Laura Melle, on the City of Boston Office of Technology team, was assigned to support the evolving departmental procurement process, provided the background information for this story. The Office of Technology “inbeds” data oriented staff in key line departments to build support for and overcome the challenges to bringing these departments into “smart cities” status.… Read More
Improve City Services with Innovation, Technology
(excerpt from: Using Innovation and Technology to Improve City Services) Cities are increasingly becoming the public sector service delivery engines in the United States. They have heard a call to action: residents expect cities to find ways to improve services. And cities are gearing up to do so. City governments, residents, and interest groups are… Read More
New Evidence Shows Citizen Engagement Increases Tax Revenues
Evidence continues to show that citizen engagement, citizens participating in public policy issues, leads to increased tax compliance and higher tax revenues. Quite a while ago, drawing mainly from the literature on tax morale, Tiago Peixoto at DemocracySpot posted about the evidence on the relationship between citizen engagement and tax revenues. As a side note, he is still… Read More
Open Governments, Open Data: A New Lever for Transparency
Citizen Engagement, and Economic Growth Posted on June 26, 2014 by Stefaan Verhulst in GovLab Digest Joel Gurin at the SAIS Review of International Affairs: “The international open data movement is beginning to have an impact on government policy, business strategy, and economic development. Roughly sixty countries in the Open Government Partnership have committed to… Read More