The City of Seattle has operated Block Watch programs in select neighborhoods for more than 35 years. But now, some city officials and local high-tech leaders think the program is ready for an upgrade. A new effort -- led by the non-profit Code for America -- is looking to transform the way neighbors communicate with one another by tapping into social networking tools. Eventually, the goal is to create stronger communities where citizens are actively engaged in helping city government operate more smoothly.

The Code for America initiative was discussed Sunday night at a fundraiser at the home of VMware CEO Paul Maritz, with other notable attendees including venture capitalist Jonathan Roberts, U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell, WhatCounts founder David Geller and Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn.

Bill Schrier, chief technology officer for the City of Seattle, said there's a real need to automate Block Watches across the city.

"Here we have an age of cell phones and Facebook and Internet and email, and you know how the city communicates with its Block Watches? 1920s technology," Schrier said. "We print stuff off on paper -- like crime maps -- and we send it out to the Block Watch captain who is expected to distribute it."

Schrier noted that 84 percent of Seattle residents have Internet connections at home, and yet the city is not using that resource as a communications vehicle to help connect residents. "We need some automated way to allow those folks to mobilize themselves in their neighborhoods, in their block watches," said Schrier, adding how members of his West Seattle neighborhood informally keep watch on a woman in her nineties. The new tool being proposed by Code for America would make that a more formal place for citizens to gather to take care of neighbors and report suspicious activities, he said.

Code for America is trying to roll out projects in five cities, tapping young, Web-savvy minds to build tools that will make city government operate more efficiently. In that regard, the program is similar to Teach for America. But teaching doesn't resonate with all civic-minded recent college grads, including Abhi Nemani who joked last night that he has an aversion to kids.

"We are kind of a startup generation," said Nemani, a self-described geek and a member of the Code for America team. "Now, what if we could enroll that same thinking on city government?"

The other four cities -- Philadelphia, Boston, Washington, D.C. and Boulder -- have already raised the funds for their projects. But Seattle hasn't done so, one of the reasons why members of the Code for America team were in Seattle last night.

Among those who offered support were Microsoft and ESRI, both of which wrote $50,000 checks. Mike and Monica Harrington, who were not in attendance, also donated $10,000 to the cause.

Tim O'Reilly of O'Reilly Media at the Code for America fundraiser.

Code for America supporter Tim O'Reilly -- who spoke about the role of technology in government -- also wrote a check for $50,000. It was O'Reilly who made the most passionate plea to empower young technical people with a new type of public service. Comparing the new Government 2.0 trend to what happened in the early days of the PC and the Internet, O'Reilly said that government really is evolving into a platform of its own.

"I think we have fallen into a trap where we start to think of a government as a giant vending machine. We put in our taxes and we get out services. And the notion of citizen participation is a little bit like shaking the vending machine," said O'Reilly. "It doesn't have the right item in it or it costs too much and we're in there banging away and that's all we think we can do. We forgot that government was originally designed as a mechanism for collective action. It belongs to us. It is us."

O'Reilly said reinventing government not only includes injecting young talent into the equation, but helping various government agencies share technologies with each other. Code for America, he said, will help meet those goals.

That was an idea applauded by Mayor McGinn. "Having the capacity to really bring government tools and Web tools and social networking tools to that interaction, to that level of accountability, can only make us stronger and can only give us the tools to solve our problems," he said. "So, I am extraordinarily excited about this."

Code for America is currently accepting applications for fellows who will work on the various projects for 11 months.