPad).

As the dynamics of government and politics increasingly shift to the Web, and citizens adopt tools and technology that make it easier to access elected officials, developers are well-suited to best understand how to tap into this opportunity.

The next step is to do something about it.

For some reason, the result is ‘painfully pretty’ as kibird says.

Website:

Red Clay Website:

Led new brand theme of ‘Building an Honest Economy,’ worked with video production company to develop membership recruitment video and developed crowdsourcing site for generate ideas, interest.

Green Chamber of Commerce Website:

‘Building an Honest Economy’ video:

‘Ideas for an Honest Economy’ Website:

Promo video for ‘Ideas for an Honest Economy:’

Logo:

The time has come to build a reliable, open platform that allows local governments to post development requirements and give private developers the ability to respond and build these applications for free.

Going a step further, we need to build a free, open source platform specifically for government, making it easier for government to install and implement and leverage plugins or modules for anything from standard contact forms to 311 citizen requests applications.

Fundamentally, we need a central repository for code and a governing organization, private or non-profit, that coordinates specifications and provides a reliable management process for deployment. Additionally, there needs to be sample usage and, ideally, implementation case studies that highlight how government is leveraging this tool and how others can follow suit.

We need a GitHub meets Taproot meets WordPress or Drupal for government.

Matthew Burton’s A Peace Corps for Programmers, comments like Kevin Curry’s recent “We need craigslist for government” tweet and inside open government baseball chatter echo these sentiments.

To date, contests to create killer Web and mobile applications from open data combined with developers with gumption have spearheaded much of the tech efforts. This approach has showed positive results, however, they don’t effectively address a customer-driven approach to product development (see Steve Blank), where the customer (government) defines the specification, instead of developers building applications of no direct benefit to government.

Government must begin to define the specification. Instead of putting it out to bid, government needs to put it out to BUILD.

Government needs to break the mold and take advantage of what Clay Shirky calls the cognitive surplus, leverage the enthusiasm of the civic developer and significantly lower the cost of its technology projects. Government must also move away from a ‘build our own’ approach to technology. This mindset is a waste of time and resources and financially irresponsible.

Sure, there are procurement hurdles around non-licensed software, but many of these can be re-defined, as done in places such as San Francisco, Portland, Vancouver.

Philanthropists or foundations with deep pockets need to step up and support a new organization or a current one truly dedicated to making this happen. Government could also ‘pay back’ with funding of its own, at a significant discount to what it would otherwise pay. Something like this needs sustainable investment and support.

If the private or non-profit sector and government could each eliminate any hurdles and actively engage an idea like this, we’d change the way government uses technology and how it serves its citizens.

Who can make this happen and how do we get started?

Demo site:

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