The Hometown Summit is showcasing a number of fairly new initiatives focused on helping city leaders improve their approach to community engagement, especially through technology and an embrace of open data. A few stand out to me thus far, please let me know if you find them useful in your hometown:

Center for Government Excellence, which is based at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore but works with cities elsewhere, has developed a number of practical guides on topics from civic open data to managing organizational culture.

What Works Cities, an initiative funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies, is working with over 70 cities to identify and share solutions. They recently launched a certification program to help cities improve their use of data and evidence and be recognized for those improvements.

The Davenport Institute has a web-based self-evaluation tool to evaluate your community’s public engagement processes and policies.

The Sunlight Foundation recently released a guide to open data for city leaders. The Foundation is actively seeking feedback on the guide, which they’re currently calling a beta test.