Month: May 2015

Issue Primer: Transportation

Christopher Whitaker
US Department of Transportation in DC

US Department of Transportation Building in Washington, DC. Photo by Flickr user Marabuchi

For this year’s National Day of Civic Hacking, we’re writing up primers on different civic issues to help people get a better understanding of the issues as they start working on projects.

Below, we’ve listed out places where you can data on transportation, some examples of projects centered around transportation, and some resources online to help you with your project.

Transportation:

Transportation policy impacts many different aspects of city life. Transportation policy impacts economic development,  the environment, and overall quality of life. Transportation is also something that cities, states, and the federal government spend a lot of money on. In 2009, total transportation expenditure by State and local governments reached the record level of $270 billion. Despite these expenditures, the American Society of Civil Engineers gives the country’s infrastructure a grade of D+. Specifically, the ASCE is calling for additional investments to repair roads, bridges, and rail infrastructure.

Data Resources:

The US Department of Transportation has over 1600 transportation related data sets at data.gov along with several developer resources. These developer resources include:

  • Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) Open Source Data API
  • Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) SaferBus API
  • Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) Safety Data APIs
  • Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) APIs
  • National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) API

At the local level, Chicago also has several sets of data related to transportation including:

  • Average Daily Traffic Counts
  • Daily Boarding Totals for the Chicago Transit Authority
  • Historical Congestion Estimates by Region API

The State of Illinois’ Department of Transportation also publishes data on transportation including:

  • Average Annual Daily Traffic 2010
  • IDOT Rest Areas Map

Potential Partners 

The best civic apps are built through partnerships between technologists, residents, and the people who work on the front lines. Here’s a list of potential partners you can work with in your own cities to help build projects that can make an impact.

  • City Transportation and Transit Agencies: Chicago Department of Transportation, New York’s MTA, or Boston’s MTBA.
  • Regional Planning Authorities: Regional planning authorities are responsible for helping to plan major transportation projects across wide regions. This is often a requirement for these projects to receive federal transportation dollars. Because of that, these agencies often have data useful for transportation projects or experts who can help with projects. Some examples of these agencies are the Chicago Metropolitan Planning Council, Association of Bay Area Governments, and the Miami Valley Regional Planning Commision.
  • Cycling Groups: Cycling groups try and advocate for policy reforms to promote cycling in cities. These groups may be familiar with current city policies, popular bike routes, and trouble areas.   These groups include Critical Mass, San Fransisco Bicycle Coalition, and Bike Austin.
  • Bikeshare Systems: Many cities are now installing bike share systems to increase cycling in their cities. Many of these bike share systems regularly release data about ridership and usage that can be used to power apps.

Examples of Transportation Related Apps: 

SpotHero: SpotHero is a civic startup that efficiently connects parking demand and parking supply. SpotHero allows parking spot owners to earn income by renting their spot when it’s unoccupied.

SpotHero was the winner of the Apps for Metro Chicago Challenge in 2012. Since then, they’ve graduated from TechStars/Excelerate , raised 2.5 million in VC funding,  expanded to seven cities and has hired twenty people.

Chicago Bike Crash Map: Crash data for Chicago in 2005-2012 where a bicyclist or pedestrian was the first point of impact by a driver’s automobile, as collected by responding law enforcement and maintained by the Illinois Department of Transportation.

TextMyBus – Built by Code for America for the  the Detroit Department of Transportation. This app lets riders text a number to see when the next bus is.

Other resources on the web

Streetsblog: Streetsblog is a national network of blogs that cover transportation issues on a daily basis.

People to follow on Twitter

@SteveVance – Transportation reporter for Streetsblog Chicago and one of the co-organizers of the Transportation of OpenGov Night Night.

@Gabe_Klien – Former transportation chief for DC and Chicago.

@Anthony_Foxx – Current US Secretary of Transportation

@JoesphKopser – CEO and Founder of Ridescout, a transit app that aggregates data from multiple transit agencies

Multiple Events for National Day of Civic Hacking in Chicago

Christopher Whitaker

logoFor the third annual National Day of Civic Hacking, Chicago will be playing host to multiple events. We’ve broken down the current events and we’ll be giving more updates as we get closer to the event.

CitySDK Launch at Chi Hack Night 

Hosted by Chi Hack Night – Braintree 6/2 – 6:00pm 

The Census Bureau has developed an open data software development kit (SDK) to enable a community, public, or private sector individuals and organizations to more easily extract value from Census data through user-friendly Application Program Interfaces (APIs). Through the SDK we are aiming to provide a user friendly “Toolbox” for civic hackers to connect local and national public data in order to bring forth innovative solutions for our communities. This national effort is being done to time with National Day of Civic Hacking.

The Census Bureau plans to launch the CitySDK on June 1st and present the CitySDK at the Chi Hack Night on June 2nd.

The Chi Hack Night (formerly known as the Open Gov Hack Night) is a free, weekly event in Chicago to build, share and learn about civic tech, or tools to create, support, or serve public good. It’s one of the largest weekly gatherings of civic innovators and takes place every Tuesday on the 8th floor of Merchandise Mart.

Urban Sustainability Apps Competition 

Hosted by the Center for Neighborhood Technology – 6/5 

The Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT) invites you to make Chicago’s neighborhoods smarter, greener, and more affordable at the 4th Annual Urban Sustainability Apps Competition.
Over the course of the event, community activists and app developers will work together to create workable prototypes of apps that make our neighborhoods more sustainable, both environmentally and economically.

We welcome participants from all corners of the city, whether you’re a local activist working to improve your neighborhood or a coding whiz looking to make a difference in the community.

Organize! Civic Tech Leader Training

Hosted by the Smart Chicago Collaborative – Blue1647 – 8:30am 6/6

For National Day of Civic Hacking, Smart Chicago will be hosting Civic Tech Leader Training to help leverage the power of technology to organize in their neighborhoods. The event will be held at Blue1647 on June 6th, 2015 and is designed to help train new civic tech leaders. We’ll be providing resource and training guides before the event.

Training will include FOIA training by the Better Government Association, community organizing training from the Southwest Organizing Project, Microsoft Excel training from Microsoft’s Adam Hecktman, data portal training by Josh Kalov, and more.

Adler National Day of Civic Hacking

Hosted by the Adler Planetarium – 9:00am 6/6 – 6/7

All Hack Days need problems to solve and those problems need domain experts – that’s where you come it! Civic Hack Day, as part of the National Day of Civic Hacking, focuses on issues to improve our communities. As the problem owner you’ll give a two minute pitch at the beginning of Civic Hack Day to attract hackers interested in creating a technology-based solution to your problem.

Need some inspiration? Check out some of the projects from Civic Hack Day 2014. We also encourage you to share your ideas before the event on the Civic Hack Day Ideas Hackpad.

Civic Hack Day will kick off bright and early at 9:00 am on Saturday June 6th. and will finish at 12:00pm on Sunday June 7th. Problem Owners and Hackers are invited to spend the night at the Adler to hack the night away. You’ll be provided with plenty of food and caffeine to keep the momentum going! If you prefer sleep to hacking you can always go home and return on Sunday morning for the event wrap-up, project demos, and prizes.

Lexhacks

Hosted by Michigan State University and OpenLegal – We Work Chicago – 6/6 – 6/7

Teams of lawyers, developers, designers, and other professionals will work together to develop software-based tools to solve legal problems over the weekend and compete for cash prizes.
Software is eating the legal industry. Join the hackathon accelerating the advancement of the legal industry.
For more information about National Day of Civic Hacking, visit the main page at Hack for Change

 

 

 

Issue Primer: Safety and Justice

Christopher Whitaker

screenshot-expunge.io_For this year’s National Day of Civic Hacking, we’re writing up primers on different civic issues to help people get a better understanding of the issues as they start working on projects.

Below, we’ve listed out places where you can data on safety and justice, some examples of projects centered around safety and justice, and some resources online to help you with your project.

Safety and Justice

Safety and Justice is a relatively new broad term that used to describe the subject areas of criminal justice, public safety and reform efforts. The term is also used to try to bridge the tension between the need to keep our communities safe while ensuring that the mechanisms used to do that are equitable and fair.

While the topic may be broad, there are some very specific challenges that are on the forefront.

Overcrowding at Jails 

When people get charged with a crime, they are sent to jail. If they can secure a bond (a payment made to the court to secure their appearance at trial), then they are released on bail. If they can not, then they are placed in jail to await their trial at a cost to the government that’s often greater than the amount of their bond. (By contrast, Prisons are where people are sent after they have been convicted of a crime – they are not the same thing.)

According to the Vera Institute for Justice, even as crime has gone down the population of jails has increased nationally as economically disadvantaged people fill the prisons because they are unable to make bail. According to the study, 75% of people currently in jail awaiting trial are there for nonviolent crimes like property, traffic, or drug crimes. The overcrowding of prisons largely impacts people in low income neighborhoods and communities of color. Per the NAACP, African Americans are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of whites.

The other element is that some jails have become dumping grounds for the mentally ill.

Tom Dart is the sheriff of Cook County, where he oversees what he calls the largest mental health facility in the State of Illinois. In 45 states, the largest mental health provider is a prison or a jail.

There are a number of things that governments like Cook County are trying to do to address the issue including electronic monitoring and alternative sentencing (often where the inmate is diverted to a treatment facility instead of incarceration.) However, impending budget cuts may stem progress.

This trend of more people in the system is also occurring at the same time overall crime is trending down nationally.

Juvenile Justice 

Another big challenge that people in this area tend to focus on is juvenile justice. Convictions for criminal convictions tend to skew young – particularly in economically depressed areas. The problem is often exacerbated by cuts in school funding and youth programs designed to keep youth away from gangs. In addition, the victims of gun violence are also disproportionately young and male.

Once a person turns 18, there are ways to have a juvenile record expunged. This doesn’t just mean the case is removed from a criminal record – expungement means that in the eyes of the law the incident never existed.  So, for example, if a person is asked on a job application if they’ve ever been arrested for a crime they can legally answer “No” if that incident was expunged.

However, in many states this isn’t automatic. The resident has to go through a legal process that can be complicated. Even if the resident wasn’t found guilty or had their case dismissed, they may still have a criminal record which can prevent them from getting a job, joining the military, or getting into college.

Even when an expungement is successful and in the eyes of the law didn’t happen, the Internet has a long memory. In some cases, news stories about an arrest still exist and come up first in google searches even if the person wasn’t convicted. In worst cases, nefarious businesses make money by scraping mugshot pictures from government websites then charging people to remove them. Google has recently changed the search algorithm to push mugshot sites down the results list and the FBI has asked victims of these schemes to file a complaint.

A complex system 

Tackling problems in the criminal justice system can seem daunting simply because of the complexity of the system. The criminal justice systems is made up of many government entities at the local, state, and federal level that each handle a different aspect of the system. From a data perspective, each agency has it’s own data system and very little of it is handed off from one part to the other. (So, you couldn’t take one incident report number and trace it all the way through to somebody being sentenced to prison.)

Data Sources

We’ve highlighted some data sets that pertain to the area of safety and justice below. However, because the criminal justice system is complex it may be of use to check out Crime and Punishment in Chicago to get a better sense of the different aspects of data available. You can also check out the Sunlight Foundation’s excellent coverage on the topic – including a Google Doc that showcases a list of known data resources nationwide.

National Crime Victimization Survey (US Department of Justice): This research helps the justice department measure how many people are victims of certain kinds of crimes, or the victimization rates.

Dallas Police Department Call of Service: This data release stands out because it identifies the units responding to each event, a link to map that will display the block from where the call originated, and the status of the call, among other included data fields. However, the data can’t be downloaded.

Chicago Crimes 2001 – Present: This dataset reflects reported incidents of crime (with the exception of murders where data exists for each victim) that occurred in the City of Chicago from 2001 to present, minus the most recent seven days.

Henrico County (VA) Arrest Reports: Arrest data is searchable, but not downloadable in bulk.

Cuyahoga County Office of the Prosecutor (Ohio): Includes a performance dashboard that includes dispositions statistics, juvenile dispositions, cold case rapes, heroin deaths and prosecutions, incarceration statistics, and charging statistics.

King County (WA) Adult Bookings: The Jail Bookings Open Data dataset is provided by the King County Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention. The dataset contains adult jail bookings which have occurred within the last twelve months; specific dates are indicated on the web site.

Maryland State Courts: Website lists what occurs in every court hearing while also detailing information regarding the officer that arrested the defendant, the prosecutor(s) prosecuting the case, and the judge presiding over the case. (No bulk download)

Oregon Prison Population: Dates and the count of inmates in the State of Oregon’s prison system for the date. Based on a DOC report for 1980 -1993. Based on query of DOC data for 1994-current

Potential Partners

Legal Aid: Legal aid foundations and societies offer free legal services to clients that may not be able to afford these services on their own. Many of the apps that focus on expungement, have legal aid foundations as partners.

Code for America Safety and Justice Focus Team: Code for America partners with local governments to build and grow digital safety and justice services focused on increasing public safety and reducing costs, helping governments transform themselves along the way.

Neighborhood Organizations: Neighborhood organizations play a vital role in building relationships between residents, public officials, and other non-profit organizations.

Examples of Safety and Justice Related Projects

Expunge.io: Expunge.io is a website designed for people with juvenile records in Illinois to kick of the process of expunging, or erasing, those records. It is a youth-led project run by Smart Chicago and controlled by the Mikva Challenge Juvenile Justice Council.

Jail Population Management Dashboard: Jail Population Management Dashboard helps judges and other stakeholders understand the conditions in the metro jail and use this data to visualize how their decisions affect program, facility and inmate outcomes.

Convicted in Cook: Convicted in Cook is a project that analyzes five years worth of conviction data received through the Office of the Chief Judge of the Circuit Court of Cook County by the Chicago Justice Project.

Courtbot: Courtbot is a simple web service for handling court case data. It offers a basic HTTP endpoint for integration with websites, and a set of advanced twilio workflows to handle text-based lookup. It’s been deployed by Atlanta to help people pay their traffic tickets online instead of waiting in line at traffic court.

People to follow on Twitter:

@TomDart: Sheriff of Cook County. Bringing an innovative approach to law enforcement in the second most populous county in the US.

@MarshalProj: The Marshall Project is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom covering America’s criminal justice system. Tweets usually from @amandablair.

@PublicSafety: The Coalition for Public Safety is working to reform our criminal justice system to make it more just, more fair, and more effective.

 

 

 

The Naru Project at Chi Hack Night

Christopher Whitaker

The Naru ProjectAt Chi Hack Night, Zachary Damato and Nick Wesley from The Naru Project talked about their non-profit that focuses on incorporating artificial wetlands into our city’s river systems.

The Naru Project is facilitating the design and implementation of a park consisting of floating gardens, wildlife habitat, and more to be enjoyed by the local community.

The Naru Project is named after the ancient Akkadians word for river. In part because rivers were the heart of the Akkadian civilization, and the Naru Project want to connect our waterways to the heart of our communities.

Their works focuses on the Chicago River just east of Goose Island. The team would like to build a park that places wildlife back in the river as well as help clean up the river.

The Naru Project team explained that the river used to be full of wildlife, but that it was cleared out to make it easier for companies to ship goods through the Chicago River. The city has not always been kind to the river in the past and to this day the city still dumps sewage into the river during periods of heavy rain or snowmelt. The team hopes that by reintroducing wildlife into the river it can help the process of cleaning the river. The teams is using a series of artificial islands to give plant and animal life a place to grow. These are floating rafts that have inserts for plant life to grow. The Naru Project has just completed a 24 month study to see if these raft units can enable plant life to come back. The units not only survived *two* winters, but after the study was concluded they discovered that fish were breeding underneath the units – which the teams regards as a huge success. To get permission to do so, they had to coordinate the the US Army Corp of Engineers which has jurisdiction over water resources development in the Chicago metropolitan area. Now that the study has shown signs of success, the team is moving towards construction of the park. Here’s their Phase One Outline.

If you want to get involved in the Naru Project, you can reach out to them by emailing [email protected]. If you want to get more involved in environmental projects, check out the environment breakout group at ChiHackNight!

Join Maptime Chicago & ADA 25 this Friday!

Smart Chicago

ADA25logoPlease join us on May 22nd to discuss opportunities to improve public and open accessibility data in our community.

In particular, we would like to identify ways in which OpenStreetMap, the free, open, and community-built map of the world, can better capture characteristics of the built environment that impact how people with disabilities move throughout the city.

This is being done in partnership with ADA25 Chicago. ADA 25 Chicago will commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 2015 and leverage this milestone to improve the quality of life for people with disabilities—often considered the last frontier of civil rights. The Chicago Community Trust is the lead funder of this initiative.

Maptime Chicago is the local chapter of Maptime – whose mission is to open the doors of cartographic possibility to anyone interested by creating a time and space for collaborative learning, exploration, and map creation using mapping tools and technologies.

Maptime Chicago and Smart Chicago are working to both improve the data in OpenStreetMap and empower community members to contribute to and benefit from the map. We need your insight and feedback to ensure this work reaches the right members of the community and is primed to create lasting impact. We look forward to meeting with you.

The outcomes of this meeting will help Maptime Chicago and Smart Chicago plan a future Maptime event centered around adding and maintaining accessibility data in OpenStreetMap.

You can register for the event here!

Meeting Details

  • When: Friday, May 22nd, 12-1:30pm. Lunch will be provided.
  • Where: Chicago Community Trust (map) – 225 North Michigan Avenue, #2200. Hosted by Smart Chicago.
  • Contact: or [email protected].

Meet people where they are: new analysis on the top best practices in #civictech, according to the people who do the work

Laurenellen McCann

“Democracy is a conversation, not a monologue!” — US Department of Arts & Culture

Last month, I posted an open call to hear from practitioners who build tech for public good with their communities (not “for” them) how they do their work, in their own words. This framework is important: to understand the most effective approaches for creating community-led tech, we have to practice what we preach. Although, through the Experimental Modes initiative, I’ve researched and analysed best field practices “civic engagement in civic tech”, I wanted to understand if the models I found resonated with real world practice—and if not, what models did.

To this end, at the Experimental Modes convening on April 4, 2015 in Chicago, we launched a case study collection project (the “case study sprint”) on-site and published it online soon after.

Today, we share an in-depth analysis of the case studies we received. From radio activism in Mulukuku, Nicaragua to community journalism in East Palo Alto, California, question campaigns about Boston’s metro transit future to a “People’s State of the Union” held by creatives USA-wide, the case studies we assembled represent a diversity of geographies, communities, conditions, and technologies. Though they may differ from each other in many ways, and certainly from our mainstream understanding of “civic tech”, what they have in common is their approach.

Go where people are and work together

By and large, the projects documented in this case study invest energy in in-person outreach and build close relationships with individuals as well as communities in spaces they share, often by playing with, discussing, and teaching each other how to get creative with the technology that’s already there.

“Take leadership from the most impacted”

Commonly identified approaches that intersected with and went beyond the 5 Modes of Civic Engagement in Civic Tech included

  • student-led teaching (with several specific citations of the Frierian model)
  • establishing community ownership by “building with, not for”
  • embedding engagement and technical work inside demographic and communally relevant events, and
  • investing concentrated time in relationship-building before moving on to technical development

As you’ll see after reviewing our findings in full below, this study is just a start, but what it reveals about existing community technology practice is vital to consider. Putting people before tool production when it comes to civic projects isn’t just a throwaway cocktail line. It’s a series of real practices, work evident in communities across the country and the globe who make the democratizing and empowering potential of technologies real by ensuring the work they do is democratized and shares power. Whether or not these projects identify as “civic” and whether or not the tech involved meets the mainstream standard doesn’t impact whether the work is solid, genuinely collaborative, and co-created with those it seeks to help.

There’s more work to do and more we’ll learn about how to do it if we ourselves collaborate. We’re leaving the case study form open for further contribution and analysis. Share your story with us here.