New York Reveals Plan To Become America’s Next Top Digital City. Through new official partnerships with Facebook, Twitter, and NY-based startups Foursquare and Tumblr, New York aims to become America’s next, top digital city.
New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and the city’s first, chief digital officer, Rachel Sterne, presented their Road Map for the Digital City, today. The full plan is available here, on NYC.gov. Before formulating the plan, Sterne led a comprehensive 90-day review of the city’s current use of web, social media and mobile technology, and surveyed thousands of public and private sector organizations, and residential users in New York to understand what was missing, and what’s working well so far. How New York City Is Going Digital in 2011. The Global Innovation Series is supported by BMW i, a new concept dedicated to providing mobility solutions for the urban environment.
It delivers more than purpose-built electric vehicles — it delivers smart mobility services. Visit bmw-i.com or follow @BMWi on Twitter. As New York City's first chief digital officer, Rachel Sterne's primary task is to assess city government's digital strategy. She and her team spent the first 90 days compiling a report, and the result is the Road Map for the Digital City, a 60-page dossier on the city’s digital reach, what the team plans to achieve and how to get there.
Mashable recently spoke with Sterne about the Roadmap and what she plans to implement in New York. Greater Access to Digital The first area of emphasis is information access, which addresses the digital divide. Open Government With APIs Tim O’Reilly is responsible for the idea of “government as a platform,” and Sterne embraces this philosophy. Increase Citizen Engagement. Rachel Sterne Vs. New York's Digital Bureaucracy.
In January, New York mayor Michael Bloomberg tapped Rachel Sterne to be the city's first chief digital officer--and ever since then, the 27-year-old (28 on Monday) has been on a tear, dragging New York into the 21st century.
She's overhauled much of the city's communication with social media; launched NYC's Digital Road Map, a plan to transform New York into a high-tech metropolis; introduced smart and simple city solutions like adding QR codes to building permits; and held the city's first ever hackathon. Her goal is to make government more effective and transparent through technology, to make the Big Apple run more like Apple. But the one element lacking in most of the buzz about her meteoric rise and even bigger ambitions is a way to prove it's all working.
Until now. As with all public sector initiatives, the onus is on her to prove she's not just wasting tax dollars building a new digital bureaucracy. But Sterne acknowledges the agencies need to be held accountable. NY Holds First Ever Hackathon at General Assembly. How data and open government are transforming NYC.
“In God We Trust,” tweeted New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg this month.
“Everyone else, bring data.” Bloomberg, the billionaire founder of Bloomberg L.P., is now in his third term as mayor of the Big Apple. During his tenure, New York City has embraced a more data-driven approach to governing, even when the results of that data-driven transparency show a slump in city services. This should be no surprise to anyone familiar with the mission statement of his financial data company: Bloomberg started out with one core belief: that bringing transparency to capital markets through access to information could increase capital flows, produce economic growth and jobs, and significantly reduce the cost of doing business. As Gov 2.0 goes local, New York City has become the epicenter for many experiments in governance, from citizensourcing smarter government to participatory budgeting to embracing a broader future as a data platform.
Video of Sterne’s talk is embedded below. Big data in the Big Apple. Strata New York 2011: Rachel Sterne, "How Open Government is Transforming New York City" NYC Digital. NYC Digital and the NYC Department of Education recently hosted Women in Tech, which introduced female students from the City’s public schools to some of the New York City’s local tech companies.
Students met with women working in various technology roles, and learned about a variety of career opportunities in the tech industry. New York City 311 (311nyc) How can New York City use technology to serve citizens?