TSP Talk Weekly Wrap Up

On Wednesday the Fed announced that they will begin to taper their $85 billion a month bond buying program by $10 billion and investors seem to applaud the action as stocks soared with the Dow gaining nearly 300-points on the day. Now we head into the strongest seasonal strength of the year for stocks soRead… Read more »

Ending Washington Paralysis with Dialogue and… a Third Party?

We recently read a fascinating piece from our friends at Public Agenda, an NCDD member organization, covering the highlights from their recent Policy Breakfast event. The reflections from former Sen. Bill Bradley have interesting and provocative insights for the state of dialogue in Washington, D.C., and we encourage you to give them a read. YouRead… Read more »

Reed Duecy-Gibbs: Why I’m Coding for America

In my eyes the most significant phenomena that are reorganizing society and our planet are the explosion of urban populations and the rise of digital information technology. These trends, for better and worse, are disrupting our physical and societal landscapes. And regardless of how you feel about these changes they are occurring. If you hadRead… Read more »

Announcing the 2014 Incubator Class

As the civic tech ecosystem continues to gain momentum, Code for America launches its second Incubator class. This year saw numerous applicants to our Startup Accelerator program and more than 80 governments present at our annual Summit. Our Accelerator and Incubator alumni companies continue to see interest from governments. After the success of last year’sRead… Read more »

Sophia Parafina: Why I’m Coding for America

I Code for America because I believe in praxis. Praxis, as I loosely define it with all apologies to Marx, is the process of putting theory into practice. For a long time I’ve been dissatisfied with the path of my career. For all of my working life, I have worked on piecemeal projects. Start aRead… Read more »

Technical Support Hell

Have spend most of today in Microsoft Tech Support Hell. After my Outlook Client stop sending/receiving after Tuesday’s Windows Update. I’ve been spending too much time being bounced around between various Support Desks, no fewer than six times. Each time repeating the same information; having the Support staff unable to open the case number documentationRead… Read more »

Text, Call, or Visit?

There are many ways to communicate, as I got a lesson this morning. Yesterday, I got a text, which I misinterpreted, due to lack of detail. We were about to commit significant resources to an ongoing project when a chance call degraded the whole effort to much ado about nothing. Seems to me a textRead… Read more »

GOV 2.0 Gift Guide: Rest & Reflection for 2013

This holiday season you may be traveling far and wide in search of some R&R before the coming year, you might be reconnecting with family, you may be working yourself to the bone as 2014 too quickly approaches, or perhaps headed to one last holiday fiesta. What I often find during the holiday season, betweenRead… Read more »

The Intentional Stack: Technology Choices in Civic Projects

An oft-discussed subject in the civic tech world is the cavernous divide in the underlying technologies used by the private tech sector as opposed to those used by government entities. Some stylized examples: open source vs. proprietary; Ruby on Rails vs. .NET; cloud services like Heroku or Amazon Web Services vs. in-house server hosting; Unix-yRead… Read more »

GOV 2.0 Gift Guide: Rest & Reflection for 2013

This holiday season you may be traveling far and wide in search of some R&R before the coming year, you might be reconnecting with family, you may be working yourself to the bone as 2014 too quickly approaches, or perhaps headed to one last holiday fiesta. What I often find during the holiday season, betweenRead… Read more »