Supporting Open Innovation in Government

What we believe in

Sharing

Government entities at all levels face substantial yet similar IT challenges. We help them share their solutions.

Building

Open architectures foster innovation and create flexibility and efficiency through interoperability.

Spreading

There is an answer to your question out there somewhere.
We’ll help you find other’s answers and share your own.

What we're doing

See all of our projects →

Marketplace

The Civic Commons Marketplace connects cities around the apps they buy and build.

Open311

Open311 is an open technology platform for government-citizen communications.

Wiki

The Civic Commons Wiki is the collaborative public library for open civic technology.

       

Latest activity from around the internet

Latest posts from the Civic Commons Blog:

The Civic Commons Community

From the beginning, Civic Commons has been a dynamic community initiative.  What began in January 2010 as a simple wiki of open government policies and practices (originally called “OpenMuni”, domains for which were simultaneously and independently obtained by Code for America and OpenPlans), grew into a partnership between the two organizations to support the growing open government technology [...]

by Nick Grossman on the Civic Commons Blog
February 11, 2012

Proprietary Lions and Bears in the Civic Commons Marketplace

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post from CC Advisor and former New York State CIO, Andrew Hoppin (@ahoppin). We strongly believe that Civic Commons is a community-driven platform, and we not only welcome but encourage dialogue on how to make it most effective as a resource. If you have an opinion on any of [...]

by Andrew Hoppin on the Civic Commons Blog
February 3, 2012

Latest clippings posted to Tumblr:
“We also are working with Code for America (CFA) to partner with the City on an accelerator for startups that focus on civic issues, funded by Google and the Kauffman Foundation. CFA will also provide a platform for civic hackers to maintain and adapt open source code for the city, establish a fellowship assigning three bright minds to city government for a year to solve specific problems, and create a Civic Commons Marketplace for cities to share technology and collaborate on new technologies and applications.”

- Ronald Conway: Sf.citi: Harnessing the Power of San Francisco’s Tech Community to Create Jobs and Improve the City

by ashseed on January 27, 2012

“Why should every city government treat the same issues as unique barriers? If one has pushed through a solution, why would we try to face the issue as a barrier? If we change our mode of thinking we are now viewing this issue simply as a process to follow. I’m not trying to simplify complex scenarios nor to undervalue thoughtful planning, but I don’t see how we can view the same problems as unique, over and over again. Take the hard work others have done before us, leverage it for our city and residents benefit, and do the same with out struggles and wins- publish our process successes and our common software solutions and share in the efficiencies and collaborations that can strengthen our governments and improve their operation.

To wit, this is exactly how I’m approaching our efforts to implement opendata in both the City of Oakland and the County of Alameda. San Francisco, New York and Chicago have done the hard work blazing a trail, now we have a great process to follow so we don’t have to do the same hard work as they did.

* Identify problem
* Search for existing solution
* Plug and play.

And I think that the more we talk about the processes and struggles to change, the more we all gain.”

-

Steve Spiker: Barriers or Processes?

 Steve Spiker writes a great post about the potential to open-source our processes, not just our code.  Hear hear.

by nickgrossman on January 11, 2012

The latest updates from the Open311 project:

Tackling the long-term strategy of Open311

by Philip Ashlock on the Open311 Blog
February 01, 2012

Latitude and Longitude issue

by lou to discuss@open311.org
February 17, 2012

Latest topics on the Civic Commons Discussion List:

SF's open source Enterprise Addressing System now in production.

discuss@civiccommons.org
latest post: February 18, 2012 06:50 PM

Open-source Enterprise Addressing System now in production in SF!

discuss@civiccommons.org
latest post: February 16, 2012 10:41 PM

Latest edits to the Civic Commons Wiki:

Edited: Davidspage

by Conklingdavid on the Civic Commons Wiki
February 17, 2012 06:11 AM

Edited: Open Data Policy

by Philipashlock on the Civic Commons Wiki
February 16, 2012 06:07 PM

Friends & Family of Civic Commons on their own blogs:

Prescient Markets

by Nick Grossman on Nick Grossman's Blog
November 30, 2011

Civic Startups (Web 2.0 Expo Slides)

by Nick Grossman on Nick Grossman's Blog
October 19, 2011