About
Fellows: In Their Own Words
“Through this fellowship experience, I gained exposure to the work of various city government agencies. I learned the powerful impact civic tech organizations, such as BetaNYC, can make in building an inclusive community.”
— Shovan Bala
“During my time as a civic fellow, I learned the importance of public structures and amenities around our neighborhood as data that can be transformed into valuable information. Utilizing that data, either the government or organizations like BetaNYC, can create meaningful projects to improve people’s lives with better facilities and a safer environment… I couldn’t have found a better place to have a rich knowledge of the history, government structure, and the streets of NYC to foster my living experience here.”
— Kyaw Khaung Myo Lwin
BetaNYC’s Civic Innovation Fellowship (CIF) is fostering the next generation of community leaders by developing digital and data literacy practices that are appropriate for the communities they serve. CIF is the first comprehensive program dedicated to training the next generation of civic leaders while improving open data and public interest technology within public spaces, community boards and other civic NYC organizations.
The Civic Innovation Fellowship equips university students, particularly from the City University of New York (CUNY), with the knowledge and skills to navigate New York City’s Open Data landscape using free and open-source technology while engaging in civic innovation projects. In recent iterations of the program, students have worked on developing a comprehensive Mapping for Equity (M4E) program—a civics and data literacy initiative that teaches the public how to interpret and visualize data while actively collecting data on under-mapped and under-represented public spaces in NYC.
Fellows are carefully selected from various CUNY schools and programs for their strong civic-mindedness, appetite to learn, critical thinking skills, and being driven by a deeper purpose to support NYC communities Then, fellows are trained in public interest technology, civic technology, open data, geographic information systems (GIS), and service design fundamentals. They learn about the City’s history and how our good government movement developed. We orient fellows to a suite of digital communication and analytical tools. Many fellows learn what it is like to work in an office for the first time. As part of the training, fellows partner with community organizations to explore a variety of public interest technology projects.
The Fellowship is hosted out of the Manhattan Borough President’s Office, with support from the Office of Technology and Innovation’s Open Data Team and various CUNY programs.
We use open-source tools and practices to collect geographical open data to create accurate representations of spaces and analyze where public amenities are and are not and which ones are in need.
Then, we work with local partners to sustain the data collection. If successful, public spaces will be better reflected in community conversations and in open data with their amenities and accessibility features open to all.
The fellowship curriculum spans two semesters and covers five areas: professional skills, civic engagement and NYC governance, open data and storytelling, community leadership, and public interest data and AI. View the full curriculum ↗
Most Current Cohorts
Alumni
Partners
This program is a partnership between the Manhattan Borough President, BetaNYC, CUNY, and the Fund for the City of New York. Manhattan Borough President Gale A. Brewer started the program, and is financially supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and the City University of New York.
The Mapping for Equity component of the fellowship is supported by additional partners: the CUNY Public Interest Tech Lab, New York State Senator Kristen S. Gonzalez, North Brooklyn Parks Alliance, NYC Council Member Jennifer Gutierríez (Council District 34), and Mapillary and OpenStreetMap.