The Gov Lab Experiment by Paloma Baytelman on Flickr.

Beth Noveck is founder and CEO of The Governance Lab at New York University, which Knight Foundation supports to promote civic engagement.

The Governance Lab Academy, a training program designed to promote civic engagement and innovation, is launching a series of coaching programs with the support of Knight Foundation.

The sessions are designed to help participants working in civic engagement and innovation develop effective projects from idea to implementation. They are geared to the teams and individuals inside and outside of government planning to undertake a new project or trying to figure out how to make an existing project even more effective and scalable. Special preference is being given to teams comprised of officials from U.S. cities or working on city-level problems and opportunities.

Convened by leading experts in their fields, coaching programs meet solely online once a week for four weeks or every other week for eight weeks. They include frequent and constructive feedback, customized and original learning materials, peer-to-peer support, mentoring by topic experts and individualized coaching from those with policy, technology and domain expertise.

The free programs are each limited to eight to 10 project teams or individuals. Here is an overview of the offerings.

• Citizen Science on the Web, convened by Francois Grey, coordinator of the Citizen Cyberscience Centre in Geneva. Begins the week of March 2.
• Civic Tech for Local Legislatures and Legislators, co-convened by Benjamin Kallos, New York City Council member, and Arnaud Sahuguet, chief technology officer of The GovLab. Begins the week of March 2.
• Freedom of Information and FOIA Project Coaching: Breaking Down the Walls and Opening Up Communications, convened by Miriam Nisbet, former director of the Office of Government Information Services. Begins the week of March 2.
• Citizen Engagement Projects, co-convened by Beth Noveck, founder and CEO of The GovLab, and Tiago Peixoto, open government specialist at The World Bank. Begins the week of March 2.
• Tech Procurement Projects: Making the Supply Chain Work, convened by Clay Johnson, CEO of the Department for Better Technology and former Presidential Innovation Fellow. Begins the week of March 16.
• Leveraging Crowds in the Public Sector, convened by Karim Lakhani, the Lumry Family Associate Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. Begins the week of March 23.
• Open Source Technology Practices for Civic Engagement Projects, convened by Brian Behlendorf, managing director at Mithril Capital Management and co-founder Apache. Begins the week of April 6.
• Humanitarian Innovation Project Collaborative, co-convened by Brian Forde, former senior adviser to the U.S. chief technology officer, and Alexandra Clare, founder of Iraq Re:Coded. Begins the week of April 6.
• Lab Design: Bringing Agility and Empiricism to Public Problems, co-convened by Geoff Mulgan, chief executive of the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, and Joeri van den Steenhoven, co-founder and chief research and development officer of MaRS Solutions Lab. Begins the week of April 6.
• Open Data Data-Driven Decisions for All, co-convened by Arnaud Sahuguet, CTO of The GovLab, and Stefaan Verhulst, co-founder and chief research and development officer of The GovLab. Begins the week of April 6.
• Data Analytics for Change, convened by Amen Ra Mashariki, chief analytics officer of the city of New York. Begins the week of April 6. 
• Open Contracting Projects, convened by Gavin Hayman, executive director of the Open Contracting Partnership. Begins the week of April 27.

Check out our website for more information and to register.