The City of Chicago is the most important policy lever in the Chicago region and they are a critical partner for having a positive impact on the lives of residents.
Our products are most effective when they directly engage with City services and operations. Here's a look at the ways we partner with the City of Chicago:
- Brenna Berman, CIO and Commissioner of the Department of Innovation and Technology, is the City's representative member on our Advisory Committee
- The City is a partner in the Smart Chicago Challenge, and Brenna Berman serves on the Challenge Steering Committee
- Danielle DuMerer, Director of Planning, Policy & Management at the Department of Innovation & Technology serves on our Operations Committee, overseeing our work and assisting in our efforts
- We work with Chief Data Officer Tom Schenk on a wide variety of open data issues, including the provision of data from our own projects and working across units of government to improve technology collaboration. The Cook County Open Data project is an example. Tom also serves on the Core Stakeholders Group for our Chicago School of Data project
- We work directly with the Chicago Department of Public Health on our Foodborne Chicago product, which they use to help encourage more 311 service requests around food inspections
- We use data published to the city data portal by Chicago Department of Public Health in our Chicago Health Atlas product, and also engage with some of their epidemiology staff on how to display the data
- We work with the Mayor's Office, Chicago Public Schools Office of Early Childhood Education, and the Department of Family and Support Services Children Services Division, to populate the Chicago Early Learning database and integrate that site with their programs
- The City operates many Connect Chicago locations, participates in our meetups, and uses the site to provide public data and assist 311 callers about public computing
- Smart Chicago participates in the City's Chicago City of Learning program with #CivicSummer
- The City is a frequent partner in the CUTGroup, and City systems and websites are frequent subjects of tests
- The City maintains a wealth of public data that is used by civic technologists who take advantage of our Developer Resources program
- We've worked with the City Clerk on projects like the residential parking zone map
Lastly, Smart Chicago was a sub-recipient for grants received by the City of Chicago under the U.S. Department of Commerce – National Institute of Standards and Technology under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP) for Sustainable Broadband Adoption and the support of Public Computer Centers.
