1. Encourage open data

Will you encourage City departments to place useful data on the open data portal on a timely basis? If so, how will you do this?

As the only tech entrepreneur (Founder of PetsMD.com, a Capital Factory Incubator Company) running for City Council, I will work to encourage a more efficient adoption of technology within city government. I will work with city manager to promote city/public work on both city site and data management.

2. Social media

How do you and/or your staff view the value of social media in promoting citizen engagement and service delivery? What has been your experience with social media?

YES!!! I love social media and have used it throughout all my companies and my campaign. I would like to see a twitter board up during council sessions, a community-posting forum and for Austin to be a leader on innovative use of social media in government. We are Austin, Texas after all! See all my tweets under #ATXCouncil or via @tinacannonTX

3. Website usability and content

What steps (if any) will you take to address the needs of community groups and concerned citizens seeking to improve website usability, identify missing content, and enhance the information richness of the City’s website?

404 redirect and DNS errors, should I say any more? The redesign, as with many tech projects both private and public, has been a bit less than ideal. Starting with the RPF process and application pool. Although it has been a valiant effort internally, I would put the completion of this project out for rebid.

4. 311 Services

Do you support studying whether Austin should join cities such as Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. in pledging support for a publicly-accessible open-standard protocol for 311 services, such as the currently proposed Open311 API specification?

I am happy to explore options of using API’s and open the doors of transparency and access to information. There may be limitations depending on the project but in a general sense, I support API for open access to public data as a way to report, solve and indicate areas for improving efficiencies in a process that without data points we may not know even exists.

5. Director of Digital Innovation

Do you support the designation of a Director of Digital Innovation to be accountable for innovation with the City’s digital portfolio (e.g. website, open data, civic applications, open government technology)? Please consult the following article for further information of this type of public servant position.

Yes, yes and yes. This is long overdue.

6. City strategy for digital innovation

San Francisco and Philadelphia have Innovation Offices led by a Chief Innovation Officer. Boston has the Urban Mechanicsprogram. New York City has a Chief Digital Officer and a Digital Roadmap. Which of combination (if any) of these organizational approaches do you believe will best encourage digital innovation for Austin?

I was just going to mention this in my response to the question above! I believe that Austin can pull from our entrepreneur and development community to use both sets as guidelines, reviewing both the programs and the data results/metrics of implementation successes/failures and develop our own Roadmap and CIO programs that best suit our unique city.

7. Budgetary resources

Do you believe the current level of budgetary resources allocated towards City information technology is sufficient? What should be the City’s IT priorities?

As an entrepreneur and founder of several tech startups, I am encourage by the opportunities we have before us with regards to transforming our city hall into a more tech and data friendly city. I would look to increase the budget to accommodate for a new FRP for the city website, data repository, API development and Director of Digital Innovation office (assuming 2 positions along with Dir). I would ask City Auditor to review the current budget and forecasted to make adjustments accordingly.