Technology

"We would have universal broadband in New York City, if only Verizon had kept its promise to provide universal fiber to every home, as was required by the 2008 franchise agreement. Countless New Yorkers have tried to get fiber in their homes only to be told it was 'unavailable,' and I know because I am one of them," said council member Ben Kallos.

"Mayor de Blasio's administration's shocking audit shows that Verizon did not deliver on its word to do just that, stalling the city's modernization for years. Now, I join the Mayor and advocates to strongly call on Verizon to do what is right and make good on its promises so that all New Yorkers can access Fiber Internet."

Earlier in the afternoon, Councilman Ben Kallos will participate in a panel on "Designing the Digital Legislature" along with Seamus Kraft, executive director of the OpenGov Foundation, a co-creator of the Free Law Founders with Kallos, and David Moore, executive director of the Participatory Politics Foundation.

On a later panel, Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer and Councilman Ben Kallos discussed how technology could help bridge the gap between the government and the public. With the establishment of laws she spearheaded, including open data and webcasting legislation, "now the challenge is making it work," Brewer said, to ensure that agencies fulfill the mandate, data is available in real-time and is up-to-date, as agencies also still face logistical and bandwidth hurdles when seeking to webcast meetings.

Kallos said Council legislation will be available through an open application programming interface beginning in July. Council legislation, meeting and member datawas already recently added to the open data portal. While those datasets had a deadline of Jan. 1, Council land use items are currently only scheduled to come on the portal in December 2018. Kallos emphasized the need for a partnership between government and the private sector and technology developers to ensure that the right of kind of data is made available in the right format.

Since taking office on Jan. 1, 2014, New York City Council Member Ben Kallos has made it a priority to introduce legislation that uses technology to overcome issues in the Big Apple.

From requiring New York City laws to be easily accessible online, to improving the transparency of government operations, Kallos -- who represents NYC's Upper East Side and Roosevelt Island -- has leveraged his background as a software developer to illustrate the value of tech use in the public sector.

Government Technology spoke to Kallos about the strides he’s made during his first year in office, and how technology will continue to play a vital part of his legislative agenda in 2015 and beyond.

The Council will also create pilot a texting initiative that will push alerts and information to New Yorkers. Councilman Ben Kallos, said one of the roadmap's biggest plans was to release more data from the Council and city agencies in databases that can be access by civic groups and the public easily for free.

"It means anyone who can access information when they want it on their own terms," he said.

"Government is going mobile first, from a click away to a swipe away," said Ben Kallos, who chairs the Council's governmental operations committee and is himself a software deveoper. "Inclusive government means using every tool at our disposal, now and in the future, to engage New Yorkers where they're at, whether by text or online."

We kicked off the event with comments from New York City Council Member Ben Kallos on the critical role of technology in government. Ben has been a tireless champion of the benefits of open government, and at the beginning of his career he was responsible for putting Albany voting records online so that citizens could hold politicians accountable. Since then, he’s been actively engaged in discussing ways to move citizen services online and make City agencies more transparent. Council Member Kallos concluded his talk with the following inspirational challenge: “Hack your government. It belongs to you.”

If you’ve ever spent a lot of time in a big city, chances are you or someone you know has had a car towed and couldn’t easily find it. It’s a problem in the Big Apple, and New York City Council Member Ben Kallos is trying to do something about it.

Kallos, who represents Gotham’s Upper East Side and Roosevelt Island, has introduced legislation that enables owners of cars towed due to emergencies or temporary parking restrictions to be able to find where their vehicle is through an online application or by 311. Tracking is currently only available for cars taken to impound lots because of standard parking violations.

Before I became a City Council member, I was a civic technologist and activist seeking to make government better through technology.  In one such action, I FOILed Albany voting records and posted them online for the public to see, prompting the legislature to follow suit. Because of this background, I am especially looking forward to helping other civic technologists create tools that will make government more transparent, efficient and engaging.

These tools have great potential to be tools that the next generation of citizens actually uses to engage with their local officials. The funding from Knight Foundation will allow me to assist teams in doing just that, with firsthand knowledge of how governments use technology.

EVERYWHERE—Council Member Ben Kallos unveiled a proposal today to add an illegal hotels complaint category to the city's 311 App in order to help the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications deal with those types of complaints more efficiently. A recent City Council hearing on Airbnb revealed that the city has a difficult time dealing with the volume of illegal hotel complaints it receives. [UPDATE: The DoITT is responsible for building the app, not for handling individual 311 calls.]