Code for America Commons is a project by Code for America and OpenPlans focused on reducing government IT costs by helping government entities share code and best practices.[1] It was initially launched as Civic Commons as an independent nonprofit organization, but later became a program of Code for America.[1] The project is a coordinated effort between Code for America, OpenPlans, and the District of Columbia's Office of the Chief Technology Officer (OCTO).[2]
The Federal IT Dashboard was launched in June 2009 as a government transparency initiative.[3] According to US CIO Vivek Kundra, it was "a website where you could track $80 billion of IT spending annually."[4] Initially it was only available to the federal government, which used the dashboard to monitor project effectiveness and decide the allocation of resources.[4] With help from the Civic Commons initiative, the IT dashboard was made freely available to all government entities in March 2011.[4]
The Enterprise Addressing System (EAS) is a web-based application introduced by the San Francisco Department of Technology to manage the city's master database of addresses.[5] In response to other jurisdictions' expressed interest in EAS, the city of San Francisco decided to open source the system with help from Civic Commons.[6] In early 2011, Farallon Geographics developed a secure solution for EAS using open source geospatial technology.[7]
