(This post originally published July 8, 2012)
Do City, County and State government CIOs have a responsibility to be “cheerleaders” for their jurisdictions for economic development of the community?
I think so.
We CIOs have talked about “aligning information technology with the business” of government and “customer service” to other departments. Those are still important, although, increasingly, CIOs are contracting a lot of the actual “doing” of technology to software-as-a-service and other cloud providers.
But most elected officials have little interest in internal information technology functions, However virtually every one believes that bringing new business to their community – or growing it – is the key to improving the overall quality of life. New businesses bring new jobs. Governments prize technology businesses, especially, because they are “cool”, generally “green” and also bring high-paying jobs. Look on the websites of any number of cities and counties for economic development goals, and you’ll see emulation of Silicon Valley.
The governments’ CIOs are the technology experts within each government. Where better to get the expertise to help entice or grow such high-tech businesses?
Seattle recently sponsored a “Startup Weekend – Government Edition”….
(Read the rest of this blog post on my Digital Communities Blog here.)
Great post, Bill. I can’t speak highly enough of Startup Weekend and the App challenges. I’m a member of WhichBus (http://whichbus.org) and we were born at a Startup Weekend event and one of our motivators to continue has been the App contest. We’re getting really close to launching our site in private beta and I just wanted to thank you for being for open data that’s allowing our dream/app to become a reality!
Thanks, Dave, for this comment and thanks for the encouragement on open data. I signed up at whichbus.org and am eagerly looking forward to the public launch!
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