Title
Code for Gainesville and the Department of Doing Collaboration (B)
This item requests the City Commission receive a presentation about the Code for Gainesville brigade, the Gainesville business portal, and the Department of Doing’s Grow-It-Yourself kit.
Explanation
In December 2015, the City Commission unanimously adopted the Blue Ribbon Report, which included a recommended change to deploy a Department of Doing. Integral to becoming the most citizen centered city in the world, the Department of Doing is a modular governmental unit that facilitates the many different steps in the process of starting or growing a business. Partnering with the Code for Gainesville brigade to co-design a business portal and prototyping a Grow-It-Yourself (G.I.Y.) kit to jumpstart the citizen’s journey, these two key resources aim to support a strong economy, one of the Strategic Framework’s guiding questions.
Launched on the National Day of Civic Hacking in summer 2016, the Code for Gainesville brigade quickly began collaborating with the City of Gainesville to bring to life our vision of an online community resource, a local business portal. Throughout the past year, Code for Gainesville’s developers, designers and coders have volunteered hundreds of hours of their personal time towards achieving this vision. Today, we unveil the culmination of their work, recent progress achieved during the 2017 National Day of Civic Hacking, and their collaboration with the UF-Gainesville Fellows.
After interviewing numerous citizens who have had experience with starting or growing a business in Gainesville, the idea of a G.I.Y. kit was born; a kit filled with helpful tips, tools and insights on how to search for a location and build a business in Gainesville. The kit lays out a journey map for new businesses and explains the city steps in clear, easy-to-understand language.
Fiscal Note
None
Recommendation
The City Commission receive a presentation.