Drones ready to fly (photo: Caroline Rubinstein-Willis/Mayoral Photography Office)

A new proposed rule by the NYPD could pave the way for private drone flights over much of New York City, opening a new frontier for anything from high-altitude advertising to spying.

Today, private drone flights are allowed in only a handful of areas on the outskirts of the city, tightly regulated by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and NYPD to ensure safe and unfettered airspace in the nation's

Seniors ready to learn (photo: John McCarten/City Council)

When the COVID-19 pandemic struck and forced a lockdown of physical access to many government agencies and services, it highlighted New York City’s stark digital divide. Some of the city’s most vulnerable people lacked access to high-speed internet connection or the knowledge and training to use them. Now, a City Council bill expected to pass on Thursday aims to address that gap for the city’s rapidly growing older adult population. 

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Mayor Adams unveils the MyCity portal (photo: Caroline Willis/Mayoral Photo Office)

Mayor Eric Adams began to fulfill one of his major campaign promises in March as he launched the “MyCity” online portal that promises to help New Yorkers more easily apply for public benefits and access city services. The platform — which Adams calls "a legacy project" — is in its infancy, currently only providing access to childcare applications, but is meant to grow into a one-stop-shop for many if not all interactions with city government.

But civic technologists say that the administration’s approach

MyCity (photo: @nycgov)

When Bill de Blasio took office as Mayor in 2014, everyone knew government information technology agencies needed significant reform but didn’t know how exactly to do it. His predecessor, Mayor Bloomberg, was a venerated technology executive who had a hugely embarrassing software development fiasco calledCity Time

Rendering of the lobby of Civic Hall @ Union Square (via Civic Hall website)

Zero Irving, at times referred to as the Union Square Tech Hub, is set to fully open later this year after construction lagged amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Built on a city-owned site that for years housed a PC Richards on East 14th Street in Manhattan, the tech hub was originally proposed as part of then-Mayor Bill de Blasio’s 2017 “New York Works” plan, aimed at creating 100,000 jobs by

Mayor Adams at a tech conference (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)

At a February oversight hearing held by the New York City Council Committee on Technology, the city’s Chief Technology Officer, Matthew Fraser, defended blockchain as a useful tool for stimulating the economy and enhancing government services.

As head of the city’s Office of Technology and Innovation (OTI), Fraser is at the forefront of the Adams administration’s plans to integrate blockchain and other digital tools into municipal operations while also continuing to evaluate the cryptocurrency marketplace. At the

Mayor Adams (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)

Mayor Eric Adams’ campaign promise to launch the “MyCity” centralized portal for city benefits will soon become reality, administration officials told the City Council on Thursday. 

At a budget hearing held by the Council’s Committee on Technology, New York City Chief Technology Officer Matthew Fraser said that MyCity will be “rolling out in a few weeks,” initially offering a child care subsidy application portal before expanding to other city benefits.

MyCity was one of the signature proposals that Adams, a first-term

Students getting connected (photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)

The City Council’s Committee on Technology held a hearing Monday to examine disparities in internet broadband access across the city and to discuss legislation that would ameliorate that digital divide. The hearing took place just hours after Mayor Adams announced the new “Big Apple Connect” program to provide free internet and cable TV services to thousands of NYCHA residents to better connect

Mayor Adams sees tech jobs in action (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)

It's now clear that predictions of economic doom for New York made in the early days of the pandemic were as far off as, well, forecasts of the city’s demise made after 9/11 and the Great Recession. But while there are numerous signs that the city is bouncing back strong—from an uptick in tourism to sky-high demand for apartments—New York still has a long way to go in its employment recovery. Indeed, the city still has 123,000 fewer jobs than it did in February 2020, regaining

Public Advocate Jumaane Williams (photo: William Alatriste/City Council)

Now that New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams’ long-shot campaign for New York Governor is over, he presumably has more time to focus on performing the functions that the New York City Charter assigns to his elected office.

One function he has yet to perform, but something all previous Public Advocates have done, is to convene a meeting of the Commission on Public Information and Communication (COPIC). There’s never been a better time for him

Mayor Adams visits a small business (photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)

One of Mayor Eric Adams’ main gripes with city government is that it is too inefficient, part of rampant dysfunction that exacerbates inequality and stifles growth. There’s far too much red tape and redundancy between city agencies and New Yorkers looking to them for services, the new mayor says. And he’s vowed to ease that access by launching an online portal that will allow people to apply for city benefits, services, and permits at the touch of a button.

When he was running for mayor, Adams proposed to

Opening for business (photo: Edwin J. Torres/Mayoral Photography Office)

The pandemic has produced both soaring unemployment in New York City and a host of booming industries hungry for employees. Business leaders and the young administration of Mayor Eric Adams, alike, are looking to spend significant resources to connect candidates to jobs in traditional and emerging sectors. But executives are beginning to see one long-time driver of economic inequality as a particular barrier to tapping New York's 250,000-strong unemployed workforce: the college degree

Command center (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)

They had been planning for this moment for years, for decades, the moment terror took to the train and targeted the beating, rumbling heart of our city. Even prior to 9/11, but especially in its wake, NYPD officials called for billions in investment to prevent and respond to an attack on underground commuter arteries, and they got every penny they wanted. Money poured in to monitor, record, and remember seemingly every aspect of our commuting life, and when a gunman made the unthinkable carnage

NYC CTO Matthew Fraser with Mayor Adams (photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)

The de Blasio administration acknowledged that New York City desperately needs a Digital Service Organization (DSO) when it announced less than a month before the mayor left office that it wants to hire people for a new “NYC Digital Services” unit that would apply best practices in modern, open-source software development to New York City’s many

NYC Department of Information Information Technology and Telecommunications Github profile

New York City’s civic technology community has for many years been calling on city government to establish a Digital Service Organization (DSO). DSOs are technology groups organized within government agenies that use open source software to create their own technology solutions instead of buying proprietary services from

Eric Adams (photo: Erica Sherman/Brooklyn BP's Office)

Eric Adams believes government inefficiency is at the root of many ills that plague New Yorkers. The ineffective delivery of public services and waste of taxpayer dollars, he says, create the very inequality and suffering that city government is meant to ameliorate.

For years leading up to and throughout his run for mayor this year, Adams -- the two-term Brooklyn borough president and

The digital era comes to government meetings (photo: Ed Reed/Mayor's Office)

In late June, more than 200 people packed into a church basement for a Manhattan Community Board (CB) meeting on the contentious proposed rezoning of parts of Soho and Noho. Representatives of the New York City Department of City Planning were scheduled to make a presentation, but opponents of the rezoning booed and shouted over the planners. 

This kind of scene is all too familiar to those who’ve attended community board meetings in the past. But it

Mayor de Blasio at Cornell Tech (photo: Edwin J. Torres/Mayor's Office)

A report released Wednesday provides technological solutions for some of the city’s myriad problems and examines the barriers to their adoption, with the hope of provoking intense debate about urban technology in this year’s municipal election. 

The 124-page report, titled “Rebooting NYC: An Urban Tech Agenda for the Next Administration,” is a first draft released by Cornell Tech’s

Cornell Tech (photo: Edwin J. Torres/Mayoral Photography Office)

With New York City’s political landscape on the verge of drastic change, urban technology experts at Cornell Tech, the graduate school based on Roosevelt Island, are looking to make sure that the new class of city officials elected this year will embrace technology-based solutions to the city’s longstanding challenges.

Cornell Tech’s Urban Tech Hub, which is part of the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute and conducts applied research, helps create startups, and

Mayor de Blasio at a LinkNYC kiosk (photo: Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)

As the pandemic forced New Yorkers to shelter at home, Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration launched several efforts to assist those who lacked the necessary access to the internet to adapt to working and learning virtually. But there remains a deep digital divide across the city, particularly in terms of lack of access in low-income communities of color, creating significant challenges for students, residents of homeless shelters and public housing, and others.

According to city data, 40%

Students and laptops, eyeing the digital divide (photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)

Among the many lessons the coronavirus outbreak is teaching us about our society is that we are not prepared to live in the 21st century, particularly residents in low-income communities with little or no access to much-needed technology.

This century is a time of continued uncertainty, in which established norms change overnight and disruptions are being regularly caused by natural and man-made disasters. Our largely interconnected globe means that the spread of information,

(photo: Edwin J. Torres/Mayor's Office)

New York City has seen a lot of growth and some large shifts in its economy and workforce over the last decade. Unemployment is near record lows, but much of the growth has been in low-wage industries and many New Yorkers are underemployed or working full-time but still struggling to make ends meet. Automation is increasing, and technology has become both its own industry and part of every other sector of the economy.

Between 2010 and 2016, the tech sector in New York City grew 57%, and tech jobs in non-tech

technology in schools (photo: Ed Reed/Mayor's Office)

21st century education requires 21st century innovation. If we want students to think critically and creatively to learn to solve problems and succeed in today’s modern world they also need and must have access to modern technology.

A decade ago, laptops, tablets, desktop computers, and internet access were just beginning to be introduced into schools and classrooms. Today, these tools are commonplace across New York and the nation, integrated into lesson plans and required for homework completion. And although

(photo: Edwin J. Torres/Mayoral Photo Office)

January 29, 2020 - Max & Murphy Podcast: How the City's Economy is Working

Julie Samuels of Tech:NYC and Joey Ortiz of the New York City Employment and Training Coalition joined the show to discuss the New York City economy, jobs and workforce development, the tech sector and how tech is part of all other sectors, and

photo via DogSpot

There you are, walking your dog in the neighborhood and you pass a new coffee shop that just opened in a long-vacant storefront. You really want to check out their lattes and support a local entrepreneur, but instead you keep walking because there’s no way you are leaving your dog tied up and vulnerable on the sidewalk just so you can get a caffeine fix. Sadly, this scenario – in which small business owner and responsible dog owners all get shorted – isn’t so hypothetical. It happens every day in New York City, where more than half a