Established September 2009 Website codeforamerica.org Date founded September 2009 Executive director Jennifer Pahlka | Location San Francisco, CA Founder Jennifer Pahlka Head Jennifer Pahlka COO Maryann Kongovi | |
 | ||
Similar Sunlight Foundation, Omidyar Network, OpenPlans, Open Knowledge International, mySociety Profiles | ||
Jen pahlka code for america s 2016 fellowship projects
Code for America is a non-partisan, non-political 501(c)(3) organization founded in 2009 to address the widening gap between the public and private sectors in their effective use of technology and design. According to its website, the organization works with residents and governments in solving community problems. The organization began by enlisting technology and design professionals to work with city governments in the United States in order to build open-source applications and promote openness, participation, and efficiency in government, and has grown into a cross-sector network of practitioners of civic innovation and a platform for "civic hacking."
Contents
- Jen pahlka code for america s 2016 fellowship projects
- 194 jen pahlka and code for america
- Founding and history
- Fellowship program
- Projects
- Board of Directors
- Funders
- References
Through five programs, Code for America helps government work more like the Internet.
The Washington Post described Code for America as "the technology world's equivalent of the Peace Corps or Teach for America." The article goes on to say, "They bring fresh blood to the solution process, deliver agile coding and software development skills, and frequently offer new perspectives on the latest technology — something that is often sorely lacking from municipal government IT programs. This is a win-win for cities that need help and for technologists that want to give back and contribute to lower government costs and the delivery of improved government service."
The New York Times described Code for America as "a new nonprofit project... which aims to import the efficiency of the Web into government infrastructures" and "[tries] to make working in government fun and creative."
194 jen pahlka and code for america
Founding and history
In 2009, the founder Jennifer Pahlka was working with O'Reilly Media at the Gov 2.0 Summit in Washington, DC. A conversation with Andrew Greenhill, the Mayor’s Chief of Staff of the City of Tucson, sparked the initial idea for Code for America, when he said “You need to pay attention to the local level, because cities are in major crisis. Revenues are down, costs are up -- if we don't change how cities work, they're going to fail." The two began discussing plans for a program that eventually became Code for America, “a one-year fellowship recruiting developers to work for city government.” With support from web entrepreneur Leonard Lin, Tim O'Reilly of O'Reilly Media, and technologist Clay A. Johnson, among others, the organization was launched in September 2009.
Fellowship program
Code for America connects city governments and web professionals through the Code for America Fellowship program.
The first year of the fellowship program began in January 2011. Twenty fellows were selected from 360 applicants, resulting in a 5.6% acceptance rate. Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, DC, and Seattle were the four cities selected to participate in the 2011 program.
On January 4, 2012 Code for America began its second year fellowship program with 26 fellows and eight cities: Austin, Chicago, Detroit, Honolulu, Macon, New Orleans, Philadelphia, and Santa Cruz.
The 2016 Code for America fellowship program is running in partnership with six cities: Kansas City, Missouri; Long Beach, California; New Orleans, Louisiana; New York City, New York; Salt Lake County, Utah; and Seattle, Washington.
Projects
The inaugural 2011 fellowship program launched four projects in Boston, Seattle, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC. Each city partners with a team of five web programmers or designers selected for the fellowship. Over a period of 11 months, the fellows and city government collaborate to develop a web application to solve a civic problem identified by the city in their project proposals. The completed software applications are released as open-source for any city government to use or adapt.
The Civic Commons project focuses on reducing public IT costs by helping government entities share code and best practices. It was launched in September 2010 after the Washington, DC project fell through due to a change in administration. Code for America Commons, as it is now called, is a coordinated effort between Code for America, OpenPlans, and the District of Columbia's Office of the Chief Technology Officer (OCTO). In March 2011, Code for America Commons helped make the Federal IT dashboard freely available to all levels of government, thereby providing local governments with tools to monitor project effectiveness and evaluate the allocation of resources.
In December 2011 Code for America announced the receipt of a $1.5 million grant from Google and the formation of two new programs: Accelerator and Brigade. The Code for America Brigades are local groups of volunteers who build civic apps on open data in cities around the world.
In 2011, CFA coders developed an "Adopt a Hydrant" website, so that volunteers in Boston can sign up to shovel out fire hydrants after storms. The system has also been implemented in Providence, Rhode Island, Anchorage, Alaska, and Chicago. Honolulu has created a similar website, "Adopt-A-Siren", for its tsunami sirens.
In 2015, fellows at Code for America designed GetCalFresh.org, to streamline the CalFresh application process. In California, 40% of people who are eligible for CalFresh, the state's Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, were not receiving benefits. California has the second lowest participation rate in the country. Although an online application is available in California, it can take up to an hour to complete, is more than 50 web pages long, and filled with over a hundred questions. It also doesn't work on mobile devices, despite the fact that most low-income people rely on smartphones for access to the Internet. GetCalFresh takes an average time of 11 minutes to complete and, as of 2016, is being used by 9 counties to help over 1,000 people. In addition, it leverages mobile phone access among applicants to encourage questions and answers, all over text. Current efforts are focused on scaling this solution.