Miranda Neubauer

An online tool from tax preparation company Intuit that can easily determine whether an application is eligible for food stamps or other benefits is now freely available through a federal agency to states, local governments or nonprofit organizations.

Councilman Ben Kallos has been pushing for legislation that would require the city to use income tax filings to determine eligibility for public benefits.

Last year, Intuit made the Benefit Assist tool available to help users of TurboTax determine whether they were eligible for an array of programs, including SNAP, Medicaid, Medicare and many others.

A bill introduced in the City Council on Tuesday seeks to expand on and codify the practice of optimizing city websites based on the analytics of their visitors.

Councilman Ben Kallos, chair of the Committee on Government Operations, introduced the legislation. It would require the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications to ensure that all agencies use web analytics in maintaining and designing their websites.

Councilman Ben Kallos, chair of the Committee on Governmental Operations, and Councilman James Vacca, chair of the Committee on Technology, are introducing the bill that seeks to mirror a feature available on the website of the New York State Senate.

The city has begun publishing detailed budget data on its open data portal, not long after Councilman Ben Kallos introducedlegislation that would require making the budget information accessible in a format that is searchable and accessible to third-party applications.

According to the playbook site, the city took input from residents, as well as several civic and technology leaders, elected and city government officials and providers, along with examples from other governments and the private sector.

The playbook specifically credits City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer and Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, and Councilmembers Ben Kallos, James Vacca, Brad Lander, Vanessa Gibson and Helen Rosenthal. It also credits the organizations Bangladesh-American Community Council, the Brite Leadership Coalition, the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty, the Central Family Life Center, Adhikaar, Make the Road NY and MASA.

He saw potential for Technology Development Corporation, the nonprofit corporation set up in 2012 under Bloomberg to oversee major technology projects, where he last worked, to evolve into something like the federal government's 18F. Its websitedocuments credit the agency with key involvement in the Pre-K for All outreach system and IDNYC.

He said, he felt however, that nobody "understand[s] the potential value of the TDC well enough."

Councilwoman Helen Rosenthal invoked a possible role for the Technology Development Corporation at a recent Council hearing considering two bills introduced by Councilman Ben Kallos aimed at pushing the administration to embrace open-source software,  which the Independent Budget Office estimates could eventually save $25 million. An 18F employee was among those testifying in favor.

City film permitting data will soon be available on the open data portal, a spokeswoman for the Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment said Thursday.

Associate commissioner Connie Ress' statement came a day after WNYC published anarticle and map of TV shoots across the city from November 2011 to July 2015 using data from the administration in response to a FOIL request. WNYC also published the underlying data to the programming platform Github, including data for feature film and news show permits.

Councilman Ben Kallos had also introduced aseparate bill on behalf of Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer that would require production permits to be made available online and searchable by community board district.

Last April, Reinvent Albany and other groups wrote a letter to the city again requesting the publication of the film shoots data on the portal, citing significant interest from hearing attendees in having more advance notice and in the data.

"We need the internet as a collective .... to come out, advocate, let the mayor, let the Council .... know that this is something they want to see the city lead the nation on," Kallos said after the hearing.

One of the bills introduced by Councilman Ben Kallos, the committee chair, would require the Department of Education, which is already under a requirement to provide voter registration information to graduating seniors, to receive such material from the Board of Elections in other languages, based on schools' student population.

The new platform is the result of legislation signed into law last year that required the publication, produced by the Department of Citywide Administrative Services, to be available online in a searchable and machine-readable format, and which was introduced by Councilman Ben Kallos.