Re: Introductions

Hi,

I'm Matt MacDonald a developer and someone who has been interested in local
government since high school when my dad a Town Councilor and my mom, a
school teacher would argue over the municipal budget. Fast forward 20 years
and I live in Watertown, MA working at Public Radio Exchange (
http://www.prx.org) and starting NearbyFYI Inc (http://www.nearbyfyi.com) a
company focused on providing data analytics and workflow tools to cities
and towns. I picked up my interest in municipal government again when my
daughter's school budget was being cut and stole every idea about managing
small towns from my dad who became a Town Manager and managed small towns
for over 15 years.

My main interest in open government standards is in how they can be applied
both technically and through via legislative process to both encourage and
force software vendors to create more useful tools for our municipalities.
The tools our municipal employees use are generally dreadful and as a
result the quality of the data we can retrieve and aggregate is awful. The
solution to this data pollution will come from improved tools that solve
municipal employee workflows.

Happy to have found out about this working group via David Moore at the
Participatory Politics Foundation and the #opengov hashtag.

I'd love to participate in the construction of pragmatic standards that
help improve solutions for municipal employees and the tools they use.

Thanks,
Matt MacDonald
NearbyFYI Inc.
@neocMatt