Citizen Interaction Design Presents:

"Rebuilding Citizenship for the Twenty-first Century"

Good governance now is intimately linked with digital, and technology can reconnect people with their government, Bracy believes. Citizens need to participate in this system of governance--at least at the local level--if they want to see an improvement in services.

"We don't have to just complain about what is broken in our communities; we can use our skills to help fix it.”

Speaker Bio:

Catherine Bracy is dedicated to bringing together local governments and technologists in a concerted effort to make better cities for everyone. She formerly served on Code for America's senior leadership team, overseeing all public-facing programming. At Code for America, she previously was the Director of Community Organizing, responsible for Code for America's community network-building initiatives, including the citizen volunteer program (the Brigade) and the international partnership program (Code for All).

Until November 2012, she was a product manager and director of the Obama campaign’s technology field office in San Francisco, the first of its kind in American political history. In that role she was responsible for organizing technologists to volunteer their skills to the campaign’s technology and digital efforts. Prior to joining the campaign, she ran the Knight Foundation’s 2011 News Challenge and before that was the administrative director at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society. She also sits on the board of directors of the Citizen Engagement Lab and the Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science.