While NYC might not have direct democracy, it does have a Charter Revision Commission. This commission gives the people the power to rewrite the City’s constitution — aka the City Charter. In an era where democracy seems under attack, over the course of 24 months, NYC will have hosted TWO Charter Revision Commissions! The […]
We have published two reports based on several years of research into the technical and information infrastructure supporting community boards. The first report, BetaNYC and Civic Innovations Fellows Community Board and Technology Needs Report, summarizes interviews with district managers about the current state of technology within district offices and their most pressing technology needs going forward. […]
We are honored to share a project showcase of the Fund for the City of New York’s Community Planning Fellows and NYC’s Civic Innovation Fellows hosted by the Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer and BetaNYC. Both programs are using geographic information system (GIS), civic technology, and open data to improve Community Board operations. This post […]
To: NYC Charter Revision Commission From: Noel Hidalgo, Executive Director of BetaNYC Subject: Civic Engagement and Independent Redistricting Thursday, 21 June 2018 Where we are now: The 1989 Charter revision created COPIC, the Commission on Public Information and Communication. Its ideals were virtuous: educate the public about the availability and potential usefulness of city produced […]
To: NYC Charter Revision Commission From: Noel Hidalgo, Executive Director of BetaNYC Wednesday, 9 May 2018 Dear Chair Cesar Perales, Vice Chair Rachel Godsil, and Commissioners, It is an honor to have this opportunity to represent New York City’s civic technology, design, and data community. I am the Executive Director of BetaNYC, a member […]
We are conducting research to better understand the information infrastructure that supports community boards and are producing recommendations on how to make municipal information more useful! Can you give us five mins and tell us your successes and/or data needs? For the last three months, we have documented the existing information workflows within community […]
At BetaNYC, we have been working on a tool to map vacant storefronts in Manhattan. Since there is currently no city entity comprehensively tracking the location or status of vacant storefronts across the city, we are attempting to reverse engineer this data by mapping where there are commercial units in the city and then removing […]
Testimony to the New York City Council Governmental Operations Committee on the Publication of Online Reports and the Broadcasting of Mandatory Debates April 26, 2018 Good morning Chair Cabrera and members of the New York City Council Governmental Operations committee. My name is Alex Camarda, and I am the Senior Policy Advisor for Reinvent Albany. […]
To: NYC Council – Committee on Technology From: Noel Hidalgo, Executive Director of BetaNYC Re: Link NYC Oversight Hearing Wednesday, 18 April 2018 Chairman Koo & the Committee on Technology, BetaNYC has fully supported Mayor Bloomberg’s and Mayor de Blasio’s reinvention of the municipal payphone. We are excited to see how Link NYC has transformed […]
How we build is as important as what we build. – Chris Whong, NYC Planning Labs Thank you for making NYC’s School of Data an amazing day and making NYC’s second annual open data week an epic adventure across the Boroughs! 2018 is our second year where we simultaneously celebrated International Open Data Day and […]
