localtalent

I saw you give an awesome talk at SXSW a couple of years back, and you discussed the concept of 'vending machine government' - citizens put in money in the form of tax dollars and get out goods and services like police, street paving, etc.

It's been a few years, and most of the 'government technology' initiatives have been about opening access to datasets and streamlining paperwork -- essentially, a bigger, faster vending machine.

What do you foresee being required to fundamentally shift this model? And as citizens, what is our role in causing that to change (short of running for office)?

Interesting, I didn't think about it that way.

Code for America is a great program, and the accelerator model is, to me, vastly preferable to hackathons. Creating something in a weekend is great, but the real value comes over weeks and months of sustained effort building something -- and that requires resources.

In your experience, what have been the main sticking points on opening datasets? I worked in city government for a bit and there were technical challenges from disparate systems put together piecemeal over the years, but my instinct is that there's some FUD gumming up the works of the already slow-turning government gears.