I worked for over 12 years in state government — at various times I worked for one of the largest state governments in the country, and one of the smallest. I’ve worked in both the Executive and Legislative branches. One of the things I am most proud of having worked on as a state employee is the Access Delaware Project.
I try to work on open source projects when I can. I never feel like I have enough time. Here are a few of the projects I’ve worked on recently.
TweetMy311
TweetMy311 makes it easy to submit 311 service requests using a smart phone and Twitter. It’s designed to work with the Open311 API being deployed by cities in the United States and Canada.
Currently, the service only works in the San Francisco metropolitan area. As more cities adopt the Open311 standard, it will be possible to enable TweetMy311 in those areas.
DC Crime Finder
The DC Crime Finder is a multimodal app that lets residents of the District of Columbia search for crime locations in their neighborhoods.
It uses actual crime data published by the District and supports a wide range of devices for looking up addresses and crime locations. The DC Crime Finder works with traditional desktop web browsers, mobile devices and PDAs, smart phones, iPhones, G1 phones — essentially any device that has a web browser and access to the Internet.
The application also works with ordinary cell phones and even land line phones. It sports a voice user interface (VUI) which makes it accessible from any old school telephone — even a rotary phone (if anyone in DC still has one).
This application was my submission to the Apps For Democracy contest (version 1) sponsored by the District of Columbia and iStrategyLabs.
Hear Me Say This
Hear Me Say This is a web application that uses the Sunlight Labs API, the Twitter API and the plain old telephone to empower citizens to send a message to the people that represent them in Congress.
The application uses the Voxeo Prophecy platform to support the VoiceXML and CCXML components it uses, and is hosted on a lean and mean Ubuntu web server. The back end is written in PHP 5 and uses a MySQL database. Its open source, and uses the latest open standards for developing telephone applications.
This application was an entry in the Sunlight Labs Apps for America contest.
NY Senate Bill Status Bot
A multi-modal application that allows citizens to use multiple channels to access information on bill status from the NY Senate legislative information system. Discussed more fully here.
Find My Library
Find My Library is an open source software project with the goal of making it easier for patrons – particularly those with limited access to the Internet from home – to locate a public library in their community. Find My Library makes it simple and convenient for anyone to locate a library in their neighborhood. The application can be used with any telephone. From traditional land line telephones to sophisticated mobile phones such as the G1 Phone, iPhone and Droid. If it can make a phone call, you can use it to find a library near you.
This application was an entry in the NYC Big Apps competition.
Toronto Child Care Finder
Find child care locations in the City of Toronto using an open data set released by the Toronto government. Discussed more fully here.
Mobile Advocate
Mobile Advocate is an open source software project that aims to turn the ordinary cell phone into a powerful recruitment and advocacy tool. Using Mobile Advocate, organizations of any size can easily recruit citizens and voters and put them in direct contact with the people that represent them in government. Mobile Advocate empowers field recruiters by turning any regular SMS-enabled cell phone into a recruitment tool. Recruiters and field workers don’t need expensive or cumbersome equipment, or lengthy complex training to quickly begin recruiting citizens and voters to their cause.
More good stuff by me can be found on GitHub.