TOP NEWS
Civic Engagement Startup's Strategy: Find the Real Constituents Online A foundational trait of the Internet is that it is fertile soil for the creation of communities based on ideology, or shared interests, or identity — and not just geography. But the government of the real world is still based on spatially-defined jurisdictions, and so engaging constituents online can be hard. So one startup, PlaceSpeak, is working to help governments narrow down their civic engagement efforts to include their real constituents based on where they are.California's Agile Pilot Project Awards Key Contract to CivicActions The Gov Tech 100 company will serve in a DevOps role for the eight-part Child Welfare Digital Services project, helping to coordinate the work of the various vendors working on it. The effort is highly watched because it is serving as a pilot test for agile development at the state's tech offices.
Louisville Offers Its Data Through the IFTTT App The popular smartphone app lets users set up and adopt if-this-then-that programs, such that a person can receive alerts about the weather or make their smart home devices perform tasks given a condition. Now the city of Louisville is using the app to connect citizens to its open data, and it's offering the code on GitHub for other cities to do the same.
How Government Helps Government Navigate Tech A lot of small local governments are so resource-constrained that they don't have formal IT departments. So in some places, their larger neighbors will lend them a helping hand when it comes to adopting technology.
DeKalb County, Ga., Pours $5M into New Water Billing System The Atlanta-area county has awarded a contract to Systems & Software, Inc. after angry residents approached the city about its old system sending them water bills in the hundreds- and thousands-of-dollars range.
Pittsburgh-Area Town Adopts Citizen Notification App from Local Company Facebook wasn't getting it done, so the town of McCandless, Pa. has launched the Savvy Citizens app from the Pittsburgh-based Management Science Associates. The app will act as a messaging service, delivering information such as trash pickup, city activities and bridge closings to residents.
WATCHLIST
Bonfire: A procurement automation firm. Bonfire just raised $11 million.Abl Schools: Time and resource management software serving secondary schools. Abl raised $7.5 million in a Series A round last week.
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WHAT WE'RE READING
Women Come Forward About Sexual Harrassment from Tech VCs: Following stories of serial sexual harassment from Binary Capital Managing Partner Justin Caldbeck, a wave of women came forward to speak about their own experiences with sexual harassment at the hands of venture capitalists in the tech sector. (The New York Times )
GovTechBiz is our weekly newsletter covering the companies, deals and trends in the business of gov tech. Got a news tip? Other feedback? We're listening. Send it to GovTechBiz Writer Ben Miller at biz@govtech.com.
