Civicist

CIVIC TECH NEWS & ANALYSIS

CITY LIGHTS

The GovTech100; DemocracyOS has fans in France; and more.

  • This is civic tech: News from Datamade‘s Derek Eder: Chicago Councilmatic has just relaunched, tracking all things related to the Chicago City Council, joining its cousin NYC Councilmatic.

  • GovTech.com and Dustin Haisler and Paul Taylor of e.Republic have put together the GovTech100, a list of 100 companies focused on servicing government customers, “having developed an innovative or disruptive offering to improve or transform government, or having created new models for delivering services. These companies are active in one or more market segments: administrative, service delivery, intelligent infrastructure and civic tech focus areas.”

  • DemocracyOS, the open-source deliberation platform that originated in Argentina, has a posse in France, as Virgil Deville describes.

  • 93 percent of 89 U.S. mayors from 31 states surveyed by the U.S. Conference of Mayors annual Menino survey say they are in favor of police wearing body cameras.

  • Asked about infrastructure needs for their cities, these mayors identified roads, mass transit, and water/wastewater/stormwater as their top priorities were they to get an “unrestricted grant” to pay for a large project. Broadband was at the bottom of their lists. (The word “technology” never appears in the full report.)

  • Asked what three cities these mayors had “recently looked to for policy ideas,” the top three responses were, in order, New York, Chicago and Philadelphia. (h/t NY city councilman Brad Lander)

  • Privacy watch: Speaking of our inspiring city, really high-speed free Wi-Fi is coming to New York City via the new LinkNYC network being built by the CityBridge consortium, and while the network’s speed and availability is going to surprise a lot of users, the Wall Street Journal’s Joanna Stern warns that you better take some common-sense steps to secure your communications before you join in the party.

  • Related: Privacy expert Julia Angwin of ProPublica offers her guide to improving your internet security.

  • Further related: If you are worried about the data that Google and Facebook may be collecting from you, Brian Fung of the Washington Post reports consumer privacy groups are even more worried about the data that your internet service provider—Verizon, AT&T, Comcast most likely—is collecting.

  • Jenna McLaughlin explains in The Intercept why the White House’s recent request of major social network companies like Facebook that they use their algorithms for spotting “terrorist content online” is highly unlikely to work. The main problem: acts of terror are exceedingly rare. She writes, “Many experts, including people with law enforcement, academic, and scientific backgrounds, agree that it’s practically impossible to boil down the essential predictive markers that make up a terrorist who is willing and capable of carrying out an attack and then successfully pick him out of a crowd.”

  • What sharing economy?: A Pennsylvania State University study funded by the hotel industry found that 39 percent of all the revenue generated by Airbnb guests in 12 major metropolitan areas over a thirteen month period in 2014-15 went to landlords operating more than one unit, Patrick Clark reports for Bloomberg Business.

  • Diversity blues: Silicon Valley companies say they want to hire more blacks, but as Vauhini Vara reports for Bloomberg Business, getting young coders from an elite historically black college like Howard University jobs at major tech firms is a lot more complicated.

  • Don’t miss Thinkup’s Anil Dash on “flying while brown” and why he’s the “most magnanimous motherfucker I know.”