Building a culture of collaboration and participation is a key ingredient to making innovative programs work in cities.

Mark Headd talks about his time with Code for America as their Head of Government Relations, and shares some of the emergent learnings from the intersection between the various elements of CfA’s program – the cities, the fellows, the brigade, the commons and now the start-ups.

“The most important thing that cities can do to keep pushing innovation in their cities is to bring in those people closest to them that are products of their own innovation.”

About Mark Headd

Mark has been the Director of Government Relations for Code for America since April 2012, as well as being a writer, speaker and thought leader on communication technologies and open government. He is a civic hacking veteran and a keen builder of civic software.

Mark has also just been appointed the City of Philadelphia’s first Chief Data Officer.

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Episode links and resources

• • Code for America
    • Brigade
    • Commons
    • Engagement Commons
    • Accelerator
    • Fellows
    • Cities
  • Young Rewired State
  • Sheltr

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• Tags: #cfa #civic #innovation

Civic innovator and hackfest vetern Mark Headd joins Gov20 Radio for an in-depth conversation about mobilizing and sustaining civic innovation: hacking, start-ups and what Governments can do to encourage local action.

In 2011, you really started to see independently-organized events taking place, where there were groups of civic-ly-minded hackers in these cities saying ‘We want to do something to give back to our cities.’

About Mark Headd

Mark is a writer, speaker and thought leader on communication technologies and open government. He currently works as a Developer Evangelist for Voxeo Labs. He holds a Master’s degree in Public Administration from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University, and is a former adjunct instructor at the University of Delaware teaching a course in electronic government.

He served for three years as the chief policy and budget advisor for the State of Delaware’s Department of Technology and Information. He has also served as Director of the Delaware Government Information Center and as Technology Adviser to former Delaware Governor Thomas Carper.

Mark has built open government applications for the District of Columbia, the Sunlight Foundation, the New York State Senate, and the cities of New York, San Francisco, Toronto, Baltimore and Philadelphia.

How you can use this episode

Listen to the episode

Episode links and resources

• Civic hacking events in Baltimore and Philadelphia
• Mark’s Civic Innovations blog

Social share with others

You can use the social sharing links at the top of the page to easily share this story with your networks. You can also follow and join in the social conversation about this episode with:

• People and organisations:
  @mheadd @civicio
• Tags: #civic #innovation