City of Bloomington Selected for Inaugural Code for America 2015 Technology Award at Annual Summit

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Sept. 30, 2015

For more information, please contact:

Rick Dietz, Director of ITS, City of Bloomington, dietzr@bloomington.in.gov, 812.349.3485

City of Bloomington Selected for Inaugural Code for America 2015 Technology Award at Annual Summit

Bloomington, Ind. - Today, the City of Bloomington's InRoads applications was named among the inaugural winners of the Code for America Technology Awards at the 2015 Code for America Summit. InRoads is being recognized as a tool that helps government work better for the American people. Code for America partnered with Google for Entrepreneurs on this program.

inRoads is a digital service developed by the City of Bloomington Information & Technology Services (ITS) Department. The inRoads applications was developed by the ITS Systems & Applications Team to help city staff manage road closing information and share it with the public and press. inRoads shows current and future road closings, lane reductions, parking reservations and more. It is available at bloomington.in.gov/inroads and is usable in a desktop web browser, on a tablet and on a smartphone. inRoads is an opensource application; its computer code can be downloaded and reused by other organizations.

"This diverse group of awardees deserves the attention of anyone who cares about our public sector working effectively for the American people in the 21st century," said Jen Pahlka, Founder and Executive Director of Code for America. "As governments struggle to meet the public's needs in a digital era, the tools and platforms that public servants use must do a better job, and the marketplace for suppliers to government must change. These examples, which include the work of companies, public servants, and engaged citizens, set a higher bar for government technology to which the whole sector must aspire."

The $142 billion government technology market is opening to new vendors, new ways of contracting, and new approaches that improve the delivery of services to the public. The Technology Awards are designed to recognize new entrants into the market who are making a difference and to encourage talented entrepreneurs to consider how they might also serve their country.

ITS Director Rick Dietz stated, "The City of Bloomington is honored to be recognized for our contribution to open source software for government. When Bloomington codes it codes for America and beyond, producing open source applications that anyone can use including GeoReporter Open311 tools, the RentRocket green rental portal, and now inRoads. We are grateful to be a part of a growing community of innovation that is improving civic life around the world with creative technology tools."

Bloomington Mayor Mark Kruzan stated, "Code for America is the leading organization championing innovation in government technology. It is a great honor to be recognized by Code for America for our inRoads service and a well-earned accolade for our City and our ITS Department."

Code for America is pleased to partner with Google for Entrepreneurs, which brings together startup communities and creates spaces for entrepreneurs to learn and work, on these awards. Technology Award winners will be invited to an afternoon at Google's Mountain View campus where they will have the opportunity to partake in mentor sessions with Googlers and hear from speakers on topics relevant to government technology.

The 2015 Technology Award Winners were selected by a panel of judges from both the tech and public sectors, including John Lyman (Head of Partnerships, Google for Entrepreneurs), Tim O'Reilly (founder and CEO, O'Reilly Media), Beth Niblock (CIO, City of Detroit), Ron Bouganim (Managing Partner, Govtech Fund), Matt Mazzeo (Lowercase Capital) and Aneesh Chopra (Co-Founder, Hunch Analytics and first-ever Chief Technology Officer of the United States).

The full list of award winners:

• Asheville NC's SimpliCity

• Bloomington, IN's inRoads

• CFPB's Qu

• Case Commons' Casebook

• Charlotte, NC and Code for Charlotte's, Citygram

• Code for Boston's MBTA Ninja

• Code for Philly's CyclePhilly

• GitHub

• Mark43's Cobalt

• Open Justice Broker Consortium's Open Justice Broker

• SeamlessDocs

• SeeClickFix

For more information visit: [http://awards.codeforamerica.org]

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