Civic Engagement App and Co-Created Governance in Mexico

MIT’s Center for Civic Media joined up with Mexico City’s civic innovation team, Laboratório para la Ciudad, to experiment with collaborative civic interventions with local partners. They identified ways to increase citizen voice and engagement in developing the Action Path app that allows smartphone users to submit feedback to the government directly, according to Civicist. Among the most important lessons is that citizens have unique insight into the dynamics of their city and should be deeply involved in governance.

Nudging Governments Into Responsiveness

DemocracySpot asks what prompts government to act, turning the concept of nudging around to use the current focus of behavioral economics in public policy to optimize citizens’ responses to instead prompt governments into being more responsive to citizens. The work ahead is to learn how praising and shaming affects government behavior.

New Survey of Local Government IT Executives

Though local governments are committing more public dollars to IT, government technology leaders fear there is not enough going to certain key areas, like retaining talent in a competitive labor market. A new survey by the Public Technology Institute and Deltek shows that, while only nine percent of respondents say they expect IT budget cuts, government IT leaders want to make sure that money goes to investment in necessary human capital.

A Model for Broadband Infrastructure

As residents increasingly demand fast, quality broadband, cities like Lexington, Kentucky are making investments to make sure they can deliver. Route Fifty reports that the state of Kentucky has structured an innovative public-private partnership to build an open-access middle-mile network that allows multiple Internet service providers to make quality broadband available. Lexington Mayor Jim Gray and Kentucky Finance and Administration Cabinet Secretary Lori Flanery shared best practices at the Financing for Next Generation Broadband event hosted by Next Century Cities, a nonprofit collaborative of more than 100 communities that aims to boost projects to bring higher-speed Internet connectivity.

Uber and Transit Planning

Mobility Lab says, as companies like Uber, Lyft, and Bridj consider operating as a broader transit service, they are enabling a new kind of small-scale transit-oriented development where the sidewalk is the new station. Cities need to set a vision for equitable service, data sharing, and access to public infrastructure early on--and they have to understand how on-demand services like Uber make access to collection point nodes a new scarce resource that could restructure mobility in the city.

New Salesforce IoT Cloud Service

Salesforce.com Inc. is introducing IoT Cloud, a service designed to help monitor billions of events relayed daily by smart devices, WSJ reports. The aim is to control interactions between devices equipped with sensors according to customers’ specifications that trigger actions to suit their purposes. This is a step toward using the connectivity of the internet to understand and act on changes in the environment, in real time.

New From Our Team

Here at Data-Smart, Harvard PhD student Laura Adler explains how the Internet of Things is enabling smarter use of water at home, in the fields, and across American cities. And Lisa Nelson, a senior policy analyst with the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland’s Community Development team, profiles a regional housing data system that is enabling organizations in Cleveland and in surrounding suburban cities to make strategic decisions about problem properties plaguing their neighborhoods.