Unifying the City of Neighbourhoods: How Ideas Behind Open Source Software Development Tools May Benefit Toronto City Government

All submissions have been posted in the official language in which they were provided. All identifying information has been removed except the user name under which the documents were submitted.

Submitted by grantarp 2010–06–05 21:03:58 EDT
Theme(s): Digital Infrastructure, Growing the ICT Industry, Innovation Using Digital Technologies

Summary

This paper will show how the City of Toronto government may be improved if officials were to study certain popular tools used in the development of open source software and use them as models for creating new tools to support policy development amongst Toronto's many diverse neighbourhoods. The software tool Git will be used as an example of how a distributed version control system for policy development will be better for the City of Toronto, as opposed to the centralized system that the tool Subversion employs. The bug reporting tool Bugzilla will also be discussed in relation to how a similar tool for complaint reporting would lead to the improvement of certain public services that are managed by Toronto government, namely subway transportation. Toronto government policies and services may be improved through the creation of new tools for the public that emulate the sensibilities behind popular open source software development tools such as Git and Bugzilla.

Written by University of Toronto master's students Grant Patten and Matthew Mandula.

Suggested URL: Co–author's personal website

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