GOVERNMENT

Houston leaders in the last year or so have cheered the promise of "civic hacking," pushing to make the mountains of data the city collects accessible to tech enthusiasts capable of building programs to help citizens better understand and interact with their government.

That disconnect about the status of security of data between the information technology people on the front lines and other state officials helps explain why states aren’t putting as much money into cybersecurity as they should.

The open data push already is paying off, sometimes in the form of better collaboration among state agencies.

A smarter city is one that’s connected and working with real time data.

Governments and councils can establish an open, standards-based IP network linking various infrastructure, from energy to public lighting to traffic light systems to disaster sensors.

The biggest danger in all of this is that these efforts will ultimately fail to take hold – that after a few promising prototypes and experiments, governments will revert to the time honored approach of issuing bloated RFPs through protracted, expensive processes that crowd out smaller firms with better ideas and smaller price tags.

A Philadelphia program called FastFWD recognizes that government doesn’t have all the answers and invites collaboration from entrepreneurs.