By: Mike Montgomery
As recently as ten years ago, government was seen as the black plague of the tech world. Bureaucracies move slowly. Governments have limited resources. Convincing municipalities to spend money on anything can be a Herculean task. Venture capitalists recommended entrepreneurs stick to the private sector where budgets are looser and there’s a more diverse customer base.
That’s beginning to change. Civic tech is now a hot space for tech investments. Governments are waking up to the need to bring their technology into the 21st century. It’s no longer good enough to have documents hidden in hundreds of filing cabinets and reports printed out on dot-matrix printers. Citizens are increasingly demanding transparency from their elected officials and too often, governments have no way to provide a clear window into how or why taxpayer money is being spent.