The Next Big Start-Up Wave: Civic Technology

For the past two years, Code for America has been embedding developers in city halls across the country, an initiative designed to show municipal officials what’s possible with technology, even if this small army of visiting fellows can’t carry on the job forever.

What cities really need in the long run, of course, are not temporary technologists and their stopgap services. Cities need a full-fledged, permanent industry around this stuff. A company called Socrata, for instance, has gotten into the fledgling business of helping cities publish and manage their public data. But there aren’t many companies out there selling modern web services to cities, or tools built on city data to citizens, or platforms for the two to connect better to each other.