City and County of Honolulu News Releases

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HONOLULU SELECTED AS 2012 CODE FOR AMERICA CITY   (Thurs., Aug. 25, 2011)—Mayor Peter Carlisle today announced that Honolulu has been selected from a pool of 20 local governments to be a Code for America City, which means the City and County of Honolulu will receive a year of intensive technical assistance from the Code for America Fellows.              Code for America is a nonprofit comprised of civic and technology leaders, and the program recruits the top talent from the technology industry to give a year of service to build innovative web applications for city governments that make them more open, participatory and efficient.              Honolulu was selected for its proposed project, the leadership within the city, and support from the community. The Code for America fellows will begin work in Honolulu in January 2012.              "I am very pleased that Code for America selected Honolulu because this project will engage both citizens and government," said Mayor Carlisle. "It will also help accomplish this administration's goal of creating a lean, clean, and smart city, and by doing so, save money and city resources."             Honolulu hopes to develop a system that will make it easy and efficient for citizens to access city information online as well as improve citizens' experience with their government.               "This opportunity, not only enables the Department of Information Technology to quickly provide more citizen services online and expand transparency capabilities, it also enables staff to further enhance their skills through contact with Code-for-America Fellows," said DIT Director Gordon Bruce.             "We're thrilled to work in Honolulu with a government that's setting the example for openness and transparency, and we're excited to see what together we can accomplish," said Jennifer Pahlka, founder and executive director of Code for America.               Citizens interested in sharing their ideas on how technology can be used to boost civic engagement are encouraged to visit http://codeforamerica.org/honolulu and share their thoughts. Those ideas will shape what the three Code for America fellows in Honolulu develop, and the solution built for Honolulu will be available to any other city or government to reuse. -30- Media contact:  Forest Frizzell, Deputy Director, Department of Information Technology, 768-7806