Civicist

CIVIC TECH NEWS & ANALYSIS

SCORING

Behind the College Scorecard; the bureaucracy hacker at 18F; and more.

  • Government opening: Columbia law professor Tim Wu, “net neutrality” coiner and former candidate for New York state lieutenant governor, is going to work for Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, Thomas Kaplan reports for the New York Times. He will focus on issues involving technology.

  • Related: Tuesday night at Civic Hall, Schneiderman is speaking on “tech & government” at an event sponsored by the NY Tech Meetup.

  • David Zvenyach, self-described “bureaucracy hacker” writes an inspiring post about what his first six months working for 18F, the tech SWAT team inside the federal government, has been like.

  • The chief digital service officer at the Department of Education, Lisa Gelobter, describes the development process that went into the new data-rich College Scorecard just released by the Obama administration.

  • Related: Michael Shear reports for the New York Times on why the administration abandoned its original goal of explicitly rating the quality of the nation’s colleges and universities, which had the aim of “publicly shaming low-rated schools that saddle students with high debt and poor earning potential.”

  • Tech and the presidentials: Hillary Clinton’s private email server was not wiped clean, according to the company that managed it, Rosalind Heiderman, Tom Hamburger, and Carol Leonnig report for the Washington Post. This means the emails could be recovered, they note, and it “could bolster her statements that her actions have been aboveboard, suggesting that she did not take active steps to hide her e-mails.”

  • Ruby Cramer reports for BuzzFeed on the HRC Super Volunteers, a network “of 1,200 or so core members” who are doing much of the work in states outside the first four caucus/primary match-ups. She reports trouble: “in recent weeks, HRC Super Volunteers have taken to their Facebook group to exchange concerns: The problem, according to a scan of the page allowed by a member who requested anonymity, is that while aides in Brooklyn ‘pour resources’ into the early states, they haven’t provided sufficient support to volunteers elsewhere.”

  • Tech billionaire Mark Cuban is hosting a rally for Republican frontrunner Donald Trump tonight at his Dallas arena. As Ben Schreckinger reports for Politico, he is one of several mega-rich guys now considering runs for office, inspired by Trump’s example. “My positions would be far different,” Cuban says.

  • Catherine Thompson of TalkingPointsMemo interviews online security pioneer John McAfee about his extremely odd campaign for president as the candidate of something he calls “the Cyber Party.”

  • Future, imperfect: Issie Lapowsky reports for Wired on the potential and pitfalls of peer-to-peer organizing to aid refugees.

  • Transitions: Hats off to Juliana Rotich, who is stepping down as executive director of Ushahidi after five years.