2015 – Smart Chicago

Foodborne Chicago is a Top 25 Innovation in Government

Smart ChicagoMay 8, 2015

Today our product, Foodborne Chicago, was recognized by the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation. Here’s their writeup:

FoodBorne Chicago
City of Chicago, IL

On March 23, 2013, the Chicago Department of Public Health and the SmartChicago Collaborative launched the FoodBorne Chicago web application with the goal of improving food safety in Chicago. FoodBorne Chicago tracks tweets using a supervised machine-learning algorithm that identifies the keywords of “food poison” within the Chicago area. This tool allows residents to report a food poisoning incident through 311 after the program identifies tweets with possible cases of food poisoning. The team then tweets back a link to submit an online web form where residents can identify where they ate, the date and time they frequented the restaurant, their symptoms, and send it through Open311. The information is sent directly to the Department of Public Health and, if warranted, an inspection team visits the restaurant in question and then lets the resident know the status of the investigation via e-mail. The algorithm gets smarter at identifying related tweets as the team replies to residents that are suspected to have a potential case of food poisoning to report. If several complaints occur together, these clusters can be investigated to prevent further illnesses from developing.

And here’s a snip from a press release from Mayor Rahm Emanuel:

The Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH) has been recognized as a Top 25 program in this year’s Innovations in American Government Awards competition by the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University for its FoodBorne Chicago program.

Two years ago, CDPH and the SmartChicago Collaborative launched the FoodBorne Chicago web application with the goal of improving food safety in Chicago.

“The Department of Public Health and the Department of Innovation and Technology used social media and technology to create a tool that makes food consumption in Chicago safer,” said Mayor Rahm Emanuel. “It is innovative thinking like this that enhances and leverages available resources to make the most impact.”

Summer Job Opportunity: Instructors for Youth-Led Tech Program in Five Chicago Communities

Smart ChicagoMay 7, 2015

UPDATE: All positions are filled.

The Smart Chicago Collaborative is getting ready to launch “Youth-Led Tech: Summer 2015”, a youth coding school in five locations across the city of Chicago in summer 2015.

We are working to get this program funded through Get IN Chicago, whose mission is to identify, fund and rigorously evaluate evidence-based programs that lead to a sustainable reduction in violence for individuals and communities most affected by violence and poverty. Read more here on our project page and complete this form if you are interested in a position.

In the interest of time, and an acknowledgement that the summer learning season is right about nowish, we are looking to start building staff for this potential program.

We are recruiting seventeen people to take serve as instructors, coordinators, and other key roles. Each of these roles are an 8-week summer job opportunity. The start date is Monday, June 15, 2015, with two weeks of orientation and preparation. Instruction begins Monday, June 29, 2015 and ends on Friday, August 8, 2015, which is the last day of employment. We will perform background checks on all applicants.

The five communities are Austin, Englewood, Humboldt Park, North Lawndale, and Roseland. Here’s are the job descriptions:

Instructor

Instructors lead all instruction at a location. There is one Instructor for each of the five locations. All instruction materials will be provided, with detailed lesson plans to guide your day. A dominant mode of instruction is “kinesthetic learning”, a learning style in which learning takes place by the students carrying out physical activities, rather than listening to a lecture or watching demonstrations.

We practice “youth-led tech”, which means that we teach technology in the context of the needs & priorities of young people. We will train you on the fundamentals of youth-led tech, but experience in working with youth in the context of needs & priorities is a plus.

The main technology we’ll teach is WordPress, a free open-source content management system. Familiarity with WordPress is a plus, and you can become familiar with WordPress very quickly. We will also offer “whet your appetite”- style training in gaming and app development.

Each instructor will be given a lesson plan for each day breaking down activities and explicitly laying out training content. Most of the actual training content will be taken from existing tutorial and instruction that is already available on the Internet in the form of teaching content and development environments. Instructors will also be responsible for documenting the program material so that it can be accessed, downloaded, and reproduced anywhere. Instructors will be responsible for filing daily reports about on-site activity.

In choosing instructors, we value strong classroom management, interest in and aptitude with technology, and the ability to listen to youth voice and make sure it gets heard and represented the the tech we make over the summer. Pay is $20 per hour.

Assistant Instructor

Assistant instructors will help Instructors to teach the material and also have other key responsibilities. These include activities like preparing the location each day (set up chairs, tables, computers), check the wi-fi, temperature, and other ambient details, order and manage lunch and snack, and assist in classroom management throughout the day.

We are seeking 10 Assistant instructors— three instructors for each location. Pay is $15 per hour.

Please apply today and share this opportunity as far and wide as possible. Questions? Contact us.

“Organize!”— Tech Training for New Civic Tech Leaders on National Day of Civic Hacking

Smart ChicagoMay 5, 2015

One of our three main areas of focus at Smart Chicago is digital skills. In the past three years, we’ve learned a lot of things from our experience running events, building projects, conducting user testing, and writing extensively about civic innovation.

As part of our work around National Day of Civic Hacking, this year we’re going to be focusing our efforts around teaching these digital skills both locally and nationally. As usual, this effort will be led by Christopher Whitaker.

Christopher has written a number of tutorials and guides to help volunteer civic technology groups for the national Hack for Change website.

Here in Chicago, he will run a training camp at Blue1647 for new civic technology leaders centered around the theme of community organizing. (Register here!) On June 6th, we’ll be bringing in experts around the city to help train new civic tech leaders on the tools and techniques used to leverage the power of technology to help our neighborhoods. The event is specially set up for people new to civic technology regardless of their technology proficiency. This is a learning event— so bring your questions!

This event will be just one of many National Day of Civic Hacking events happening in Chicago including hackathons happening at the Adler Planetarium, Center for Neighborhood Technologies, the Chicago Public Library’s Maker Lab, and OpenGov Hack Night. We’ll be blogging about these events and more as we get closer to June 6th.

You can register for our event here.

New Cook County Data: Businesses Registered with the Cook County Department of Revenue

Josh KalovMay 4, 2015

List of Registered New Motor Vehicle Dealers embedded on a Department of Revenue web page.

The Cook County Department of Revenue maintains lists of registered businesses for a variety of tax types. They wanted to be able to share these lists on the web pages for each tax type. This became a great opportunity to use the Socrata embed to create open data while supporting department functional needs.

The registered business lists were added to the data portal as open data that will be regularly updated and then the Department of Revenue embedded views on the pages they wanted. There are eight lists of registered businesses:

Parking Lot Operators and Valet Operators Registered with the Cook County Department of Revenue (http://www.cookcountyil.gov/department-of-revenue/parking-lot-garage-operation-tax/)
New Motor Vehicle Dealers Registered with the Cook County Department of Revenue (http://www.cookcountyil.gov/department-of-revenue/new-motor-vehicle-tax/)
Wholesale Alcoholic Beverage Dealers Registered with the Cook County Department of Revenue (http://www.cookcountyil.gov/department-of-revenue/liquor-tax/)
Gasoline Distributors Registered with the Cook County Department of Revenue (http://www.cookcountyil.gov/department-of-revenue/gasoline-and-diesel-fuel-tax/)
Firearm Retailers Registered with the Cook County Department of Revenue (http://www.cookcountyil.gov/department-of-revenue/firearm-tax/)
Diesel Distributors Registered with the Cook County Department of Revenue (http://www.cookcountyil.gov/department-of-revenue/gasoline-and-diesel-fuel-tax/)
Titled Personal Property Retail Dealers Registered with the Cook County Department of Revenue (http://www.cookcountyil.gov/department-of-revenue/use-tax/)
Amusement Operators Registered with the Cook County Department of Revenue (http://www.cookcountyil.gov/department-of-revenue/amusement-tax/)

Tools, Not Tech

Laurenellen McCannMay 4, 2015

The textbook definition of “technology” is all about “tools”. Not computers, not command lines, but, to quote Wikipedia: “the collection of techniques, methods or processes used in the production of goods or services or in the accomplishment of objectives, such as scientific investigation.”

“Civic technologies” are the tools we create to improve public life. To help each other. To make our governments and our communities safe, joyful, equitable places to live out our lives.

Over the course of the Experimental Modes project, I’ve been exploring how different people create civic technology with their communities—the social strategies and tactics wielded to build tech at the speed of inclusion and make sure the civic problem-solving process is truly collaborative. But what nuts and bolts go into making this work…work?

At our convening of practitioners earlier this month, as part of a larger discussion of “civic tech”, we went around the room and shared two types of technologies (tools!) we use to do what we do.

Shifting our understanding of “tech” helps us focus on people. When we stop trying to force specific types of tech solutions and start listening to people for opportunities to take action, we put ourselves in a stronger position for problem-solving. We open up creativity, both in terms of who gets to be creative and how we see what tools are available to us. Some of the best civic tools are the ones we already have in hand, and their “civic” utility is unlocked just by wielding them differently.

As you read through the tool round-up below, ask yourself: what tech do you take for granted that’s a part of your civic work?

(What follows are a slightly cleaned up version of the live notes taken during our conversations. You can read the original, unedited documentation of this conversation here.)

Experimental Modes convening attendees using laptops, pens, food, and phones for their work. Photo by Daniel O’Neil.

Two technologies we use in our work

Name	Tech 1	Tech 2
Laurenellen	Email	Cell phone
Maritza	Email	Laptop
Sonja	Cell phones	Video Camera
Whitney	Headphones	Websites
Sanjay	Radio	Google Docs
Allan	Drills	Email
Danielle	Laptop	Phone
Demond	Google docs	Phone
Jennifer	Post-it Notes	Whiteboard
Laura	SMS	Community feedback boxes
Tiana	Blogger	Slack
Jeremy	Whiteboards	Pizza
Stefanie	Social media	Email
Greta	Google Hangouts (love+hate)	Routers
Geoff	Group chat	Collaborative source code wrangling system
Asiaha	SMS	Emails
Marisa	Pen + paper	Adobe Illustrator
Meagan	Flip charts	Markers
Diana	Zines/printing press	White boards
Adam	Story circles	IM
DXO	Slack	Google chat

Results of Our PACER Postcard Campaign

Smart ChicagoMay 1, 2015

Today our colleague Elizabeth Bartels collected 31 postcards from law students, lawyers, and interested residents sharing their thoughts about making the PACER federal court document system more accessible and open to all.

One reason we’re so happy with these results is that everyone who completed a postcard is an actual registered user of PACER. It’s one thing to be an open information advocate, writing to a distant federal official about the concept of openness. It’s another thing altogether to be an actual user of the software, someone building their career, someone who will be working directly with Judge Ruben Castillo on important matters of justice.

When we approached this campaign, in which we joined with people in San Francisco and New York, we did so with a focus on building real relationships with people here in Chicago who are passionate about this issue of open law. We hired Oprima-1 to research contact information for law school interest groups.

Some examples: the Muslim Law Students Association of the University Chicago Law School, the Justinian Society of John Marshall Law School, the Student Funded Public Interest Fellowships Program of Northwestern University, the American Civil Liberties Union of Loyola University Chicago, the Journal of Intellectual Property at Chicago-Kent College of Law, and the DePaul Entertainment and Sports Law Society.

The point: there are a lot of people (in 187 student groups and 449 law firms) who care about this topic. Moving beyond our own circles, our own tight spheres of civic tech and open data, our own Slack channels and our own favored blogs, is essential. As we’ve re-learned, in great detail, in our Experimental Modes project, if we want to be of impact, we have to meet people where they are.

That’s hard work. We’re happy we do it, because it’s all that matters. Here’s pictures from our day.

Our first cards

On the agenda at John Marshall Law School

Postcard from Daniel X. O’Neil

Elizabeth Bartels working with students who are completing postcards at John Marshall Law School

Some postcards!

Swartz Law Day 2015

Our final results

We gave away copies of In Re: PACER to all

Many postcards to choose from.

Custom stamps (and buttons!)

Here’s a look at every completed postcard— lots of great comments:

Completed Pacer postcards from May 1, 2015 Law Day Event at John Marshall Law School from Smart Chicago Collaborative

Finally, a very special shout-out to my friend, sister-in-law, and John Marshall Law School valedictorian Elizabeth Bartels for leading the way on this project.

Elizabeth Bartels

Year: 2015