The Knight News Challenge is open for applications until 5 p.m. ET on March 18. We’ve asked a handful of people to share their hopes for open government. Below, Philadelphia’s Mayor, Michael Nutter, whose city just won the Bloomberg Mayors Challenge for innovation, offers his thoughts. *Note: Knight will be in Philadelphia to host a civic idea meetup on Saturday, March 16 at 3 p.m. ET.

As a mayor, I spend much time creating a fine balance between responding to challenges facing the City of Philadelphia with the immense opportunities that present themselves on a daily basis. Cities everywhere are dealing with a “new normal” where revenue decreases and health and pension increases have reduced discretionary spending. At the same time, however, cities are growing faster than the suburbs and millennials and others are pouring in, creating a do-it-yourself ethos in the civic space.  Technology is developing at a blindingly rapid pace and citizen expectations are high and needs as profound as ever. This has created an explosion of entrepreneurial civic innovation and openness from government to become full and equal partners in identifying problems and creating sustainable solutions to the most vexing urban challenges.

City governments are revolutionizing how we think of our roles – moving from solvers of all problems and deliverers of all services to providers of opportunity.  To realize our full potential, American cities must support and advance evolved notions of transparency and engagement.  Beyond ethics, honesty, openness and welcoming of citizen input and participation which lay the foundation for “good” government, city governments need to work towards leveraging all available assets (citizen, institution, university, and business) to solve our toughest urban challenges.  We must work to achieve “great” government.

In Philadelphia, we have designed a structure to facilitate a true, open and transparent government.  We have created new positions, represented by our Chief Innovation Officer, Chief Data Officer and Civic Technology Director, all of whom work to ensure that we are developing innovative service delivery strategies, exposing data and information to the public, and working to digitally connect with our citizens.  We have created a number of nimble, public-facing offices working in prioritized areas (Arts & Culture, Education, Sustainability, and Civic Engagement & Volunteerism) that work to leverage the wisdom and strength of outside partners. We have also created – inspired by the City of Boston – a Philadelphia Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics.  Combined with the extraordinary creativity and talent of our public employees, we believe we’ve created a supportive and sustainable innovation infrastructure that will better position our government to sustain an internal culture of innovation and promote entrepreneurial approaches to problem solving with outside partners.

This “Innovation Infrastructure” has engaged the city’s entrepreneurial and startup communities to harness their energy, passion and intellect.  We have established solid working relationships with business incubators/accelerators in Philadelphia and are expanding the network of those in and outside of government working to analyze and solve civic challenges. Most notably and recently, our new “Startup PHL” initiative – driven by the Deputy Mayor for Economic Development and the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation – is intended to support and grow Philadelphia’s startup and entrepreneurial communities.

Our application to the Bloomberg Mayors Challenge proposes the development of a structured approach that brings together public sector experts with deep knowledge of civic challenges and entrepreneurs with a fresh eye and a knack for problem solving and significantly expanding social enterprise business acceleration programming in Philadelphia.  We are looking at reframing civic challenges as opportunities that can be solved by entrepreneurs – thereby creating a new source for ideas and structure for supporting the deployment of innovative solutions in Philadelphia and beyond.

Ultimately, we are working to ensure that we stay true to the principles of “of the people, by the people and for the people.” New technologies are enabling this notion to be redefined and strengthened as citizens gain access to new data, new information and new tools.

Local government is the critical and preeminent player in positively transforming our cities, but we’re not the only player.  We must ensure that our role is one that promotes a culture and develops an ecosystem of entrepreneurial civic innovation.

In the end, meaningful change is what we seek.  We’ve done our job when our citizens are safer, better educated, healthier, more productive, and, quite simply, happier. To that end, we must work to ensure authentic transparency and openness in government. It is my challenge, and our challenge to develop the ideas and solutions that turn ideas into action. The Knight Foundation News Challenge ends at 5 p.m. ET on March 18 – apply!

By Michael Nutter, Mayor of Philadelphia