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. Read our open letter.
By building up in-house digital service teams across NYC government, our city can:
Empower civil servants and frontline workers to deliver excellent services for all New Yorkers
Save money by reducing reliance on $100M+ IT consultants
Act fast in the face of emergencies
Build resilience in case of federal hostility
How to get started? Invest in the NYC Digital Service and appoint a CTO who can build.
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 — undersupported and underfunded. Let’s give these efforts the resources to grow.
The models exist. For more than a decade, the U.S. Digital Service, 18F, UK’s GDS, New Jersey’s Office of Innovation and other digital service organizations have proven that government can build software for people—and save money as well.
NYC can too.
We can build it now. Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s 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.
Who we are. As civic technologists we’ve built digital systems in New York City government, at the state and federal level, and in nonprofits and the private sector.
Contributors:
Aidan Feldman (Columbia SIPA, NYU Wagner, formerly 18F, US Census Bureau, NYC Planning Labs & OTI)
Andrew Staniforth (Formerly co-founder & CEO Assembly OSM, Sidewalk Labs)
Art Chang (Coalition for Asian American Children and Families, formerly 2021 NYC Mayoral Candidate, NYC Votes, Casebook child welfare system, Pivotal Labs)
Dan Getelman (Co-founder Remix transit planning software, formerly Code for America fellow)
Hendrick Townley (Formerly NYC First Deputy Mayor’s Office, Integrity Institute, FB Civic Integrity)
Jaime-Jin Lewis (Founder & CEO of Wiggle Room)
Matthew Burton (U.S. Department of Treasury, formerly Consumer Financial Protection Bureau)
Sarah Evans (NYC Department for the Aging Volunteer, formerly Palo Alto Networks)
Tong Galaxy (MTA Digital Team, formerly Ramp, Crisis Text Line)
Thank you for feedback and advice to Bryan Hirsch, Cara Eckholm, Catherine Vaughan, Gabe Paley, Jessica Cole, Jon Rynn, Luke Farrell, Nathan Storey, Noel Hidalgo, Robert Holbrook, Ross Dakin, Ruthie Nachmany, Youssef Kalad and many others.
Reach us at [email protected]
