MEDIA RELEASE

8 September 2016

Council launch new Code for Aotearoa fellowship

Wellington City Council and Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) have announced two Open Data Fellowships through Code for Aotearoa – the first fellowship of its type in New Zealand.

Gabrielle Young, Peter Jacobson, Marcus Crane and Vaishnavi Iyer are the first civic-minded developers to be chosen for the 3-month pilot Fellowship.

The Fellowship is a partnership between Wellington City Council and Land Information New Zealand (LINZ). Code for Aotearoa and Australia are getting behind the pilot programme to help strengthen the link between the growing civic tech community in Wellington and government.

Deputy Mayor Justin Lester says: “These Fellowships will allow our smart community and finest tech talent to access our wealth of data and mine its potential. They’ll be working with us and the public to develop tech-based solutions to solve civic-problems that make a difference.”

The Fellowships will leverage a community of passionate and skilled contributors from the tech-sector and capitalise on the many opportunities digital transformation presents.

When Wellington City Council was approached by LINZ to create a programme using open data to solve civic engagement issues they seized the opening.

The Chair of Council’s Economic Growth and Arts Committee, Councillor Jo Coughlan, says Wellington City Council is always looking for ways to meet our Wellington Digital Strategy and Action Plan.

“We’ve already partnered on the Digital Earth Summit, Smart City Sensing projects, Open Data and now the Digital Fellowship programme.

“Council is committed to exploring opportunities that can make engagement with our communities easier, more transparent and helps to accelerate economic growth using open data. This is why Wellington is achieving global recognition as a creative digital city.”

Co-founder and Managing Director of Code for Australia, Alvaro Maz is in New Zealand this week helping to settle the Digital Fellows in.

“Code for Aotearoa will open many opportunities on what we can achieve together that we can't do alone. This partnership with Wellington City Council and LINZ represents a new sensibility about how government can work, and a feeling that there is something productive citizens can do to fix civic problems and have meaningful contributions to society.

“We build for and with citizens using data-driven, user-centred methods; we create digital interfaces to government that are simple, beautiful, and easy to use.”

Background

Alvaro Maz

Before Code for Australia, Alvaro was an urban planner, designer, open data and open government consultant for Australian governments and a social entrepreneur. He is also a Sandboxer, Centre for Sustainability and Leadership Fellow, Startup Leadership Fellow and is learning how to play the Ukulele.

We are privileged to have on board Alvaro Maz, one of the co-founders and Managing Director of code for Australia. He will be with us to help run the pilot programme. For more about him go tohttp://www.codeforaustralia.org/team/ or http://subtledisruptors.com/alvaromaz/

Code for Aotearoa

Alvaro came to visit New Zealand in 2015 and was amazed at the interest and willingness from government agencies in doing things differently. There is a growing civic tech community and Alvaro thought a good way to start linking them together would be through a similar set of programs that other Code for country programs run.

Code for America – first code for country program

Jennifer Pahlka was inspired by the work that Tim O'Reilly was doing with web 2.0 and with O'Reily media; a tech publication based in Silicon Valley, and wondered if that same talent could be applied to government services.

Code for Germany, Caribbean, Poland, Australia

Seeing the success from Code for America since 2010, other countries began making similar programs with a shared vision; digital technology opens new channels for citizens to more meaningfully engage in the public sphere and have a positive impact on their communities.

Code for All

Established in 2014 to hold Code for country hands and welcome new Code for country programs

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