Year: 2014

An Incomplete List of Chicago Civic Technology Groups

Christopher Whitaker

As part of our work, the Smart Chicago Collaborative makes a lot of introductions. Chicago has a deep bench of civic innovation talent with multiple organizations working in tandem to use the power of technology to help solve problems.  There are also a number of mailing lists and meetup groups that are in the civic innovation space. To help get people who are interested in the space more acquainted, we’ve put together a list of mailing lists, events, and resources for people who want to get more involved.

Englewood Codes

Demond Drummer gives out an award during Englewood Codes demo day

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OpenGov Hack Night: Building a Vision for a Transit Future (Part 2)

Christopher Whitaker
This presentation was rather long, so we’ve split this into two posts. The first one has to do with the Transit Future policy itself. This post is about the process used to build the Transit Future site.

On the April 15th OpenGov Hack Night, Ed Oser with Center for Neighborhood Technologies and OpenCity Apps presented their work on both the Transit Future plan and the web app that shows it off.

The Vision for Our Transit Future Site was built by Juan-Pablo Valez and Nick Dorian using the Code for America Annual Report template as a base.

Blue Line Stop

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Damaged Vehicle Claim = Civic Engagement

Christopher Whitaker

Lots of people in my professional life talk about “civic engagement”. Everybody seems to want it. Fran Spielman reports in today’s Sun-Times that the City Clerk’s office had received over 3,100 damage claims due to potholes. That’s thousands of people engaging.

While we don’t always think of civic engagement as people filling out forms and claims, this is civic engagement at it’s core. Thousands of people going through a multi-step process to get reimbursed for a weaknesses of the civic infrastructure— and being paid back by the taxpayers— is about as engaged as one can be. Each year, the Chicago City Clerk‘s office processes thousands of claims for damaged vehicles.

potholes

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Open and Online: Accessing and Using Health Data at the Public Health Informatics Conference

Smart Chicago

Today I’m participating in the session called, “Open and Online: Accessing and Using Health Data” at the Public Health Informatics Conference in Atlanta. Here’s the description:

This session will present “8 Principles of Open Health Data” to guide management of, access to, and governance of de-identified non-aggregate health data. Presenters will discuss the use of an online interactive Disability and Health Data System that uses Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System disability data and will present a framework for capturing newborn admission data from hospitals.

If you care about these issues, please consider joining the Health Data Liberation meetup group, which is meeting tonight at the Opportunity Hub (“Atlanta Intro to the 8 Principles of Open Health Data“, right next door to the PHIC Conference.

Join us in this fight.

OpenGov Hack Night: Building a vision for a transit future (Part One)

Christopher Whitaker
This presentation was rather long-ish, so we’ve split this into two posts. The first one has to do with the Transit Future policy itself. 

On the April 15th OpenGov Hack Night, Ed Oser with Center for Neighborhood Technologies and OpenCity Apps presented their work on both the Transit Future plan and the web app that shows it off.

Untitled

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Hack Night Live! Experimental Station!

Christopher Whitaker

Danny Burke from Experimental Station will talk about the61st Street Farmers Market including their food access programs around food stamps, value incentives, table counts and consumer behavior within the context of food justice on the south and west sides of Chicago. 

Watch the live stream here!