In March, Senator (and Presidential candidate) Kamala Harris introduced the Digital Services Act, designed to “jumpstart digital innovation” and help state and local governments field “small teams of technologists, designers, and civil servants who will update and rebuild government systems.” …

This post is part of a series created by the California Public Technology Roundtable. Read more about the Roundtable, see a list of all participants, and learn more about our first meeting here. Governments operate with different constraints than the private sector. Unlike businesses, governments can (on most functions) freely…

California can lead the world in honest and effective government through best-in-class public technology California is a bellwether state for the world. Transformative technologies, cultural movements, and political trends start here. We’re entering a new stage of possibility for public technology in California; ambitious initiatives are already happening, with more…

Inspired by what you saw at Mindshare? Here are a few ways to get involved: Block Parties Host a block party in Santa Monica this year! Block Party Permit - City Of Santa Monica - Block Party Complete this process to obtain a permit to utilize a street for a block party or other similar neighborhood event.go.citygro.ws Boards and Commissions: Almost every local government has at least a few Boards and Commissions — non-elected, appointed volunteers who provide “civilian” oversight and…

In late 2015, our Chief Technology Officer and Founder Stephen Corwin was frustrated with the lack of machine-readable open data about real estate development permits in Los Angeles. Even when data was available, it was in PDF format or required looking up records by parcel number, and the quality of…

I’m one of the co-founders of Hack for LA, the Los Angeles civic technology group (currently hosting weekly civic tech meetups — one each on the East and West Sides of town- go!). I’m not involved directly in Hack for LA now (except as a supporter, cheerleader, and occasional meetup…

CityGrows recently added the ability for administrative users to completely delete individual processes (applications). ​ CityGrows has always allowed users to “Halt” processes that are abandoned or unqualified applications, but sometimes halting isn’t enough. When dealing with duplicate, mistakenly launched, and test processes, you may prefer to remove them from the system entirely by deleting them. Deleting processes will also remove them from your aggregate statistics and data visualizations.

A Serenity Prayer for Government Technology This weekend I saw a tweet from Mark Headd and just couldn’t resist amplifying it… Sometimes the effort and energy it takes to improve government technology makes most people I know in the field want to check themselves in to a temporary technology detox program. There’s been a lot of…

We recently launched the ability for governments to add Logic to your processes on CityGrows. Our goal is to make your processes as responsive and flexible as possible, and this is a feature that many of our users are looking forward to. Now, when you’re setting up a “collect information”…