Code for America

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Code for America
Codeforamerica logo.png
Established September 2009
Executive Director Jennifer Pahlka[1]
Location San Francisco, CA
Website codeforamerica.org

Code for America is a non-partisan, non-political 501(c)3 organization founded in 2009 to bring web-industry professionals to work with city governments in the United States in order to promote openness, participation, and efficiency in municipal governments.[2]

Through three programs Code for America helps local governments harness the internet. Through the Fellowship, Code for America connects developers and designers to local government. Through the Accelerator, Code for America provides seed funding, office space, and mentorship to civic startups. Through the Brigade, Code for America helps local, community groups reuse civic software.[3]

The Washington Post described Code for America as "the technology world’s equivalent of the Peace Corps or Teach for America." The article goes on to say, "They bring fresh blood to the solution process, deliver agile coding and software development skills, and frequently offer new perspectives on the latest technology — something that is often sorely lacking from municipal government IT programs. This is a win-win for cities that need help and for technologists that want to give back and contribute to lower government costs and the delivery of improved government service." [4]

The New York Times described Code for America as “a new nonprofit project... which aims to import the efficiency of the Web into government infrastructures” and “[tries] to make working in government fun and creative.” [5]

Contents

Founding and History [edit]

Code for America building in San Francisco

In 2009, founder Jennifer Pahlka was working with O'Reilly Media at the Gov 2.0 Summit in Washington, DC. A conversation with Andrew Greenhill, the Mayor’s Chief of Staff of the City of Tucson, sparked the initial idea for Code for America, when he said “You need to pay attention to the local level because cities are in major crisis. Revenues are down, costs are up -- if we don't change how cities work, they're going to fail."[6] The two began discussing plans for a program that eventually became Code for America, “a one-year fellowship recruiting developers to work for city government.”[6] With support from web entrepreneur Leonard Lin, Tim O'Reilly of O'Reilly Media, and technologist Clay A. Johnson, among others, the organization was launched in September 2009.[6]

According to their website, “Code for America helps city governments become more transparent, connected and efficient by connecting the talents of cutting-edge web developers with people who deliver city services and want to embrace the transformative power of the web to achieve more impact with less money. Inspired in part by Teach for America, CfA works with city officials and leading web development talent to identify and then develop web solutions that can then be shared and rolled out more broadly to cities across America.”[3]

Fellowship Program [edit]

Code for America connects city governments and web professionals through the Code for America Fellowship program.[7]

The first year of the fellowship program began in January 2011. Twenty fellows were selected from 360 applicants, resulting in a 5.6% acceptance rate.[8] Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, DC, and Seattle were the four cities selected to participate in the 2011 program.[9]

On January 4, 2012 Code for America began its second year fellowship program with 26 fellows and eight cities: Austin, Chicago, Detroit, Honolulu, Macon, New Orleans, Philadelphia, and Santa Cruz.[10]

Projects [edit]

The inaugural 2011 fellowship program launched four projects in Boston, Seattle, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC.[9] Each city will partner with a team of five web programmer and/or designers selected for the fellowship. Over 11 months, the fellows and city government will collaborate to develop a web application to solve a civic problem identified by the city in their project proposals.[8] The completed applications will be released as open-source for any city government to use or adapt.[7]

The Civic Commons project was launched in September 2010 after the Washington, DC project fell through due to a change in administration. Civic Commons is a coordinated effort between Code for America, OpenPlans, and the District of Columbia's Office of the Chief Technology Officer (OCTO), the project is focused on reducing public IT costs by helping government entities share code and best practices.[11][12] In March 2011, Civic Commons helped make the Federal IT dashboard freely available to all levels of government, thereby providing local governments with tools to monitor project effectiveness and evaluate the allocation of resources.[13]

In December Code for America announced the receipt of a $1.5 million grant from Google and the formation of two new programs: Accelerator and Brigade.[14]

Board of Directors [edit]

Board of Advisors [edit]

Staff [edit]

Funders [edit]

External links [edit]

References [edit]

  1. ^ "Who We Are". Retrieved 2011-01-15. 
  2. ^ "What We Do". Retrieved 2011-01-15. 
  3. ^ a b "About Code for America". Retrieved 2011-01-15. 
  4. ^ Wadhwa, Vivek (2011-12-16). "Code for America: An elegant solution for government IT problems". Washington Post. 
  5. ^ Bilton, Nick (2010-07-06). "Changing Government and Tech With Geeks". New York Times. 
  6. ^ a b c Kamenetz, Anya (2010-11-29). "How an Army of Techies Is Taking On City Hall". Fast Company. 
  7. ^ a b "Code for America Chooses 20 Developers as Fellows". Mashable. 2010-11-02. Retrieved 2011-01-15. 
  8. ^ a b "Code for America Fellows to Work with City Governments". Government Technology. 2010-11-03. Retrieved 2011-01-15. 
  9. ^ a b "Hacker Driven Code for America Kicks Off Today". Fast Company. 2011-01-05. Retrieved 2011-01-15. 
  10. ^ "http://codeforamerica.org/2012". 2012. Code for America. Retrieved 20 January 2012. 
  11. ^ "Civic Commons Launched to Help Government Share Technology and Cut Costs". DC.gov. Retrieved 2011-04-20. 
  12. ^ "Civic Commons - About". Civic Commons. Retrieved 2011-04-20. 
  13. ^ "Cost-Saving IT Dashboard Software Now Available to All Levels of Government". Code for America. Retrieved 2011-04-20. 
  14. ^ "Google Awards $1.5 Million To Code For America". Google Awards $1.5 Million To Code For America. InformationWeek. Retrieved 14 December 2011. 
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