Over the past year or so we’ve highlighted various projects undertaken by the government of New York that utilize web 2.0 technologies to promote both civic engagement and transparency.  A recent article on Metro Focus offers an overview of these projects.  Many of the programs can be adopted by other cities as well:

While still in its infancy, this open data movement is a a giant step for transparency advocates and democracy in general. One of the most fascinating impacts of the open data and open source (software code that’s available to the public to improve and reuse) movements has been the influx of new web tools, developed by private companies and nonprofits, that help people better engage with, and navigate, their city.

You can read more here.