• New digital democracy tools for AI — MCPs for the Charter/Laws, Council, the City Record, and Checkbook

    New digital democracy tools for AI — MCPs for the Charter/Laws, Council, the City Record, and Checkbook

    New Amsterdam’s Open Government History The argument about who controls what the public knows about its government is not a recent one in New York. It goes back to 1649. That year, Adriaen van der Donck — a Dutch lawyer and president of the Nine Men, the colonists’ advisory body to Director-General Stuyvesant — went…

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  • Justice is in the Mapping: A Reflection of a Mapping for Environmental Justice Workshop

    Justice is in the Mapping: A Reflection of a Mapping for Environmental Justice Workshop

    Naeema explores how GIS and mapping empower communities for environmental justice, sharing stories, tools, and lessons from an inspiring workshop.

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  • What’s New at State of the Map US 2024?

    What’s New at State of the Map US 2024?

    The Fellowship team attended State of the Map US 2024 at Salt Lake City! Learn about the workshops they attended and what trends they noticed within the open-sourced mapping world.

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  • Testimony to NYC Council’s Hearing on Open Data

    Testimony to NYC Council’s Hearing on Open Data

    Now, more than ever, the City’s data analytics team and the open data program need resources to ensure other agencies can do more with less. Since its inception, the data analytics team has streamlined internal and external data-sharing practices. Their work has improved people’s lives.

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  • Community Board Technology Needs Report – 2018

    Note — This report is one of two reports we are releasing this Fall, and a follow up to our 2015 report. Please read our executive summaries of both reports; you can download a PDF copy of this report here – Community Board Technology Needs Report 2018 – Final Version (pdf). You can download our…

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  • Scraping Data about Manhattan’s Licensed Beauty Salons and Barbershops

    At BetaNYC, we have been working on a tool to map vacant storefronts in Manhattan. Since there is currently no city entity comprehensively tracking the location or status of vacant storefronts across the city, we are attempting to reverse engineer this data by mapping where there are commercial units in the city and then removing…

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  • How to improve NYC’s open data law 2.0?

    Last week, we had the chance to join with members of the NYC Transparency Working Group and provide feedback on the future of NYC’s open data law (video). As this bill is under discussion we encourage all to provided your thoughts via councilmatic. Intro 1525-2017 This bill would require updates to the agency compliance plan, to…

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  • On the release of alpha.nyc.gov

    Today, NYC.gov launched a new digital front door. We welcome this experiment known as AlphaLabs, civic tech office hours, and, all the other things that the Mayor’s Office of Digital Strategy is doing to make government more accessible. ALSO – We love that Alpha.nyc.gov is built on BetaNYC’s award winning ReinventNYC.gov hackathon idea!   Back when…

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