In a rare bit of international news for the What’s New in Civic Tech weekly roundup, Bloomberg Philanthropies has announced a partnership that will see the scaling of one of its civic innovation programs in Israel.
Essentially, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Israel’s Ministry of the Interior, and the Peres Center for Peace and Innovation will be working to facilitate civic tech within 12 jurisdictions in the country. They will be doing so through the creation of Hazira, a national hub for city innovation.
The center’s undertakings may be familiar to some who are involved with or aware of the innovation programs that Bloomberg Philanthropies supports domestically. In fact, the work at Hazira will be to scale the Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Innovation Teams (i-teams) program to the 12 aforementioned new cities in Israel over the course of the next five years. For the unfamiliar, the i-teams program is one that aims to give local government or other stakeholders the tech and other tools needed to overcome their most complex community challenges.
“Cities have to find creative ways to address complex challenges with limited resources. Innovation teams help them do that, and our program has had a lot of success working with cities in Israel,” said Michael R. Bloomberg, three-term mayor of NYC and founder of Bloomberg LP and Bloomberg Philanthropies, in a press release announcing the new initiative.
In addition, Hazira will also support existing i-teams in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Be’er Sheva. The first two of those have been at work since 2015, and the other since 2017.
This ties into something that was a steady topic of conversation last month at the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative in New York City, during which experts and attendees noted that many of the challenges and solutions cropping up in local government as of late are shared by jurisdictions in both the U.S. and abroad.
Source: https://www.govtech.com/civic/Whats-New-in-Civic-Tech-CfA-Shares-Clear-My-Record-Tech.html