At its peak, GovPress was a popular, free, open source WordPress theme for government websites. It was designed to be accessible, responsive, fast, and easy to use.

However, over time, GovPress was dying on the vine. I didn’t renew the project domain name, and the WordPress.org theme page was pointing to a questionable site now using the URL. When submitting minor changes to the theme to address the above issue, I realized the codebase was no longer aligned with WordPress best practices. The theme’s outdated dependencies also made me uncomfortable having it in a publicly accessible repository.

I questioned whether I should just delete the project and move on.

Because of AI coding tools, I was able to refresh GovPress and again make it a free, reliable option for government websites. I was able to quickly refactor the codebase and bring it up to date with the latest WordPress standards. I also updated the theme’s dependencies and fixed any security vulnerabilities that were present. I made slight theme enhancements, mostly retaining the original design approach that leans heavily on simplicity. And GovPress now has robust documentation to support installation and customization.

The project is now back on track and ready for the next phase of development. I don’t plan on making major theme changes, but will update it occasionally to ensure it remains secure and compatible with the latest versions of WordPress. And, of course, I’m open to addressing bug reports and high-demand feature requests from the community.

A project I thought was ready to deprecate has been revitalized.

I’m excited to see what the future holds for GovPress and the government websites that use it.

Get GovPress:

• GovPress on GitHub

• GovPress on WordPress.org

• Documentation

• Release notes

After several years and 25 chapters from more than 20 contributors, I’m extremely proud to announce that “Proudly Serving: Public service with and for the people” has launched.

“Proudly Serving” is available in multiple formats, including print (at cost) and free on Amazon Kindle, Google Play Books, Apple Books and web, HTML, EPUB and PDF formats.

It’s been an honor to make this with so many amazing people committed to public service and a better way of doing civics. The patience, persistence and commitment from everyone involved, and the final product, will forever inspire me.

Much love to everyone who made this possible.

Get Proudly Serving.

The more I talk with government and vendor digital service folks about how best to address website bot traffic, the more concerned I get that the default is simply to block or significantly limit access.

This is short-sighted and unproductive. It doesn’t take into account that bots are now a core part of digital service delivery.

I’ve written about the importance of government bot policies. I created a sample one for re-use.

A bot policy is a set of guidelines and rules that govern how external bots can interact with government systems, like websites, APIs, and other digital services. It addresses issues like rate limits, access controls, data usage, security measures, and more.

Today, bot traffic makes up more than half of all web traffic. This isn’t going away. It’s only going to increase.

As public service providers, governments and vendors must be strategically proactive – not reflexively reactive – in managing this.

This shouldn’t be secondary to other digital priorities. It should be a core part of your digital strategy.

Build your bot policy now and work with your digital team or vendor to implement it.

In the same way we think of humans accessing a website, as the internet shifts to bot-dominant traffic, governments must now prioritize machines in their digital strategies.

Bots 101

Bots – also knowns as crawlers – are computer programs that visit websites to pull or evaluate information.

Search engines like Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo use bots to crawl websites and determine how they show up in search results. As search engine technology became ubiquitous, the need to make websites more machine-friendly became important, and the practice of search engine optimization (SEO) emerged.

Artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT and Claude use bots in the same way. However, rather than displaying simple search results, they use information that’s been crawled to deliver in-app responses to chat prompts.

Researchers, journalists and technologists also use bots to scrape public information to make it more consumable, particularly when data isn’t easily accessible – improperly structured, poorly formatted or not easily retrievable.

Machine experience

The term “machine-readable” generally refers to a digital product’s technical accessibility and properly designed information. A site must give bot access and, once accessible, provide content in a structured way.

Much of today’s digital experience focuses on how humans interact with a website or application. This includes human-centered design practices that focus on user experience and graphical interfaces.

With the emergence of artificial intelligence, tools like ChatGPT and Claude rely even more on machine experience. Because of this, governments must become more proactive in adopting practices and policies that support bot accessibility.

Why it matters

Understanding bots protects website infrastructure from abuse and malicious activity, balances transparency requirements with security needs, and ensures public information and services are still optimized for access.

The challenge

As bot traffic increases, new burdens are placed on government technology resources, particularly server overloads that can cause websites to be less performant or secure. This also adds to financial costs that, if not properly managed, could be substantial.

The solution

To better manage bot access, governments must implement bot policies that are transparent, practical and technically aligned with open and good public service principles.

Bot traffic

Website traffic from bots is steadily rising. According to Cloudflare, bot traffic makes up nearly 30% of all traffic. By location, nearly 45% of that comes from the United States.

Bot access

As a general rule, governments should start conservative, blocking clearly malicious bots immediately, and refine over time.

• Allow most crawlers except known malicious ones

• Heavy rate limiting instead of blocking

• Focus on preventing abuse, not all bots

Bot documentation

Legitimate AI tools publish their technical information about their crawler behavior, such as OpenAI’s GPTBot and Anthropic’s ClaudeBot. And Cloudflare outlines its access policies for sites using its services.

Similar to how these companies expose their crawl behavior, governments can do the same with policy, creating bot governance on the terms for access.

Public (bot) policy

As with any policy, government should openly publish bot governance. This makes it more transparent and easier for the public to understand what public access looks like to machines and, ultimately, the people using those services.

At minimum, bot policies should include:

• Whitelist/blacklist

• Rate limits

• Verification requirements

• Review processes

• License/terms of service

• Contact information

Bot standards

Government relies heavily on the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) for information access standards related to people and assistive technologies (like screen readers).

We now need Web Bot Accessibility Guidelines, a WCAG equivalent for machine access. Creating governance that include accessibility standards for bots will ultimately make public services better for everyone.

Build your bot policy

I’ve started work on policy and implementation checklist templates (with Claude’s help) to help governments better implement and share their bot access governance. These templates are available in the GovFresh bot governance GitHub repository. Feel free to submit issues or pull requests.

My goal with the templates is to create higher expectations for vendors who support the public sector, but also help governments be more thoughtful and transparent in how anyone can access information and digital services, whether they’re human or machine.

Overview

California Alpha was an experimental project conducted by the State of California from December 2019 to March 2020. The 90-day project brought together a team of internal and external digital experts to build a working prototype of how the state could re-think service delivery, culture and work.

The challenge

The state was making progress on digital transformation efforts, but there were still shortcomings in delivery and culture. There was little focus or emphasis on direct human-centered design practices or modern development practices, causing digital innovation stasis throughout the state.

The opportunity

As part of a new CA.gov mandate from Gov. Gavin Newsom, the state tested a low-risk pilot that adopted user-centered design, agile development and open culture in a short-term project with a small-but-nimble team of digital service experts. The learnings from this project would be used to expand digital service innovation across other state agencies.

Read the full paper

Watch

• Post

• Video

Timestamps

• 02:53: The Journey from Journalism to Technology

• 10:15: Connecting Technology and Government

• 12:09: The Birth of GovFresh

• 16:12: Launching ProudCity

• 24:27: Navigating the Government Market

• 24:55: Navigating Government Procurement Challenges

• 28:05: Innovating in Government Tech: The Innovator's Dilemma

• 29:28: Introducing ScanGov: A Civic Tech Initiative

• 36:13: The Future of Civic Tech and Open Source

• 41:24: AI in Government: ChatCivic and Its Potential

• 53:17: Civic Leadership and Influential Voices

World CityCamp Day 2025 is September 20, 2025.

CityCamp is an unconference focused on collaboration and innovation for local governments and community organizations.

Who it’s for:

• Residents

• Elected officials

• Government staff

• Civic leaders

• Entrepreneurs

• Designers

• Developers

• Journalists

Themes:

• Arts

• Civic engagement

• Civic technology

• Economics

• Education

• Environment

• Housing

• Human services

• Open government

• Safety

• Emergency management

• Health

• Transportation

The first CityCamp was held January 2010, in Chicago, Illinois. It was then established as an open source brand so that anyone could host events anywhere. Since then, there have been self-organized CityCamp events worldwide.

Learn more at citycamp.com.

Listen

In this episode

In this episode, we dive into a bold, state-sponsored experiment that reimagined how government can build digital services.

In 2019, the State of California launched California Alpha—a three-month prototype that challenged the status quo and showed what’s possible when you start from scratch with a small, focused team and a clear mission.

You’ll hear directly from the people who built it: the early hurdles, breakthrough moments, and lessons that could reshape how public services are delivered.

Whether you work in tech, policy, or public service—this is what it looks like to build government differently.

This conversation includes Alpha team members Kimberly Glenn, Aaron Hans, Art Khomishen, Carter Medlin, Angie Quirarte and Luke Fretwell.

Be sure to also listen to California Alpha (Part 1), where Angie discusses setting the Alpha foundation.

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The digital government paradox

Traditional government websites—with overly aesthetic designs and weak content structures—are now obsolete in the age of artificial intelligence. As digital becomes essential to government service delivery, the public sector must confront this cultural and operational shift now, not later.

I say this after 15 years working on government websites, from developing a widely used goverment WordPress theme to co-founding a software-as-a-service company that supports municipalities with web hosting and content management tools.

I’ve seen the good, bad, and baffling in government websites. I’ve had countless conversations with government leaders about digital strategy. After asking my advice, I’ve been told “we’re going to do it the other way” only to hear later that “we should have done it that way.”

What once felt unimaginable—redefining what a website is—now seems inevitable.

Goodbye, aesthetic-first bureaucracy

Too many governments treat their websites as visual exercises. Content is secondary. API, AI and other access points are afterthoughts.

Sites are often organized around agency structures (yes, still), filled with on-brand design elements— like embellished hero units and carousels—and built to adapt to devices more than user needs.

Design systems like the U.S. Web Design System and the California Design System still matter. But simplicity and elegance—not visual flair—must be the default.

Redefining digital roles

Public sector design must shift from graphic-heavy to content- and data-driven.

Talent priorities must move from visual design to content design, data modeling, technical writing, and user research.

Content designers must understand structured, machine-readable data. Technical writers and subject matter experts must translate policy into plain language. Information architects must simplify complexity into usable content.

Teams must adopt autodidactic mindsets and apply learning quickly to their work and culture. Training—whether via online classes, YouTube, GPT prompts, or vendor demos—must be encouraged, even required.

Everyone—governments and vendors alike—must become service designers.

In this process, cross-functional teams will finally emerge, breaking down silos between digital, communications, policy, and leadership.

Build on content, not aesthetics

The new model for government websites is content-first and structure-deep: modular, reusable blocks of information managed at a single source of truth.

Content must syndicate across platforms, both public and commercial.

Visual design must take cues from developer documentation—scannable, hierarchical, and task-focused.

This content-forward approach will better solve persistent accessibility and performance issues.

The CMS overhaul

WYSIWYG editors and PDF-centric workflows must be phased out. CMS tools must enforce structured content types and design standards.

Governance must become critical. Version control, approvals, and automated compliance must make policy and service information faster and easier to publish.

Leading through change

Civil servants and elected officials must become AI-informed leaders. They now have a real chance to deliver public services at speed and scale—and must act on it.

Resistance is inevitable, even from digital and civic tech advocates, but we can no longer be naive, precious, or rigid about what’s needed.

A mandate for simplicity and service

To deliver great digital public services, governments must invest in function over form: clean, text-based interfaces, structured content, and AI-powered tools to help users find, understand, and access services.

We must evolve beyond outdated ideas of what a government website should look like. The future is radically simple, powered by data, extensible, and run by new talent with new skills.

Government websites, as we know them, are dead. Long live government websites.

Listen

In this episode

In Hack to the Future: How World Governments Relentlessly Pursue and Domesticate Hackers, Emily Crose offers a cultural, historical and legal schooling on government’s approach to hackers and hacking.

The relationship between hackers and the government has evolved over the decades, from combative to somewhat congenial, but it’s continuously complicated.

In this episode, Emily and I discuss the evolution of hacking and how governments can better work with hackers, particularly in recruiting them for public service.

My big takeaway from talking with Emily is that hacking is not about just one person or group, but a community built on creativity and joy, of people who are artists who also happen to be technologists. If government can better grok this, we’ll have a more symbiotic and productive relationship between the bureaucracy and hackers that better serves us all.

About Emily

Emily Crose is a cybersecurity expert with over 13 years of experience, including roles at the National Security Agency, Central Intelligence Agency, and U.S. Army INSCOM. She has worked in both offensive and defensive network security, specializing in Industrial Control Systems (ICS) for sectors like energy and transportation. Currently a research manager at Sophos Labs, she focuses on Linux behavior and ICS security. Crose is a respected speaker, having briefed military and corporate leaders, and collaborates with the International Spy Museum. An advocate for transparency and counter-extremism, she also educates on cyberwar threats and privacy protection.

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In Hack to the Future: How World Governments Relentlessly Pursue and Domesticate Hackers, Emily Crose offers a cultural, historical and legal schooling on hackers, hacking, and government’s evolving approach to dealing with them.

Crose dives deep into the personalities (the Kevins and Cliff Stoll—my favorite), the organizations (Cult of the Dead Cow, Anonymous, LulzSec), and the gatherings (DEF CON).

The relationship between hackers and the government has evolved over the decades. Laws—from the Comprehensive Crime Control Act to the PATRIOT are passed to keep up with the times. Acronym agencies are created to counter the increasing volume and variety (the FBI consistently seems to drop the ball).

Over the years, the relationship between hackers and the government has shifted from combative to somewhat congenial, but … it’s complicated.

Hack to the Future is a master class in hacking history. Crose, with her technical chops and intelligence experience, is the perfect professor.

In this episode

The PDF, short for portable document format, is a file format created by Adobe that lets people easily create documents.

Government loves PDFs. They’re used for meeting agendas and minutes, newsletters, staff reports and, well, everything imaginable.

When not created properly – and often they aren’t – they are inaccessible. But there are broader public service problems PDFs cause, particularly in the machine-readable direction we’re heading. They are cumbersome and research shows that people just don’t like them.

In this episode, I speak with Department of Civic Things CEO Rebecca Woodbury. Rebecca works with governments on content strategy and implementation. This includes PDF audits and best practices. Rebecca and I talk about why PDFs are a digital experience pain point, and how government can move beyond them.

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Even before the chaos of the moment, I’ve been doing some personal and professional introspection and retrospection over the past few months.

This has given me space to think about my work, reconnect with people that matter to me, establish new relationships, find the threads, and intentionally explore what and who inspires me.

Life is art

Those who know me know I’m a huge fan of Julia Cameron’s “The Artist’s Way” – which advocates journaling as a daily practice. While I don’t do it daily, journaling (writing generally) has always been a personal tool for discovery and regeneration.

Life is a canvas for creativity. “The Artist’s Way”, Rick Rubin’s “The Creative Act: A Way of Being”, Steven Pressfield’s “The War of Art”, and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s “Flow” and “Creativity” all foster this belief for me and are sources I refer to regularly.

This note stems from my belief we’re all artists and journaling helps process thoughts and better realize creative direction. Albeit more personal than I’m accustomed to, consider this is a journal entry.

I believe:

• We’re all artists.

• People are powerful.

• Technology is fundamental.

• Together, people (and their art) and technology can change the world.

I’m lucky

For some reason, I’ve had the good fortune of working with amazing people on amazing projects. Some have gone nowhere, while others have far surpassed my expectations of their potential (usually after I’d moved on). I’m proud of my work and honored to have done it with people I respect and admire.

I’m embarrassingly lucky and extremely grateful.

Taking stock

The most meaningful work I’ve done has happened over the past 15 years, focusing on how design, technology and democracy impact and support one another.

This is me taking stock of this work and showing gratitude for those I worked with.

GovFresh

Everyone should have a creative sandbox, and mine is GovFresh.

Initially, it started as an aggregated view of official government RSS and social media feeds that made it easier for me to follow federal government activity. I registered the govfresh.com domain because the idea was you could refresh the page and get the latest government updates, hence GovFresh.

After visiting federal government websites, being dismayed, and generally seeing the disconnect between Silicon Valley (I lived in San Francisco at the time) and Washington, D.C. (where I grew up and attended college), I began blogging about government and technology.

Since then, GovFresh has served as a place for me to share thoughts, code, design, learn and engage with amazing people.

Gratitude: Way too many people to mention.

GovPress

In 2010, working with Dustin Haisler, I built a WordPress theme for the City of Manor (Texas) website. At the time, Dustin was the 20-something government technology wonderkid (then Manor’s chief information officer) who reached out to me to write for GovFresh. He’s now president of e.Republic.

Initially, this started as a web design project just for the city, but we both quickly realized it could easily be repurposed for other governments who couldn’t afford expensive web services.

Eventually, Devin Price and I developed GovPress, an official WordPress theme for government. Though the theme and repository are now inactive and archived, at its peak there were thousands of active installations (not including government).

I learned from GovPress the power of open source and its potential to exponentially solve government technology problems. It was the beginning of a realization that I still hold today: open source is the future of great democracy technology.

Gratitude: Devin Price, Dustin Haisler

Manor.GovFresh

The early days of Gov 2.0 or open government (what we now call civic tech) were magical. For me, one of those moments was co-hosting an event with the City of Manor, Texas.

Dustin and I organized a two-day event, Manor.GovFresh, that brought together around 100 government officials, civic innovators, entrepreneurs, and even a White House representative (Beth Novek), to share how this was possible. Some of the folks there went on to become influential voices and leaders in civic technology and still reference that event as special.

(Side note: Sometime later, President Obama visited Manor New Tech High School where Manor.GovFresh was held.)

Gratitude: Dustin Haisler

CityCamp

The first CityCamp was organized by Code for America Brigades founder Kevin Curry and Jen Pahlka in January 2010 in Chicago. It was part barcamp, part hackathon, and was another one of those special moments.

Afterwards, others began asking about holding a CityCamp in their city. Kevin Curry and I worked together (over Skype, beers and a three-hour time difference) and developed a strategy that would open source the brand so other cities could easily replicate the format locally. Ultimately, cities worldwide held CityCamps. For a few years, it was a source of connection between civic hackers and local government, but also for civic technologists globally.

Save the date, because, with the help of the Alliance for Civic Technologists and others, CityCamp is making a comeback.

Gratitude: Kevin Curry, Christopher Whitaker

FedScoop/StateScoop

Goldy Kamali and I met virtually during the early days of Gov 2.0 (me in San Francisco, her in D.C). What started out as me supporting her with the FedScoop newsletter turned into a partnership that changed how D.C. does government technology editorial. I laugh (and cringe) at how rudimentary I was in the beginning compared to where Goldy has taken it.

Today, Scoop News Group is a leading government technology media company. I’m in awe of but in no way surprised by what Goldy and her world class team have built and continue to build.

Still today, when I hear ‘Intro’ by The xx, I know it’s Gogo time.

Gratitude: Goldy Kamali

NuCivic

Andrew Hoppin was one of the first, if not the first, government chief information officer to lead on open source, actively adopting and championing its usefulness. Andrew went on to start a company, initially named Nuams (short for New Amsterdam Ideas), to build what he called OpenSaaS tools for government.

I supported Andrew and the team with a re-brand (NuCivic) and other strategic work.

The primary offering was DKAN, an open source open data platform for governments and nonprofit organizations. The NuCivic team was scrappy, passionate about and deeply committed to open source and its importance to government.

NuCivic was eventually acquired by GovDelivery, which was then acquired by Granicus. DKAN is still used by government agencies and organizations globally.

Gratitude to: Andrew Hoppin, Federica Pelzel, Teófilo Sibileau, Sheldon Rampton, Janette Day, Dan Feder, Aaron Couch, Jim Craner

CivicActions

I came across CivicActions researching development firms working at the intersection of open source and civics. Eventually, I began working with them on a shared, part-time basis. It’s tough to describe the work I did with CivicActions other than they gave me ultimate freedom to fill in the gaps. Those who know me know this is something I cherish.

Two byproducts I’m most proud of: Agile Government Leadership (now Technologists for Public Good) and OpenACR (a machine-readable VPAT tool led by the General Services Administration).

Gratitude: Aaron Pava, Henry Poole, Elizabeth Raley, Bill Ogilvie

ProudCity

When we started ProudCity, we wanted to bring continuously improving, cost-effective, open software web solutions to local governments. While small communities desperately needed it then, they need this more than ever today.

Today, ProudCity serves government organizations across the United States and is consistently honored by Government Technology as a GovTech 100 company. I’m proud of what we’ve built and how we’ve built it. I’m biased, but it’s the best government technology company in the world, and I’m excited to see how it grows beyond me.

Founding and bootstrapping a government technology company is hard. You learn about yourself, your co-founders, business, government, America. You meet great people who genuinely care about the communities they serve. You discover that government technology entrepreneurs are public servants in their own right and often don’t get the credit they deserve.

Gratitude to: Kevin Herman, Jeff Lyon, Alex Schmoe, Curtis McHale

CivicDMV

CivicDMV was a relatively short project to re-imagine how the Department of Motor Vehicles could do digital. Rachel Kroft and I worked together with a small group of other folks to prototype and socialize how DMV could be different. This work inspired the California DMV to move forward on digital transformation efforts.

With CivicDMV, I learned that even a strategic small nudge from the outside can spark big change on the inside.

Gratitude: Rachel Kroft

Code California

With the California Government Operations Agency (aka Angie Quirarte), I developed Code California, a resource to help state employees adopt open source software and culture.

It’s since evolved into something different, but the two of us learned a lot about key concepts of open source and quietly working in the open (GitHub). It laid the foundation for how we’d work on another endeavor that would come to have even more impact (California Alpha).

Gratitude: Angie Quirarte

Agile Government Leadership

In 2014, working with CivicActions, I started Agile Government Leadership as an open community of practice to bring together government and industry leaders to support, learn and collaborate around themes such as agile project management, open source, procurement and human-centered design.

I worked closely with Elizabeth Raley and Melinda Burgess, building the website, creating community, coordinating contributor white papers, hosting virtual conversations with digital service early adopters and all the little things you do to build a movement.

Today, AGL is Technologists for the Public Good and is now an official nonprofit organization.

Gratitude to: Elizabeth Raley, Melinda Burgess

The Government We Need

In 2019, I put a call out asking if anyone was interested in starting a civic technology podcast. Jessica MacLeod responded, and we called it The Government We Need. While we weren’t prolific (my fault), those interviews are now preserved on GovFresh.

Jess is thoughtful, intuitive and conversational, and I always enjoyed collaborating with her on each episode.

Gratitude: Jessica MacLeod

California wildfire response and recovery

When wildfires broke out in Santa Rosa and Paradise (California), ProudCity quickly stood up web presences so local officials could effectively communicate with their communities during two of the most devastating disasters in California history.

By no means were we on the front lines, but it’s impossible to not feel the sense of urgency and anxiety for those who were. I’ll never forget working on the Paradise/Butte County response website from my kitchen island, smelling smoke from fires hours away, feeling fortunate I could get a relatively good night’s sleep, knowing that those on the front lines were running on adrenaline and a deep sense of duty to their communities.

Through those experiences, I learned that we need better digital resilience in disaster response efforts, and that there’s still more work to be done there. I also learned the superpower of both the people who care deeply about their communities, but also volunteers that care deeply about people.

Gratitude to: Jake Bayless, Rebecca Woodbury, Christine Foster, Talia Smith, Kevin Herman

California Alpha

In 2020, Angie Quirarte called me one night to let me know about an experimental project California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office. Called California Alpha, the idea was to create a small team for a three-month cycle that would re-imagine how the state could do digital service.

Angie asked me to serve as product designer, but also to help coach the team on working in the open. While it was a short timeframe, key members of the team (not me) led the state’s COVID-19 digital response efforts. It was also the incubator for what is now California’s Office of Data and Innovation. It was an honor to work with that team and an opportunity of a lifetime.

On Alpha, I learned about the need for crucial conversations and the importance of baking in long-term sustainable practices with the immediacy of day-to-day delivery.

Gratitude: Angie Quirarte, Hilary Hoeber, Art Khomishen, JP Petrucione, Aaron Hans, Kimberly Glenn, Chad Bratton, Carter Medlin, Rebecca Huval, Mike Wilkening

OpenACR

OpenACR – coupled with amazing public servants – was a byproduct of the work we did establishing an accessibility practice at CivicActions. To some at the time, discussions around a machine-readable VPAT may have seemed theoretical. Today, it is a reality.

Gratitude: Mike Gifford, Daniel Mundra, Owen Barton, Syed Azeem

Chief Ninnovation Officers Council

Sometimes, the world’s problems are solved on a recurring check-in with no agenda.

Gratitude: Joe Morris, Dustin Haisler

Department of Civic Things

I first met Rebecca Woodbury when she was a program analyst charged with revamping the City of San Rafael’s website. Those initial conversations about software-as-a-service and government procurement planted the seeds to a personal and professional relationship that will last forever.

Today, Rebecca is the CEO of the Department of Civic Things, a government content design service. We joke about it now, but initially Rebecca was incorporated as NAME REDACTED. I reached out to her to chat about branding and suggested she take a broader approach. We had several conversations about what best aligned with her as a person and her art. Ultimately, she landed on DoCT.

After prototyping a logo, she ran with it (faster than I was expecting). Today, DoCT is a thriving content service provider for local governments. Rebecca is an incredible person, and I’m proud to have been a small part of DoCT’s genesis.

Gratitude: Rebecca Woodbury

Proudly Serving

At some point, I had an idea to write a book for local governments, helping them understand and adopt a culture of digital. It didn’t happen. I reached out to Rebecca Woodbury to co-write it, and we still couldn’t get it off the ground. We then reached out to Marlena Medford and Kirsten Wyatt and everything began to click into place.

Proudly Serving is a true open, collaborative editorial project. While it’s been Rebecca and I from the beginning, others have been deeply involved at times and have been crucial to its progress.

And while it has taken much longer than I expected, the final product is something that will be a timeless, invaluable resource that helps government officials understand what it means to have a digital service culture.

Gratitude to: Rebecca Woodbury, Morgan Griffin, Marlena Medford and Kirsten Wyatt, Echa Schneider

Civic Hacking Agency

My son Elias and I began coding together during COVID. Many of the projects we first built now reside on USA.GovFresh, but we created the Civic Hacking Agency moniker to work under. There’s not much there, but it was the genesis of a project (ScanGov) that has evolved beyond even my optimism.

Inherently, I’ve known this, but CHA truly presenced me to HAFO. Hack around, find out.

Humans of Public Service

The first time I met Brian Whittaker was on a virtual call while vacationing near Sequoia National Park. The internet was spotty, but I still remember that it was such an enjoyable conversation.

He shared his idea for Humans of Public Service, and I remember telling him his wife would divorce him if he hired a professional photographer for every featured nominee. We brainstormed low-hurdle, more cost-effective options, and he landed on a really great contribution to the public servant community.

Brian is infectiously joyful, and I hope to work with him more. The work him and his team are doing is more important now than ever.

Gratitude: Brian Whittaker

ScanGov

In 2024, Elias and I built a website that graded state and federal websites on key web guidelines and protocol. The goal was to help government agencies understand key web standards and how they fared.

It’s been inspiring to watch him engage with government folks on GitHub (most of whom probably don’t realize they’re talking to a teenager), helping to improve their websites. We’ve talked with government officials and shared our story with industry press.

It has since evolved into ScanGov and Project ScanGov.

With ScanGov, I’ve learned deeper about how you can impact bureaucratic change from the outside. I’m proud of the way Elias and I worked together to build it, and I’m grateful for the back channel feedback from senior government leaders and public support from the broader civic technology community.

Recently, Aaron Hans joined as a maintainer to expand its scope and impact, but also prototype a commercial offering. The work we’re doing with ScanGov can truly help empower great government digital services at scale, and I’m extremely excited about its potential.

Gratitude: Elias Fretwell, Aaron Hans

Journalists

The narrative is an important part of civics, and journalists play a critical role in this. Thank you to those who have included me in their stories.

Gratitude: Paul Taylor, Keeley Quinlan, Rebecca Heilweil, Troy Schneider, Dennis Noone, Ben Miller, Nancy Scola and others

Et al

Gratitude to these folks (not mentioned above) for friendship, camaraderie and service to the people:

Ryan Wold, Mary Lazzeri, Hillary Hartley, Steve Spiker, Joy Bonaguro, Lenae Storey, Jake Rozran, Carlos Moreno, Carla Briceno, Greg Elin, Beth Archibald, Mai-Ling Garcia, Mark Headd, Camille Tuutti, Ido Ivry, Adriel Hampton, Lawrence Grodeska, Brian Purchia, Alex Howard

Open civic organizations

Much of the above work are examples of how organizations can impact culture internally and have very real impact externally. I call these open civic organizations.

More organizations – particularly civic tech nonprofits and government digital service teams and vendors – should employ this into their culture. It will pay dividends on your people and the bottom line.

Long live civic technology

We live in a new world order that’s causing good civic technology work to be undone. In more than one conversation, I’ve heard folks say civic technology is on the decline or dead.

Civic technology is more important now than ever, and its potential is boundless. As the kids say (or used to), if you know, you know.

My public service

In Proudly Serving, I wrote a chapter about reframing public service.

From the overview:

“The pillars of public service include government, non-profit, business, media, academia, and the general public. By reframing our context for what it means to serve, we shift power dynamics from ‘the government’ to ‘we are all public servants.’ This empowers everyone to have a shared sense of responsibility, accountability, and unity.”

I’ve never worked for government, but I’m proud of the work I’ve done in service to ‘the people’. It hasn’t been the traditional path or the one the traditional public sector industry celebrates, but I know my north star and that the edge will always be my creative zone.

JFDI

Years ago at a Code for America happy hour, there was a poster with ‘JDFI’ printed in sans-serif lettering.

“What’s JFDI?,” I asked.

I’m 99.99% certain it was Keven Curry that turned, looked at it and said, “Just f***ing do it.”

Since then, it’s been the perfect acronym to describe my philosophy on art and impact.

Momentum is everything.

Hack around. Find out.

Share your art.

JFDI.

Post script

Contact me if you’d like to work together or want to meet and discuss ideas (see also: services). I’m open to all the possibilities.

In this episode

In December of 2019, a small, ad hoc team assembled for a 90-day experimental project. Called California Alpha, its goal was to help the state rethink government digital service delivery. Its members – picked from government and private sector – had never collectively worked together. Their mission was to create – in three months – a culture and product that embodied a new way of delivering services to Californians – one that focused on designing for user needs and challenged the status quo of digital delivery in state government.

This is the story of California Alpha, why it was stood up, how it worked, and the resulting impact it had on the government digital ecosystem, inside the state and beyond.

This is a series on California Alpha, where I speak with Angie Quirarte, who played a key role in its creation and then led the project’s work.

In this episode, Angie and I discuss setting the California Alpha foundation.

Listen

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Briefs: Open data + open source AI 📄

Two new GovFresh Briefs:

• Open data by Carlos Moreno

• Open source AI by yours truly

Demo: ca.gov 🎥

State of California UX Design and Web Development Manager Artem Khomishen demos ca.gov:

Federal GitHub activity 🤓

Travis Hoppe analyzed all federal government open source code on GitHub:

• “The open-source landscape is diverse but leans towards repositories focused on scientific and cybersecurity topics.”

• 775 federal organizations

• 25,276 repositories

• 27,382 unique contributors

• 189,000 unique users have left more than 322,000 stars

• Most popular: NSA’s Ghidra

Deleting 18F 🥄

18F co-founder Hillary Hartley speaks her mind on the agency’s dismantling:

• “The simultaneous targeting of teams like 18F and USDS reveals what this is really about: removing the experts who understand modern technology delivery from inside government.”

• “People who understand that services only work when they’re designed with user needs in mind.”

• “People who can call bullshit on vendors and approaches that are simply snake oil or don’t consider how real people will interact with the service.”

To be continued.

GovTech reckoning 💀

Joy Bonaguro says it’s time to change the govtech game:

• “The dismantling of 18F and the restructuring of the U.S. Digital Service marks a pivotal moment for government technology reform.”

• “These developments aren’t just organizational changes. They represent the inherent vulnerability of government-led digital transformation efforts.”

• “So what if, instead of ignoring or fighting or ceding the market to the status quo, we reshaped it?”

DMing agile acquisitions 💬

Acquisition strategist, author, innovator, problem solver Jonathan Mostowski talks procurement with GovFresh:

• “Agile acquisitions in government streamline the procurement process to be faster, more flexible, and responsive to the purchaser’s needs, leveraging a broad spectrum of federal acquisition authorities.”

• “Agile fails most commonly, for the same reason most things fail: people.”

Related: Leading Agile Acquisitions

USG + OSS security 🔒

Former CISA Senior Technical Advisor Jack Cable shares how the U.S. government is (was?) tackling open source software security at All Things Open 2025.

Related: Secure by Design

Government repo tools 🧰

The Digital Service at Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has templates and command line tools for creating repositories for U.S. federal open source projects.

Related:

• Repo maturity model

• DSACMS GitHub org

The Hackers’ Almanack 🪁

DEF CON Franklin published The Hackers’ Almanack, “a novel first cut at bridging the chasm between policy makers and technologists.”

• AI Red Teaming is Bullshit: “When DEF CON, FDA, and CISA are aligned, it’s time to move beyond siloed and flawed evaluation and red team processes,” and change the way that policy makers view AI red teaming.”

• Governments Failed, So Hackers Step Up: “It’s time to re-evaluate our hesitancy around vigilantism … Perhaps there are ways that vigilantes could better share information with law enforcement or victims without fully ‘hacking back.’”

Open digital EU 🇪🇺

Open Future Senior Policy Analyst Jan Krewer on The European Union’s moment of truth.

• “The return of Donald Trump to the White House, backed by a coalition of tech oligarchs, has made it clear that no free society or independent economy can be built on the foundations of centralized digital infrastructures controlled by foreign corporations.”

• “Calls for independent European digital infrastructures have grown louder. Some advocate for a EuroStack, a sovereign European technology stack that could free the continent from reliance on foreign platforms.”

• “As an alternative, a non-aligned digital movement is taking shape. Seeking to escape the digital imperialism and geopolitical conflicts that come with dependence on US or Chinese technologies, this movement could prioritize collaboration, openness, and non-extractive governance models for technology. Often referred to as digital commons, such initiatives reject centralized corporate control in favor of shared, participatory governance of digital infrastructure.”

Related: Public Policies for Digital Commons webinar: European Tech Infrastructure and Open Source Investment

OpenSSF Policy Summit ⛰️

The Open Source Security Foundation hosted its 2025 Policy Summit in Washington, D.C. (recap).

Sessions:

• AI & Open Source Security

• Open Source Best Practices

• Regulatory Harmonization

• Repository & Package Supply Chain Security

AI Action Plan comments 🤖

The White House issued a request for information on its AI action plan. Google, OpenAI and Palantir responded.

Open source + open data jobs 📊

Open Knowledge Foundation is looking for CKAN Services:

• Senior developer

• Product owner

Book club 📚

Recent reads/listens:

• The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West

• Dark Wire: The Incredible True Story of the Largest Sting Operation Ever

• The Tech Coup: How to Save Democracy from Silicon Valley

Events 🗓️

• CityCamp, TBD (global)

Community 🫶

• The GovFresh community is open to anyone.

• To join, email community@govfresh.com with ‘Community’ in the subject.

Got tips? 📫

• Topics: tech, design, open source, data, security, blockchain, AI, civic hacking

• Send to: signal@govfresh.com

• Subject: ‘Signal tip’

Got feedback? 😍

• Send to: signal@govfresh.com

• Subject: ‘Signal feedback’

Get Signal 📨

• Subscribe

Logistics

• Host: Luke Fretwell

• Date/time: Fridays, 9:00-9:30 a.m. PT

• Location: Zoom

What’s the format?

Open Q&A. Ask me (and anyone who joins) anything.

Themes?

• Accessibility

• Civic hacking

• Web standards

• Gov/civic tech

• Digital service

• Product design/development

• Open source/data/innovation/culture

Do I need to RSVP?

No, just join at the designated time.

Can I invite others?

Yes!

More GovFresh demos

New GovFresh Brief from Carlos Moreno!

Intro 🚪

Governments use public data to serve the needs of citizens, creating a shared understanding of information that is accessible to everyone.

Why it matters 🚨

Transparent and accessible information:

• builds trust and understanding in communities

• increases public accountability

• improves efficiency and effectiveness

• inspires collaboration and empowers innovation

More from the California Open Data Publishers Handbook on the why of open data.

Read more

“The Tech Coup: How to Save Democracy from Silicon Valley” is a holistic take on how unprincipled, unfettered technology is eroding democracy. Marietje Schaake provides a blueprint for what we can do about it.

Schaake’s government experience as a European Parliament member and her proximity to Silicon Valley—as the international director of policy at Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center and a fellow at the university’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence—make her perspective one to note. She sees the digital forest for the trees.

The problem: Technology giants and authoritarian regimes, both leveraging monopolies of their own kind, fail to take privacy, security, and democratic principles seriously.

The solution: Upholding fundamental values of openness, transparency, accountability, security, and privacy—across technology and procurement—while advancing a “public stack” and digital public infrastructure, with governments leveraging their purchasing power to drive change.

Global values and policy initiatives, such as those outlined in the Declaration for the Future of the Internet, can guide us.

With core principles and a plan, the attempt can be resisted.

Original post