Growing tired of the inertia in collective bargaining talks between Cablevision and the company’s Brooklyn employees, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer stood with workers outside of Madison Square Garden to demand that Cablevision negotiate in good faith and reinstate a group of workers who were dismissed a week ago. Last week,  Quinn and de Blasio–both Democratic candidates for mayor–ventured deep into Brooklyn to stand with 23 Brooklyn Cablevision workers… [More]

This is not your parents’ government. Thanks to ongoing advances in technology, everything from campaigning to government operations to keeping constituents informed is not what it once was. At City & State’s RealPolitech forum last month, lawmakers, government officials and consultants delved into the interplay of government and technology, discussing efforts to battle increasingly sophisticated hackers, the possibilities for improving elections and campaigns, and the advantages of making government data easily accessible. In New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has… [More]

A real press release, annotated Sent 1:06 p.m., Tuesday, January 03, 2012,  from City Comptroller John Liu’s press office.… [More]

The Bloomberg administration is working hard to stay ahead of the curve on sexy new technology – which is why a 69-year-old mayor found himself yesterday extolling how New Yorkers can connect with their government through Facebook and Foursquare and Twitter and Tumblr. But some of the city’s most important tech work is taking place behind the scenes on boring old systems, like merging data warehouses and monitoring software consultants. New York is belatedly trying to take control of an… [More]