Over the past decade, we’ve seen more and more local governments explore and embrace open government and civic technology. Yet, most of these examples are from medium-to-large city governments. Small local governments don’t seem to be as much of a part of the conversation, and may have less capacity or ability to do some of the things larger governments can.
In this session we will discuss how the 2020s can be the decade where we change that.
This issue is particularly salient because it affects so many people. About 46% of Americans live in municipalities with a population under 300,000, according to the Census Bureau.
This session will include a brief presentation followed by an interactive workshop with lively discussions of:
- How might large city governments help smaller local governments?
- Where are there good opportunities for regional and statewide collaboration?
- Are there ways in which small governments may have advantages in terms of nimbleness, speed of execution, and ability to experiment?
- How can smaller places develop a civic-tech community?
This session will be designed for a wide range of people, including government employees, community advocates, and civic hackers. Attendees will leave with ideas that they can take back to their communities, regardless of size — and inspiration for spreading civic tech and open government to smaller communities in the decade ahead.
(This session has jointly been developed by Greg Jordan-Detamore from the Sunlight Foundation and Tom Dooner from Code for America.)
