Google Invests $1.5M to Help Silicon-ize Cities

Google is giving a startup that connects Web developers with city governments a $1.5 million grant to help it bring the innovative ideas of entrepreneurs into the government sector.

“Our goal is to bring the principals and values of the Web to the government,” said Jennifer Pahlka, the founder of Code for America, which announced the grant today. “With the cost of technology dropping, you can try cool new things quickly and drop them if they don’t work.”

She blames deeply ingrained bureaucracy on the government's current inability to take advantage of such experimentation.

“There is a gap between the innovation curve of the economy and the innovation curve of the government,” she told Portfolio.com.

To close that gap this past year, the nonprofit organization hosted 19 fellows in Boston, Philadelphia, and Seattle, which together developed 21 open-source apps designed to facilitate the city government’s ability to communicate with its citizens.

One such app called DiscoverBPS was created for the Boston Public Schools system, to help parents understand which schools their children are eligible to attend and which school best fits their needs. Since then, 10 cities have contributed “participation fees” in order to use such apps, and next year looks to be even more productive, with 26 fellows selected from 550 applicants.

The idea for Code for America began in 2008 when Andrew Greenhill, Code for America board member and chief of staff to the mayor of Tucson, Arizona, asked Pahlka how she could facilitate finding Web 2.0 talent to develop apps for his city’s government.

She was at first skeptical that such a project could attract the interest of the high-stakes crowd of Silicon Valley. In the end it was Teach for America’s business model, which inspires young people to volunteer their time in exchange for the prestige of the program, that encouraged her to proceed with Greenhill’s request.

“If you can’t get people to do something for money, you can get them to do it for glory," she said.

So far, CFA has received public support from some big names. Facebook cofounder Mark Zuckerberg, the cofounder of Twitter Biz Stone, the cofounder of Flickr and Hunch Caterina Fake, and the first U.S. chief technology officer Aneesh Chopra have all appeared in a video supporting the effort.

The nonprofit was founded in 2009 and claimed just over $280,000 in grants and donations when it filed at the end of 2010.

Since then, Code for America has received $1 million from the Knight Foundation, $250,000 from the Omidyar Network, $150,000 from ESRI, and $100,000 from big data company EMC, amongst dozens of smaller donations.

CFA founder and exective director Jennifer Pahlka is slated to deliver the keynote address at the 2012 SXSW Interactive Conference.

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Michael del Castillo is a freelance reporter for Portfolio.com.