Interview with executive director of betaNYC, Noel Hidalgo on civic technology and NYC

Interview with executive director of betaNYC discussing civic technology past and present in NYC

0:14 – Introductions Noel Hidalgo – executive director beta.NYC
1:16 – How Noel became an open data advocate / his history
2:00 – beginnings of NYC civic hacker community
3:21 – Haley Cooper Rider – meet up based around question of what is open government ?
3:58 – Open NYC Meetup becomes Open NY Forum
4:28 – Kind of people getting involved
5:15 – Rebranded as Beta.NYC – betanyc.us/
5:24 – Beta NYC helped create city’s open data law
6:00 – BetaNYC – joins Code for America – Brigade Program – discussion covers BP
8:10 – Hurdles, challenges, wins
10:00 – Peoples roadmap for digital NYC
12:25 – City’s analytics officer redefines data as being human readable
13:37 – Tools developed by community getting most use/reuse
Data.beta.nyc
talk.beta.nyc – community
www.citygram.nyc/
15:58 – Citygram in the perspective of Everyblock, Fixmystreet, SeeClickFix types of services. 311 services.
18:50 – Data found at 2 repositories: data.beta.nyc + data.cityofnewyork.us
19:30 – Data advocacy program
21:10 – Teaching internal government to use civic tech platforms
22:10 – Community boards, land-use decisions, licensing and permitting
23:45 – NYC Civic Innovation Fellows Program – undergraduates taught civic tech, data and design and then embedded in community boards
25:15 – What are community boards?
26:35 – Do community boards have gender/age balance? Are new members voted in frequently?
29:00 – Manhattan recent call to change/redesign concept of community boards vs Brooklyn
30:25 – Are community boards the same model in different US cities?
32:57 – How are you funded?
34:02 – Final thoughts – influencers coming into civic tech. space in NYC. NYC BigApps bigapps.nyc/p/, co-working specifically for civic tech. activistis, civic hall – civichall.org/, center for social innovation – nyc.socialinnovation.org/, transition towards civic tech. entrepreneurs , data & society www.datasociety.net/