Palo Alto CIO to kick off Code for Ireland initiative

9 Jan 2014

Code for Ireland, a movement aimed at creating apps that solve community and government problems and modelled on Code for America, is to be formally launched next week by Jonathan Reichental, CIO for the City of Palo Alto, California.

Code for Ireland aims to connect community developers and government in order to develop apps and services that will enable government to become more efficient.

The Irish organisation is an international member of the Code for America movement.

The Code for Ireland movement will be formally launched on 16 January at 6pm at Dublin Castle by Minister for State Brian Hayes along with Reichental and Catherine Bracy, who heads up Code for America’s international network.

Open government

“The aim of Code for Ireland is to bring together people from local communities, developers and people working in government in order to develop apps and services that solve community problems and also to enable government to become more open,” explained organiser Dominic Byrne, who heads up the IT department at Fingal County Council.

He said the idea is to build out apps that make a difference to the community and encourage ongoing participation via monthly events, and build out a Code for Ireland network throughout the country.

The first Code for Ireland meet-up in November has already led to the commencement of three projects, including an emergency app that shows where all the defibrillators in Dublin are located, a queueing app aimed at avoiding long waits at the motor tax office, and a business location assessment app that will guide businesses on the best place to locate based on zoning, available property and other businesses in the area.

“The idea is that people from the developer community would work on developing these apps as open-source projects – similar to the model already in use by Code for America,” Byrne said.

“There is the potential for Code for Ireland to reuse or repurpose these apps for use in Ireland.”

Co-operation image via Shutterstock

John Kennedy
By John Kennedy

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years. His interests include all things technological, music, movies, reading, history, gaming and losing the occasional game of poker.

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