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What’s New in NYC Civic Tech – October 17, 2025

Noel Hidalgo

By the time you’re reading this, NYC’s mayoral candidates will have battled it out on the debate stage. What a night, right?

Last week, we doubled down on digital equity events and kicked off our Public Interest Tech (PIT) workforce development survey. In NYC’s history, we’ve never seen a bigger opening to ensure digital services work for all New Yorkers. That’s not hyperbole.

Why we’re optimistic:

1. Now through early April 2026, NYC’s public interest tech, data, and service design community is firing on all cylinders. Whoever ends up at Gracie Mansion, they will see a steady stream of events, classes, and programs aimed at strengthening the whole ecosystem.

2. There’s real momentum to inform the next administration—and avoid repeating past mistakes. We’re seeing clear, community-rooted ideas about what equitable, effective tech and data governance can look like.

What’s happening right now:

  • Circuit Breakers + TransportationCamp (this weekend): Two community-powered gatherings mobilizing New Yorkers to understand—and reshape—how tools and policies work for everyone.
  • NYC’s Internet Master Plan returns: Thanks to Council Member Jennifer Gutiérrez and the Council’s Technology Committee, a community-oriented plan is back on the table. It would be updated every five years, prioritize affordable broadband in underserved areas, and establish an internet advisory board to review progress and recommend improvements.
  • NYC PIT Pop-Up at the Oculus (later this month): For two weeks, the South Concourse becomes part gallery, part workshop, part future commons—demos, hands-on sessions, and conversations about building a more inclusive tech future. The schedule is live, with more events rolling out.
  • 2026’s School of Data and Open Data Week now features the most inclusive, intellectually diverse call for proposals we’ve put out with OTI.

Save the date: “Tech for Us” — Nov 5, 2025

Right after the election, we’re convening the City’s PIT community to meet the next generation. Join Siegel Family Endowment, CUNY 2x, BetaNYC, the CUNY PIT Lab, and the NYC PIT Pop-Up for Tech for Us, a short-film screening and conversation with local public interest tech leaders. Come for inspiration, stay to connect.

TL;DR

PS – Since this newsletter combines two weeks of news, we’re emailing you a short list of articles and posting a longer list on beta.nyc.

Election 2025 🗳️

  • NYC’s First Mayoral Debate on YouTube.
  • The 6 Ballot Questions New Yorkers Will See This November by Marina Samuel. (The City)
  • Sahalie Donaldson, from City and State, looks into the same six proposals. (City and State)
  • Of all the run-downs on the housing issues, Hellgate’s rundown is the most comprehensive. (HellGate)
  • Rebecca C. Lewis writes “Citizens Union has released a new report explaining why the top concerns from the proposal’s opponents are largely unfounded, even as a similar change to municipal elections in other parts of the state continues to face opposition. (City and State)
  • Who judges the judges? (Gothamist)
  • The race for the next city council speaker is heating up. Crain’s Nick Garber gives us a look into this secret campaign. (Crain’s New York)

YO! New York, this is news you can use! 🗽

  • Nominations for the NYC Hayes Innovation Prize are now open. This award is open to all NYC government employees who are driving change within the City government. 
  • This week, State Lawmakers held a hearing on artificial intelligence and data privacy. Jack Arprey covers the story on NY1.
  • Sahalie Donaldson and Annie McDonough look back at Eric Adams’ tenure as mayor. (City and State)
  • Tim Donnelly looks at New Yorkers’ addiction to civic comedy. (New York Groove) 
  • If you are a huge fan of data visualizations, SVA has a new program for you! Jason Forrest, one-half of the Data Vandals art duo and a frequent Open Data Week participant, is chairing a new master’s program at the School of Visual Arts! (SVA)

Additional articles.

  • You can now answer your cell phone in the East River tubes on the 4 and 5, writes Caroline Spivack. (Crains New York)
  • Jie Jenny Zou reports in “Surprise Trump Move Will Upend New York Food Stamps. New York counties thought they had months to prepare to implement SNAP work requirements. Now, they have weeks.” (NY Focus)
  • Steven Fulop, the outgoing mayor of Jersey City, has been named the next President and CEO of the Partnership to New York City, succeeding retiring leader Kathryn Wylde. Fulop’s selection, announced late Monday, brings an end to a closely watched succession race for one of the city’s most influential positions. (Crain’s New York)
  • Who watches the watchers, part 2. Nick Pinto looks at how the NYPD’s watchdog is tossing out lying cop cases and then ‘hiding’ the data from the public. (HellGate) 
  • A lawsuit for safe streets aims to audit Uber’s code and routing software. Sophia Lebowitz reports “an Uber driver made an illegal u-turn and hit someone, but the in-app navigation told him to do it and the company won’t give up the code.” (Streetsblog NYC)
  • The Surveillance Resistance Lab has extended its deadline to submit your stories on digital grief. What is digital grief? Due to the oppressive ads I was seeing, when I deleted Instagram from my phone, I lost the ability to keep up with all the d/Deaf creators and creators who use the platform as their primary mode of community engagement. (SRL)
  • A new section in the New York Times is dedicated to lost science. (NY Times)

GovTech, Services, and Digital Rights 📚 

  • This week, New America launched a “digital service for the planet.” This partnership is designed to incubate innovative digital tools, data, policies, and strategies that the government can use to improve the delivery of services across our ecosystems, communities, and environmental priorities. Eventually, they will host multidisciplinary fellows who will map barriers and opportunities across several priority issues: our drinking water, wetlands, and forests. (New America) 
  • A quarter of the CDC is gone. What type of data surveillance will we have moving forward? (Wired) 
  • 
“The Trump administration’s manipulation of statistics is exporting uncertainty into the international system,” writes Sydney Saubestre and Prem M. Trivedi. (Foreign Policy)
  • “A new exhibition in Berlin shows how the notoriously paranoid East German state greeted the dawn of video gaming with surprising enthusiasm,” writes Tamlin Magee. (The Guardian)
  • Insights from California’s Joy Bonaguro. Ms. Bonaguro proposes a Joint Powers Authority (JPA) for government modernization, which they claim would create a sustainable, scalable, and flexible mission-driven alternative to for-profit vendors. Read the idea and give them feedback on LinkedIn.

Additional articles.

  • Trump’s ICE Has Started Targeting Activists, Not Just Immigrants. ICE demanded Meta hand over personal information attached to Instagram accounts that track immigration raids. By Mike Ludwig in Truth Out.
  • Dell Cameron is reporting in Wired that “United States Immigration authorities are moving to dramatically expand their social media surveillance, with plans to hire nearly 30 contractors to sift through posts, photos, and messages—raw material to be transformed into intelligence for deportation raids and arrests.” (Wired) 
  • Dharna Noor reports on how the Sunrise Movement is shifting its focus to fight authoritarianism “In order to win the bold action that we’ll need to prevent climate catastrophe, we’re going to need a country where we have the right to dissent and protest,” she said. “How are we going to win on climate under authoritarianism?” (The Guardian)
  • Now, the Trump Administration wants to stop measuring food insecurity. Story by Paul Shafer and Stephanie Ettinger de Cuba at WBUR. (WBUR)
  • “It’s rather chilling to consider what Apple would have done if the Trump administration had “demanded” a list of device IDs and user identities for everyone who had installed ICEBlock.” – John Gruber (Daring Fireball)
  • AP reports that California’s new law is part of an agreement made in September between Newsom, state lawmakers and the Service Employees International Union, along with rideshare companies Uber and Lyft. In exchange, Newsom also signed a measure supported by Uber and Lyft to significantly cut the companies’ insurance requirements for accidents caused by underinsured drivers. (AP) 
  • The Danish prime minister says the country will ban social media for under-15s, as she accused mobile phones and social networks of “stealing our children’s childhood”. (The Guardian)
  • Earlier this month, our dear civic tech colleague and Oak Park Village Trustee, Derek Eder, spoke at a press conference and expressed solidarity with protesters at the ICE Detention Facility in Broadview. (Derek Eder’s Blog) 

Artificial Intelligence 🤖

  • Edward Graham in NextGov looks at the AI tools currently being used to identify veterans at high risk of suicide and how they (currently) always include human outreach. (NextGov) 
  • A new philanthropic endeavor to build a more human(e) future, which keeps humans in the AI loop. I like this framing. “We know that AI is neither a poison nor a panacea. The choice in front of all of us is clear: will we allow AI to be designed only for profit, or will we invest in a future where people get to decide how, whether, and to what ends AI is used?” https://humanityai.ai/ 
  • Innovating on the edge of AI. Will Knight writes is Wired that “Thinking Machines Lab, a heavily funded startup cofounded by prominent researchers from OpenAI, has revealed its first product—a tool called Tinker that automates the creation of custom frontier AI models.” (Wired) 
  • Eva Roytburg writes about OpenAI’s energy consumption footprint.  University of Chicago’s Andrew Chien adds, “we need a broader societal conversation about the looming environmental costs of using that much electricity for AI. Beyond carbon emissions, he pointed to hidden strains on water supplies, biodiversity, and local communities near massive data centers.” (Fortune)

Additional articles.

  • AI Book Alert – Dr. Damar Monett, Professor of Computer Science at Berlin School of Economics and Law, has pulled out their best quotes from The Myth of Good AI: A manifesto for critical artificial intelligence by Arshin Adib-Moghaddam (LinkedIn)
  • BBC’s Lily Jamali looks into the fears of an AI bubble bursting in Silicon Valley. (BBC)
  • I’ve been reading Empires of AI, and Chapter 6 dives deep into how AI is powered by human trainers. Last month, Varsha Bansal reported on “How thousands of ‘overworked, underpaid’ humans train Google’s AI to seem smart.” (The Guardian)
  • What “pedestrian-friendly” is, and how we can design better side road junctions? (City Infinty)

In the realm of interesting technical things 💼 

  • Does Your Home Contain Lead Paint? Check out the Cooper Square Committee and BetaNYC’s new map! 
  • Version 11 of GraphHopper, the flexible and fast open source routing engine for OpenStreetMap.
  • Bradley Tusk funded the Free and Fair team, which has launched an online mobile voting platform. The code is up on GitHub. To be honest, this is a bit sus. The podcast that announced this project was filled with explicit political bias and overemphasized the narrative of “open source.” I wish projects like this were launched with addressing community needs, like Participatory Budgeting or Community Board meetings. 

Jobs Alert and Announcements 💼 

Upcoming Events 📅

Note: All times are listed in EDT

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