When the government approves of hacking

Fri, 25 Jan 2013 14:52:00 +0000

The White House announced this week that cities nationwide this summer will celebrate a National Day of Civic Hacking. "Roll up your sleeves, get involved, and get civic-hacking," read the announcement from the Office of Science and Technology Policy. Riffing off President Obama's inaugural call to "harness new ideas and technology to ... empower our citizens," the announcement invited technologists to "unleash their can-do American spirit" on June 1-2.

The idea, which has already been tested by local governments, is to hold local events for which public data and code is released to volunteering technologists who are invited to design programs and apps deemed useful for the wider community. In Philadelphia, for example, a public hackathon event led to the development of a smartphone app with a public transport schedule.

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When the government approves of hacking