

10k active government users on GitHub - waffle_ss
https://github.com/blog/1874-government-opens-up-10k-active-government-users-on-github

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rmason
The Federal government gets most of the headlines but there is a civic data
revolution going on at the state and city level in the US. Here in Michigan
five cities have civic data groups meeting regularly: Detroit, Ann Arbor,
Jackson, Kalamazoo and Grand Rapids. Jackson is one of the first cities in the
nation to have an open data law in the city charter:

[http://www.mlive.com/news/jackson/index.ssf/2014/08/jacksonu...](http://www.mlive.com/news/jackson/index.ssf/2014/08/jacksonuniversity_of_michigan.html)

On the statewide level we're holding the second annual Code Michigan civic
hackathon which will expand to three locations this year: Detroit, Newaygo and
Marquette.

[http://www.codemichigan.com](http://www.codemichigan.com)

~~~
monksy
Chicago has a meetup for gov/data "hackathons"

------
decentrality
Watching the U.S. Digital Services `WhiteHouse Playbook` repository has been
interesting. Strange really.

In the recent post on Wired with Snowden's recording [1] about why he leaked
information, there is a call that seems to be answerable by things like GitHub
repository activity. It at least feels like the public and government are
finding a way to leverage technology as a means of cooperating on development
of our social structure.

[https://github.com/WhiteHouse/playbook](https://github.com/WhiteHouse/playbook)

There is a lot of activity, to the point where one begins to feel that
government activity is actually just another use of git like any other task.
Illusion or not, it is starting to feel like the government is interactive.

[1] [http://www.wired.com/2014/08/edward-
snowden/](http://www.wired.com/2014/08/edward-snowden/)

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the_ancient
I wish the government would enbrace git for more than just software, like
creating law....

~~~
BillFranklin
San Francisco laws are now forkable

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AlbieDuncan
I didn't know Github had interns to spend time putting this data together.
Pretty cool.

~~~
thedaniel
We don't. [http://readwrite.com/2014/08/14/github-government-ben-
balter...](http://readwrite.com/2014/08/14/github-government-ben-balter-open-
source?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:%2Breadwriteweb%2B\(ReadWriteWeb\))

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maaku
> 10k active government _contractors_ on GitHub

Fixed that for you.

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vidarh
Maybe you should bother checking before you start making stuff up.

~~~
maaku
I'm part of that statistic, having worked for the government (NASA) as a
contractor. It is the contractors which make the recommendations which
influence the decisions to use sites like Github.

