Code for America Summit 2022

Greetings Civic Hackers!

This years Code for America Summit will be a hybrid event and take place in Washington DC from May 17 to 18, 2022. Code for America is currently accepting proposals for summit sessions. Whether you are a volunteer, government employee, or academic Code for America is interested in hearing about your ideas and experiences and providing a platform for you to share these. I hope you will read more about Summit and consider submitting a proposal.

What we’re reading and watching:

• On Zealotry and Cryptocurrency in Government is civic tech luminary Mark Headd’s perspective on Philadelphia embracing cryptocurrency.
• Maybe There’s a Use for Crypto After All is Kevin Roose’s exploration of the Helium network, a not quite legal decentralized long range low bandwidth network used by scooter and other companies.
• NYC Mayor Eric Adams pledged to take his first few paychecks in crypto.
• Tim Davies looks at the UK Open Government National Action Plan

Matt & The Code for Boston Team

Events

Code for Boston Demo Night 2022

Code for Boston Demo Night is an opportunity to see what the results of the volunteer work that members have been putting in throughout the year. This is a hybrid event, attendees can participate virtually or in-person at the Venture Cafe on the 5th Floor of CIC One Broadway in Kendall Square. Presentations will be both in-person and virtual, with virtual presentations on a projector for in-person attendees.

Code for America: Creating Shared Goals with Emergent Strategy

Starting in February, the Brigade Network will be convening a series of six public, monthly workshops on community organizing and how to create distributed leadership, deliberation, and clear decisionmaking processes.

Jobs

City of Boston Cabinet Positions

🌇 Chief of Planning: The first-ever(!) Cabinet-level planning role in Boston, you’ll direct all citywide plans and spearhead a vision for a more equitable, resilient, transit-oriented, affordable city.

👩🏾‍💻 Chief Information Officer: You’ll run the award-winning 150+ person Dept of Innovation & Technology (DoIT) to deliver mission-critical technology products and services that are simple, beautiful, and easy to use - improving both City Hall and resident quality of life.

🌱 Senior Advisor for the Green New Deal: The first position of its kind, you’ll champion an all-of-government approach to climate and implement initiatives of Boston’s Green New Deal and Just Recovery.

❤️ Chief of Human Services: You’ll lead the delivery of services for our most vulnerable residents, with a focus on youth, seniors, veterans, folks with disabilities. Noteworthy: the Boston Public Library will sit within Human Services as an innovative channel for tools and outreach.

Project Updates

Legislative Testimony Platform Project

• Digital public testimony for MA legislature
• Backend with Firebase
• Front end is React

Clean Slate

• Got first big PR for version 4 of testing framework merged
• Continued issues for testing framework
• Keeping version 3 stable
• Met with MRCC to talk about website/wordpress/design

Mattapan Mapping

• Continuing to refine UX design as well as figuring what they want to use for the backend to display tabular data.