Technology

BEN KALLOS: "Time Travel to Save City Quadrillion Dollars." "Investment of tax dollars into time travel, will provide an infinite return on investment as we are able to avoid calamity be altering our time line. So long as we do not create a portal to the alternate timelines we destroy, we should all be fine." SEE THE STATEMENT: http://benkallos.com/press-release/time-travel-study-legislation-drafting-and-passage-announced-council-member-ben-kallos

He saw potential for Technology Development Corporation, the nonprofit corporation set up in 2012 under Bloomberg to oversee major technology projects, where he last worked, to evolve into something like the federal government's 18F. Its websitedocuments credit the agency with key involvement in the Pre-K for All outreach system and IDNYC.

He said, he felt however, that nobody "understand[s] the potential value of the TDC well enough."

Councilwoman Helen Rosenthal invoked a possible role for the Technology Development Corporation at a recent Council hearing considering two bills introduced by Councilman Ben Kallos aimed at pushing the administration to embrace open-source software,  which the Independent Budget Office estimates could eventually save $25 million. An 18F employee was among those testifying in favor.

City film permitting data will soon be available on the open data portal, a spokeswoman for the Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment said Thursday.

Associate commissioner Connie Ress' statement came a day after WNYC published anarticle and map of TV shoots across the city from November 2011 to July 2015 using data from the administration in response to a FOIL request. WNYC also published the underlying data to the programming platform Github, including data for feature film and news show permits.

Councilman Ben Kallos had also introduced aseparate bill on behalf of Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer that would require production permits to be made available online and searchable by community board district.

Last April, Reinvent Albany and other groups wrote a letter to the city again requesting the publication of the film shoots data on the portal, citing significant interest from hearing attendees in having more advance notice and in the data.

"We need the internet as a collective .... to come out, advocate, let the mayor, let the Council .... know that this is something they want to see the city lead the nation on," Kallos said after the hearing.

My Distinguished guest today is New York City Council Member Benjamin J. Kallos—Kallos Represents District 5 in the City of New York: Roosevelt Island and the Upper East Side.

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“We’ve got a second bite at bridging the digital divide in the Big Apple,” said City Councilman Ben Kallos (D-Manhattan).

Manhattan Democrat Ben Kallos wrote to the city’s Law Department on Monday after reading an exclusive story in The Post about how the agency paid InSync Litigation Services $1.2 million over the past five years to deliver legal papers by hand when it could have filed them online for free.

The new platform is the result of legislation signed into law last year that required the publication, produced by the Department of Citywide Administrative Services, to be available online in a searchable and machine-readable format, and which was introduced by Councilman Ben Kallos.

Councilman Ben Kallos of Manhattan announced on Friday that he opposes proposed legislation that would place a cap on new for-hire licenses issued to ride-sharing services such as Uber.