Mark Headd joins gov software firm Accela as technical evangelist

Mark Headd‘s last day as Philadelphia’s first Chief Data Officer was Friday. He published his first blog post for his new gig Monday.

Headd is now a technical evangelist for Accela, a venture-backed government software firm in the Bay Area. He’ll be working with developers and businesses who want to build on Accela’s platform. It’s a move that seems natural for Headd, who worked as an evangelist for telephony API provider Voxeo Labs and was responsible for introducing the company to open government.

Headd will remain in Philly, working remotely at Indy Hall and other community spaces, and will also be traveling.

He said he’s excited about how Accela embraces the idea of government as a platform, where their platforms and products allow third party developers to build solutions on top of them, and also that he’s encouraged to write blog posts and use social media. Headd kept a blog during his tenure at Chief Data Officer and was also very active on Twitter.

“Sadly, that wasn’t always appreciated when I was at the city,” he said in an email. “At certain times it was downright discouraged.”

And who will replace Headd? We couldn’t get a confirmation from the city but this tweet from Chief Innovation Officer Adel Ebeid offers an answer: Tim Wisniewski, the city’s Director of Civic Technology, who went from civic hacker to city official in a little over two years.