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(Just Over) One Year Later: Philly's Open Data Policy

Laurenellen McCann, Alisha Green and Solay Howell | Sunlight Foundation | August 19, 2013

Just over a year ago, Mayor Michael Nutter of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania signed an executive order creating an open data policy for the city. That order called for Philly to take some big steps [...]. But how do these policy provisions play out in real life? Read More »

Health Care Goes to the Mall

By Kim Bellard | June 27, 2017

It's either auspicious or ironic: decades after other retail industries, health care is coming to the mall. These are not, generally, good days for the malls. We've all seen strip malls that were never finished or that have simply fallen on hard times, but in recent years those stalwarts of American shopping -- enclosed malls -- are sharing that fate. Credit Suisse says that 20-25% of the 1,100 U.S. malls will close over the next five years. Analysts talk about "zombie" malls, whose anchor tenants -- like Sears, JC Penny, or Macys -- have pulled out, creating an exodus of other tenants. The malls themselves still stand, but their largely deserted storefronts and scarce shoppers mean they're dead but they don't know it...

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New Open Data Application Gives Access To Licensing And Permitting Data From The City Of Philadelphia

Press Release | Azavea, PlanPhilly | January 15, 2013

Built by Azavea in collaboration with PlanPhilly, the ‘License to Inspect’ application enables the public to access Department of Licenses and Inspections (L&I) data for any address in Philadelphia, including building permits, zoning variances, code violations, and housing inspection licenses. Read More »

Philadelphia Goes To Space

Ali Llewellyn and Andrew Thompson | open.NASA | January 22, 2013

Did you know that the International Space Apps Challenge has a Global Mainstage – kind of like a mission control for intergalactic space collaborations? Last year we were based in San Francisco, and this year we are excited to announce that the 2013 Global Mainstage will be in Philadelphia! Read More »

Philadelphia Open Government 2011 Year in Review

Mark Headd | GovFresh | December 29, 2011

2011 began with enormous potential for the growth of the open government footprint in Philadelphia because of a group of coders and designers that came to town as part of Code for America (CfA). Philadelphia was one of the CfA partner cities for 2011, and the group of fellows that came to town in the early part of the year wasted no time in making their presence felt.

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To ER Is Human...To Build an App to Find the Right Caregiver Is...

By Kim Bellard | September 29, 2015

I was prompted to think of ERs by a WSJ op-ed by Dr. Paul Auerbach.  In it, he argues that non-emergency visits to the ER aren't going to stop, much as we might wish patients to do a better job of evaluating when they are actually suffering an "emergency."  He notes the limited access to timely care from primary care physicians, and how it is not reasonable to expect people to make such rational evaluations when they or their loved ones are suffering. As he says, "You can't teach patients economics lessons when they don't feel well."

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Welcome To A Brand New PlanPhilly!

Matt Golas and Ashley Hahn | PlanPhilly | January 14, 2013

What you are looking at today is a thoroughly new, innovative PlanPhilly website that is designed to better connect the planning, design and development communities in Philadelphia through an integrated content package made up of breaking and investigative news, expert analysis and opinion, organizational and individual profiles, mapped neighborhood pages and enhanced photo and video packages. Read More »

What Can You do with Open Data?

By Gordon Haff | May 9, 2016

Play a word association game and the word "open" will almost surely be followed by "source." And open source is certainly an important force for preserving user freedoms and access to computing. However, code isn't the only form of openness that's important. Open data has been discussed for at least a decade. At the OSCON conference in 2007, Tim O'Reilly kicked off a bit of a ruckus when he suggested that open data might actually be more important than open code. Open data in this context mostly referred to the ability to export the user-created "Web 2.0" data, which was becoming important at that time. Tim Bray, then at Sun Microsystems, highlighted the issue when he wrote...

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