Newsletter
Donate
Blue BetaNYC card. Title: "This week in NYC's #CivicTech. Week 44 of 2026." Bullets in a light-blue panel: "Early voting is outpacing 2022. Election Day is November 3. NYS courts issue AI guidance for attorneys. The city's open records portal is still waiting. NYC Urban Fellows applications are open."

This week in NYC’s #CivicTech – October 29, 2026

,

Gabrielle Langston

Hello friends,

Noel and Naeema are abroad this week at MozFest in Barcelona, so the team at home in NYC is bringing you the must-know items.

Top of mind is the election. Election Day is Tuesday, November 3, and early voting ends this Sunday, November 1. New Yorkers are already turning out: through October 26, the Board of Elections counted 224,894 early voting check-ins (unofficial as of close of polls), about 76% more than the same stretch in 2022.

This year’s ballot asks for more than a choice of candidates. It also carries five proposed amendments to the City Charter, the document that sets out how our city government works. While ballot questions are easy to skip, they are incredibly important and shape how the city runs long after the campaigns wrap up.

If you’re voting, read the questions before you head out. They are available in eight languages and in plain language, and you’ll find more guides under this week’s Media section. If you haven’t voted yet, find your poll site and view your sample ballot, and check voting dates and hours. If you or someone you’re voting with needs an accommodation, here is more information on accessible voting.

Not everyone in our city can vote, but civic life belongs to all of us. If you can’t vote this year, share these resources with someone who can, or tell your elected officials what you think about the issues on the ballot.

Voting isn’t the only way to shape how our city works. The call for proposals for School of Data and Open Data Week is open, so if you’ve built something or learned something you want to share with other New Yorkers, submit your proposal by December 6.

As always, we’ll keep working together, in solidarity, to leave the world better than we found it. Let’s keep lifting each other up, and we hope to see you at one of our fall events soon.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Take care of yourselves, and have a great Halloween weekend!

— Gabrielle Langston, with support from Duncan Ballantine

Support BetaNYC

  • Become a BetaBuilder — BetaBuilders are New Yorkers who sustain the city’s civic infrastructure. For $5 a month, you join the BetaNYC Discord, where classes and open data work get planned, and you help keep our newsletter, classes, and open data resources free for everyone. – Become a BetaBuilder

Upcoming Events with BetaNYC

Civic Tech News & Updates

  • The city’s open records portal is still waiting — A law requiring every city agency to join the Open Records portal for records requests was enacted last December, but its implementation report, due in June, has not come out. “Nothing’s happening,” said Council Member Gale Brewer, the bill’s sponsor. – The City Reporter
  • The state’s open government committee missed its own meeting — The Committee on Open Government, which oversees FOIL and the Open Meetings Law, canceled its October 22 meeting for lack of a quorum. Axel Ebermann of the New York Coalition for Open Government points to S387/A1288, a bill to rebuild the committee. – New York Coalition for Open Government
  • More bus stops are getting countdown clocks — The Department of Transportation will spend $17 million adding countdown clocks, with text-to-speech for riders with low vision, to bus shelters and poles. It plans to reach 2,900 of the city’s roughly 15,000 bus stops by 2030. – Gothamist, bus countdown clocks
  • The data center pause becomes a campaign issue — Gov. Kathy Hochul, who said in May she was “not talking about a flat-out moratorium,” announced a year-long pause on large data centers in July and now makes it a centerpiece of her reelection campaign. Her opponent, Bruce Blakeman, opposes the pause. – Gothamist, data center pause
  • $11 million for AI that makes benefits easier to get — The Center for Civic Futures awarded $11 million to 11 projects in the second round of its Public Benefit Innovation Fund, including work on the data systems, procurement, and workforce behind safety net programs. – Center for Civic Futures
  • A map of what covers every block in NYC — Tim Miller’s interactive map breaks down the city’s land cover (trees, soil, water, buildings, roads) from the City’s 2017 LiDAR capture. Search a neighborhood to see its mix. He also built an API endpoint that returns land use percentages. – Tim Miller, Morning Atlas · his LiDAR post
  • squidmaps makes maps your chatbot can draw — Chris Whong’s new tool styles and publishes maps from GeoJSON, CSV, shapefiles, and more, and lets an AI assistant create a map you can claim. It’s in public beta; request an invite. – Chris Whong, squidmaps
  • Check your websites for php2shell — Henry Williams explains how to check small sites for php2shell, a newly found PHP vulnerability that can let attackers take over a website, and how to fix it by upgrading PHP. – Henry Williams

AI Roundup

  • NYC schools switch off AI in dozens of classroom tools — The Education Department is turning off student-facing generative AI features in more than 38 previously approved products, including the Amira reading tutor and its own chatbot, and is also switching off Google’s Gemini for students. – Chalkbeat, via The City Reporter
  • New York courts let lawyers use AI without saying so — The state court system’s new guidance lets attorneys use generative AI in filings without disclosing it, but they must personally confirm its accuracy. The guidance warns that AI is “designed to generate text that sounds right, not text that is right.” – amNY
  • The state launches an AI Jobs Institute in Queens — The state’s new AI Jobs Institute in Long Island City, designed and run by Pursuit and set to open in 2027, aims to connect New Yorkers left out of the tech economy to AI careers. – Office of Governor Kathy Hochul
  • What public servants need from AI training — Drawing on surveys from InnovateUS, which has trained more than 250,000 public servants, Lee Rainie, Gregory Porumbescu, and Beth Simone Noveck report that they need help seeing how AI fits their jobs, learning to use it, and knowing what’s allowed. – Reboot Democracy, InnovateUS
  • What chatbots tell voters about candidates — Caucus AI tracks how leading AI chatbots answer questions about U.S. candidates and elections and which sources they cite. – Caucus AI

Jobs & Opportunities

Events

  • November 12 at 10:00 am Civic Tech x Public Sector Coworking Day – NYC Civic Tech Community, at 18 West 40th Street. Civic technologists and government employees cowork for the day, or drop in. $20 covers coffee and lunch; registration needs host approval.
  • November 12 at 5:00 pm Blue Ridge Labs Founder Showcase – Robin Hood Blue Ridge Labs. Twenty-one founders demo ventures on economic mobility, from workforce and housing to health. Registration needs host approval.
  • February 22 to 26, 2027 GIG-ARTS School on Digital Governance – GIG-ARTS and the Internet & Communication Policy Center, University of Salerno, in Salerno, Italy. The third edition of an intensive program on Internet governance and digital technologies, with 30 speakers from academia, industry, and policymaking. Paid; early-bird registration runs through November 15.

Hearings

Nothing scheduled. No city or state hearings on open data, technology, or transparency in the next 30 days. We check every week and will flag the next one as soon as it is calendared.

How to testify at a City Council hearing. In-person testimony needs no pre-registration. Virtual testimony requires signing up in advance. Written testimony is accepted up to 72 hours after a hearing adjourns. Details at council.nyc.gov/testify, or email hearings@council.nyc.gov. State hearings are often invitation-only for oral testimony — check the individual notice.

Media to Watch, Listen, or Read

Watch or listen

  • Nikole Hannah-Jones presses the chancellor on integration — At a town hall hosted by New York Appleseed and The Bell, Nikole Hannah-Jones asked Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels whether he has a plan to integrate the city’s schools. – Chalkbeat New York

Read

  • The five charter questions, explained — Sahalie Donaldson and Emily Wilson walk through the five City Charter amendments on the November 3 ballot and where good-government groups and critics stand on each. – City & State New York
  • A plain guide to the ballot proposals — Kaitlyn Schwanemann explains each of the five proposals, plus how and when to vote. – The City Reporter, Sept. 23
  • Early voting runs through November 1 — Where and how to vote early, with Election Day on November 3. – The City Reporter, Oct. 23
  • Everything to check before you vote — Key dates, ID rules, your polling place, and mail, absentee, and accessible voting options. – New York Focus
  • Early voting is outpacing 2022 — Through October 26, the Board of Elections counted 224,894 early voting check-ins in the city, about 76% more than the first three days of early voting in 2022. – amNY
  • The Council takes up ballot access at Rikers — Intros 797-A and 786-A would require the Department of Correction to report on voting in city jails and to catch fixable errors on absentee ballot envelopes before they are sent. – NYC Public Advocate Jumaane Williams
  • Serbian New Yorkers wait hours to vote — Polls at Serbia’s Midtown consulate ran from 2 am to 3 pm, matching Serbia’s local hours, and voters waited about two hours in a line down West 45th Street. – Gothamist
  • The state backs food banks as SNAP shrinks — Gov. Hochul announced $8.3 million for 59 food banks and pantries, $2.27 million of it in New York City, and pledged to keep school meals free for all 2.7 million students. – News10
  • Cities need their own digital teams — Keith Wilson and Justin Elszasz argue that cities should build in-house digital teams rather than default to contractors, with Baltimore’s team as the example. – The Department of What Works
  • People want to volunteer but can’t find a way in — Dominic Ramos-Ruiz of Citizenry asks funders to build shared tools, modeled partly on the Common App, that help people find civic opportunities. – The Chronicle of Philanthropy
  • Designing an AI-ready state workforce — Holly and 17A won a $1.1 million grant to help Oklahoma and Virginia identify how AI changes government work and modernize job classifications, and will publish an open-source tool. – Holly
  • AI disinformation floods the midterms — Experts warn that AI-driven election lies are spreading as platforms scale back voter protections. “You can run an information operation now with quality that was impossible in 2016 for super, super cheap,” said Frances Haugen. – The Guardian
  • Data center backlash crosses party lines — Lauren Feiner on how data centers became an issue in congressional and governor’s races across the country. – The Verge
  • Data centers now follow the power — As 16 state legislatures have considered bans, developers say access to electricity and friendly neighbors now matter more than tax incentives. – Politico
  • What the U.S. data center fight can learn from abroad — Paris Marx, author of Hyperscale, on lessons from Ireland to New Zealand. – Wired
  • Treating data centers as a land rights issue — Vaishnavi Patil argues that India’s Forest Rights Act offers a model: record land claims and give local bodies a say before sites are approved. – Tech Policy Press, forest rights
  • Preparing for a glut of AI data centers — Mark MacCarthy argues that construction is outpacing demand, and urges lawmakers to protect electricity ratepayers. – Tech Policy Press, data center glut

New Data to Note!

NYC Open Data (data.cityofnewyork.us) — 0 new

  • Nothing new this window.

NYS Open Data (data.ny.gov) — 0 new

  • Nothing new this window.

Before you go

What did you think of today’s newsletter? We’d love to hear your feedback and ideas.

Want to sponsor this newsletter or be featured in future ones? Share your community resources, projects, events, and anything else happening so we can feature them in future posts.

Did a friend forward this to you? There are three ways you can subscribe to our newsletter. Read it on our website, receive it via email, or via LinkedIn!

We use AI tools to help scan and organize civic tech news each week — all editorial decisions are made by the BetaNYC team, per our AI Policy.

Build with NYC’s civic data. BetaNYC publishes free, open-source MCP connectors giving AI assistants direct access to NYC Council legislation, city spending and contracts, Council discretionary funding, 311 service data, the City Record, the NYC Charter and Administrative Code, and NYS Open Legislation. If you’re building with AI and civic data, explore them on GitHub.

Take care of each other, and have a great weekend!

BetaNYC is a civic organization improving lives through civic technology, design, and open data. Subscribe to the newsletter · Support our work · Follow us on Bluesky, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Mastodon, Reddit, and YouTube.

author avatar
Gabrielle Langston
See Full Bio