City of Bloomington completes 2013 Google code program

The City of Bloomington finished participating in the Google Summer of Code program, which matches student programmers with mentor organizations that create open source software.

Open source software is computer software developed publicly so the underlying computer source code can be reviewed, changed, reused and redistributed by others, according to a press release from the City of Bloomington.

Bloomington was the first city government to participate as a mentoring organization in the program in 2012.

The City of Bloomington uses Open311, an open standard for completing non-emergency service requests such as filling potholes and removing graffiti.

The GSoC projects helped Bloomington expand its existing suite of Open311 tools, which includes smartphone apps, according to the press release.

Rick Dietz, director of the information and technology services department for Bloomington, and Cliff Ingham, lead developer for Bloomington, went to Google Headquarters in Sunnyvalle, Calif., and met with Google Open Source Programs staff as well as developers and mentors from around the world.

“Google Summer of Code 2013 was a great experience for the City,” Dietz said in the release. “We learned a lot from GSoC 2012 and the 2012 Mentor Summit, and we put those best practices into place in 2013. We had even better results this year, in 2013, because of the lessons we learned.”

GSoC students in Bloomington worked to create and improve GeoReporter and uReport apps for the City, according to the release.

While in California, Dietz presented a session on the status of open source in
government.

“GSoC is helping us to better serve Bloomington, and share great open source tools with the world,” Dietz said.

— Matt Stefanski