Thanks to Ann Higgins for the heads up on the article in CivSource that highlights the efforts in Illinois and New York to use broadband, open data and civic engagement to help local government and residents work together to solve problems…

Illinois is joining a growing group of states that hope to utilize civic hacking and provide more transparency with a new website launched yesterday. Data.Illinois.Gov, is a searchable clearinghouse of information from state agencies that will help inform residents about the operation of state government and encourage the use of state information, including the development of applications for mobile devices that can be built around the data.

If two minds are better than one, I think this approach can be very valuable. I’ve written about the approach before, especially OpenData, which is Minnesota’s open data project. New York is tweaking its approach…

The data site is an initiative of the Illinois Innovation Council, which promotes innovation in economic development. The first phase of the site includes data from the Illinois Department of Transportation, the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, the Illinois Department of Revenue and the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency. More agencies are expected to add their own data to the site and the Governor hopes that eventually, the site will become a data clearinghouse for all state agencies.

People love to point out deficiencies. This approach could be very successful – if there is follow up. It is so interesting to see how the government is starting to work more with residents – not for but with. We have a perfect storm of increasing access to the technology, decreasing budget to pay for government R&D and ever increasing skills to use the technology both as a “user” and “developer”. I think we’re on the verge of it making a real difference in how we get things done in government, which will result in improvements in how we do so many of our daily chores.