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Citizenville: Connecting People And Government In The Digital Age (2013)

by Gavin Newsom(Favorite Author)

3.78 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

1594204721 (ISBN13: 9781594204722)

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

Penguin Press HC, The

review 1: Citizenville, it says, updates the commonwealth notion of a township, a place where we all know and tolerate each other and come together for the common good. Newsom writes that government is stuck in the twentieth century. How Did We Get Here?, the first chapter, traces the impact of large-scale bureaucracy, and, for example, describes the dysfunctional US Senate as "a museum piece." Estonia came out of the 1991 Soviet breakup. Starting from scratch without a legacy system in place, the country invents itself in the modern era. Citizens pay parking meters, parking tickets, property taxes on their phone. And they can vote from anywhere through the Internet the week before election day. Because it leads the world in many modern ways, some call the country E-stonia. One-way ... morecommunication is dead, writes Newsom several times. Two-way is the future. PDFs, for example, represent locked-up, one-way, unusable communication. Governments, instead, should make data freely available then get out of the way to let citizens work and play with it, which can lead to ideas and breakthroughs. Governments collect mountains of data. But it's our data.A good, quick and well-written book. Three and a half stars.June selection, Urban Milwaukee Book Club.`
review 2: I liked the premise and Newsoms modern approach to citizen engagement. I didn't like that he implies that all people working in government IT are incompetent which I found personally insulting. I have worked for Alameda County IT for a little over one year and have found them to be the smartest, most innovative and caring people I have ever worked with in my entire career leveraging all aspects of technology to engage the public. Hackathons, mobile apps, social media, interns,award winning website, they are all in! less

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