That's pretty cool. I like the idea of making a more open government based upon what already exists and is available. Of course it is a passion of love and requires plenty of dedication and work towards the goal but it is very admirable and provides a framework towards how, using existing resources, the citizens can help make their government more open with what their government provides in rudimentary form.
I just hope that the projects that are created are generalizable across municipalities instead of being geared to just one city. Every time I see these open government projects they also come across as very city specific.
I've found that the City-specific projects are the ones that usually end up being successful.
Cities are complicated, and while there are things that every city does (collect taxes, handle zoning, have a police department, etc) every city does it slightly differently. By deploying in one city and treating it like a prototype, you can quickly find out what works and what doesn't and THEN scale up. You need to solve one person's problem before you can solve everyone's.
Not sure I can agree. Different cities have different needs and while it would be cool to have a unified platform to provide everything uniformly, you'd still end up with a lot of different approaches everywhere.
