Omaha’s shot at becoming one of Code for America‘s 2012 city partners ended on Wednesday, when the organization announced 10 finalists for next year’s project and Omaha was not among them.
Code for America works with city managers to identify civic projects that can benefit from web-based solutions. The organization recruits top talent from the tech industry to give a year building civic software that will help cities cut costs, work smarter and engage more with their citizens. The program, per its website, “is structured to not only create immediate impact with our projects, but also catalyze long-term, sustainable change.”
Omaha was one of 19 city, state and federal agencies to apply for the project earlier this year. From the 10 finalists — Austin, Texas, Chicago, Detroit, Honolulu, Macon, Ga., New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, Raleigh, N.C. and Santa Cruz, Calif. — named on Wednesday, the group will be narrowed down to 5-8 city partners for 2012.
Despite Code for America passing on Omaha, there is evidence Government 2.0 activity is on the rise around town, as a sampling of our recent coverage on Silicon Prairie News shows.
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Late last month, the Omaha World-Herald unveiled Curbwise, a project spearheaded by Matt Wynn, Ben Vankat and Paul Goodsell. As Wynn described in an interview with Silicon Prairie News, Curbwise is a one-stop shop for real estate data in Douglas County.
In April, the City of Omaha collaborated with Omaha-based startup MindMixer to launch Gov 2.0 site Engage Omaha, and MindMixer announced last week it has brokered similar deals with several more cities, including Silicon Prairie burgs Des Moines and Norwalk, Iowa.
Omaha also is home to Graffiti Tracker, a web-based system designed to help users identify, track, prosecute and seek restitution from graffiti vandals. Shortly after Graffiti Tracker co-founder, Timothy Kephart, relocated from Los Angeles to Omaha, we visited with him about the company.
