Gateway to Gov - Research and Discussion Blog

I’m pleased to announce that Gateway has awarded a Google Earth Pro grant. This software grant will help us to expand and enhance the GIS planning we’ve been doing for the NYCCF project. This is our second Google grant, the first being a scholarship to attend the Personal Democracy Forum that we received in 2007. [...]

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NYC Primary Election - Tuesday, September 15th 6am - 9pm
Voter guide:
http://www.nyccfb.info/public/voter-guide/primary_2009
To look up your candidates for the general election:
http://pvoter.org (this website will soon be renamed and moved to whoismygov.org. It’s a TOPP project that was used for http://tacandidatesurvey.org)
To locate your polling site:
http://gis.nyc.gov/vote/ps/index.htm
To look up your voter registration info:
https://voterlookup.elections.state.ny.us/
You can also call the board of elections [...]

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NYC Council’s Technology in Government Committee held a public hearing to discuss Int. 991-2009, a bill sponsored by Gale Brewer  mandating that NYC government release all city data online. Full video coverage shows that the administration is less than supportive of this legislation.
As Joly MacFie put it:
“… Bloomberg’s announcement upstages a much wider proposal by [...]

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On Monday morning Mayor Bloomberg made a Skype appearance at #PDF09, announcing that NYC would be holding a “Big Apps Competition” in the spirit of DC’s Apps for Democracy. The New York Future Initiative did a nice piece on this, as did the NYTimes City Room blog.
Garnering less publicity, the NYCEDC has issued an RFP [...]

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The last couple of weeks have been very busy (re: NYC Community Fiber) but I’ve managed to set a few hours aside to attend Day 1 of Participation Camp 2009, an unconference being at NYU’s ITP. True to its participatory namesake, the two main organizers, Matt Cooperrider and Suresh Fernando, have done a great job [...]

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A lively discussion of eDemocracy tools, techniques and approaches is underway at the George Washington University, The Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet (IPDI) & The Graduate School of Political Management (GSPM).
Follow remotely using  twitter hashtag #eDemCamp and the wiki, http://www.eDemocracyCamp.org

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Find your polling location and vote!
http://maps.google.com/vote

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Google just announced a new tool for finding polling locations, absentee ballots and the various deadlines along the way.
“We developed the site in the hope that it will increase voter participation. We were helped by a number of partners, including many state and local election officials, the League of Women Voters, the Pew Charitable Trusts, [...]

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Starting a non-profit is as hard, if not harder, than starting a for-profit — and for all the financial risk and hard work invested starting a not-for-profit public service organization, very little (if any) chance of a financial return, no less any form of remuneration for the years of effort invested. If I’d only known [...]

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There has been a lot of talk over the past 10 years about the so-called digital divide – the disparity between those who benefit from new technologies and those who don’t – and its impact on online advocacy. Traditional thinking has been that the divide is primarily a problem of access – once you provide [...]

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