We did a talk for a group of fellows and staff at Code for America, chatting afterwards about how we might be able to support each others’ projects a little more. Some of Code for America’s work in cities in the US overlaps with what we’re working on, and it was particularly interesting to think about how the approaches we’re taking on the transformation projects might better enable the sort of focussed innovative projects the Code for America fellows take on.

A good example is a project in New York which helps charities who run schemes focussed on offenders to identify the right candidates for those schemes. That service is made possible by the fact that the city’s judicial system is entirely digital, and has the right interfaces to allow new projects to search the data and take it to the people who need it.