View of the Manhattan Bridge from Washington Street in Brooklyn. © Superbass / CC-BY-SA-4.0 (via Wikimedia Commons)
We are civic tech people advocating that NYC build government tech in-house for a more affordable, faster, and fairer city. Interested in following our work? Join us.
Digital infrastructure is essential to delivering city services.
Universal childcare. World-class public transit. Affordable housing. Clean streets. Public health. All these services and more depend on digital systems to deliver real, fast, and fair benefits to all New Yorkers.
Yet, the current digital systems in NYC government are often broken, failing to deliver for working families.
$100 million, 43 contractor groups, 3 years and counting. This is the cost of a single digital project championed by the Adams administration. Despite great potential, today the site remains a “skeleton” and “dud”.
Unfortunately this story isn’t new.
We can do better. New Yorkers deserve better.
To deliver, NYC must grow our public-sector technology teams to match the speed and scale of our city’s needs.
We stand on the shoulders of New York’s public servants who’ve planted the seeds over and over before — isolated, underfunded and undersupported. Let’s give these efforts the resources to grow.
The models exist. For more than a decade, the U.S. Digital Service, PIF, 18F, New Jersey Office of Innovation and other digital service organizations have proven that government can build software (and save money too).
Why can’t NYC?
We can build it now. Mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani’s primary victory creates the political opening for bold new action.
Cities face a daunting equation: deliver more services with fewer resources after deliberate federal withdrawal.
If New York gets this right, we create a blueprint for every city in America.
Reach us at [email protected]