The goal of this project is to establish a set of procedures and recommendations for creating an advisory council to local government. There are review boards and advisory councils for a broad spectrum of public services but very few that review current technologies, procurements and budgets and make formal recommendations to councils or commissions. Executive branch may have informal tech advisory councils but they seem focused on growing biz opportunities, not how easy is it to report missed garbage pick up.
I am proposing starting as a shadow council. Follow all of the rules and procedures of other local municipal boards. Get comfortable with Robert's Rules of Order. Then open dialogue with the elected officials. Speak on agenda items or during public comment. Vote as a committee and present the opinion to the public.
I bounced around a lot of ideas. It's certainly still open for discussion. I envision local guild chapters and a network to share ideas and lessons from wins and losses. But no two communities are the same and there shouldn't be one size fits all set policies aside from those that center around equity and inclusion as core principles in all decisions.
That said, a 5 character dot org domain is hard to come by and adding subdomains or subdirectories for municipalities would keep a nice clean URL.
I recently learned about CityCamp and believe it would be an excellent way to introduce the idea to the community and set the tone and expectations for the chapter as well as build rapport with staff.
My goal is to start a Tampa chapter as a founding city. I would be thrilled to have others join me in planning either locally or as another founding city.
I debated whether GitHub is the right place for this but for the subject matter I believe requiring a GitHub account isn't a barrier. Microsoft has a mechanism to connect your two accounts for those that aren't as code heavy on the tech. GitHub does a good job of providing a web interface for editing markdown, discussions outside of issues and a wiki.
Invariably I expect tools to be added as needs arise or models are built for demonstrations.
Now. Join me in the discussion.