Year: 2016

OpenGrid on the Chicago Public Data Blog

Smart Chicago

WBEZ LogoChris Hagan of WBEZ wrote a good post today on OpenGrid: Chicago launches OpenGrid, latest step in making open data more accessible. Here’s a snip:

Dan O’Neil, executive director of the Smart Chicago Collaborative, which assisted on the project, reminded developers that tools such as OpenGrid are a first step. He pointed out that despite Chicago’s advances in open data, problems such as police misconduct have arguably gotten worse.

“There are no dots on a map that stopped that from happening,” O’Neil said. “There is no set of crime statistics that stopped that from happening. We have to find ways to have communion with people who are not here.”

Maps and tech and data are simply pieces. Communion among humans is what matters.

Listen In: Podcast Debut of “Dirty Little Secrets (Episode 2)- Birth Control and Bladder Control”

Chris Walker

Smart Health Navigator, Michelle Vu, has released the second episode of her podcast, Dirty Little Secrets (Episode 2) – Birth Control and Bladder Control! This episode features a two brand new segments: “Birth Control with Clare and Nilofer” – where they discuss different birth control options, and “The Sex Situation Room” where, in this episode, they discuss what happens when you urinate during sex.

Dirty Little Secrets is a sex education podcast dedicated to debunking myths around sexual health, rights, identity, and reproductive justice. Sex is still a very uncomfortable and taboo topic, despite how sexualized society has become. Michelle Vu, Sexual Health Educator and Smart Health Centers-Health Corps Member, will guide listeners through a variety of difficult, interesting, sometimes embarrassing, but super helpful discussions so sex is no longer a “Dirty Little Secret.” All of the content discussed is appropriate for ages 13 and up. Younger audiences should only listen with adult supervision. Smart Chicago highly recommends this podcast as a teaching tool for educators and parents.

Listen Here:

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Explore the full Smart Health Centers podcast playlist here:

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Read about the birth of the podcast series and other Smart Health Centers news here.

OpenGrid on the Harvard Data-Smart City Solutions Blog

Smart Chicago

data-smart-city-solutionsSean Thornton of Harvard Data-Smart City Solutions wrote up a great piece on the launch of OpenGrid. Here’s a snip:

Yet in order for DoIT’s OpenGrid and UrbanCCD’s Plenario to interact, additional software—also called a service layer—was necessary.  Enter the Smart Chicago Collaborative, a local civic organization that focuses on improving residents’ lives through technology.

Smart Chicago’s work focuses on three main areas for residents – increasing access to the internet, enhancing digital skills, and expanding the use of meaningful city data.  For Smart Chicago Executive Director Dan O’Neil, supporting a program like OpenGrid is a natural fit.

“A collaborative union between developers, residents, and government – that’s what Smart Chicago is about, and that’s what OpenGrid is about too,” O’Neil noted at the application’s launch. “This is why we’re on it.”  To build the service layer, Smart Chicago commissioned UTurn Data Solutions, a local IT consultancy focused data storage and Cloud computing projects.

Smart Chicago is also helping ensure that OpenGrid is effective in its mission to enhance transparency efforts between the city and the public. One of Smart Chicago’s marquee programs is its Civic User Testing Group, or CUTGroup.  CUTGroup participants, which include residents from all corners of the city, are compensated to participate in focus groups that test civic websites and apps.  The program has given developers numerous insights and has led to the improvement of many local apps, including theEveryBlock iPhone App, FoodBorne Chicago, and the Chicago Health Atlas. CUTGroup will be testing OpenGrid to help DoIT refine the tool and learn how residents can most benefit from its work.

 

 

Chicago’s Mayor on the OpenGrid Launch

Smart Chicago

Seal_of_Chicago,_IllinoisThe Mayor’s Office of the City of Chicago published a press release about the launch of OpenGrid: Chicago Launches “Open Grid” to Help Residents Explore Their Neighborhoods. Here’s a snip:

Over the past four years, Chicago has led in the publishing of data, leveraging the City of Chicago’s Data Portal to make city data available to all residents. With OpenGrid, the City is making that data even more user-friendly. It allows residents to learn more about their communities, and encourages communities to add their own data and civic developers to enhance the capabilities of the app, all to engage and serve the city’s diverse neighborhoods. For example, a community group can use OpenGrid to determine when and where best to organize an event based on OpenGrid’s ability to show active building permits, street closures, and more.

OpenGrid is hosted by the Smart Chicago Collaborative, an organization housed at the Chicago Community Trust dedicated to making technology available to all Chicago communities. The website and app are available today at opengrid.io

Smart Chicago hosts this application and we also created the code that drives all the data into the system. More here.

City of Chicago Launches OpenGrid

Smart Chicago

OpenGrid_Logo_Horizontal_3ColorToday the Smart Chicago Collaborative helped the City of Chicago launch OpenGrid— a free, browser-based, open source mapping platform displaying Chicago’s robust collection of open datasets.

OpenGrid.io was launched this morning at an event at the University of Illinois Chicago Electronic Visualization Labratory. Chief Information Officer Brenna Berman, Chief Data Officer Tom Schenk, and the Smart Chicago Collaborative kicked off the official launch and demo.

OpenGrid is Public

This important work goes back to WindyGrid, the City’s internal tool displaying all past and present city data. Now, through OpenGrid, the ability to see and layer information about Chicago is in the hands of individual residents. Anyone with Internet access can see Chicago’s data come alive in relation to their homes, communities, and workplaces.

Here is the OpenGrid introductory tutorial:

OpenGrid is Open Source

The City first articulated its plans to build a public-facing WindyGrid and open up the application source code in the 18-month Tech Plan Update. The Plan stated OpenGrid would be “the first open source situational awareness system that other municipalities can use and build upon.”

Smart Chicago’s Role in OpenGrid

Through support from the MacArthur Foundation, Smart Chicago supported the OpenGrid project by creating a service layer to plenar.io, a spatio-temporal open data platform. This layer serves as a data feed to OpenGrid— if the data is in plenar.io, it can get into OpenGrid.

We worked with technology partner Uturn Data Solutions to create the code that drives the data. This easy-to-deploy stack can be used by any municipality or organization to display open datasets on a map. This entire project is dependent on our Amazon Web Services account, which is maintained by Uturn. We also serve many Chicago-based technologists via our Developer Resources program,

We’re proud of our continued work with the City to deliver on the Tech Plan, with local developers to encourage their role in the civic tech ecosystem, and with the University of Chicago to support the plenar.io platform for data ingest.

Here’s a set of photos from launch day:

Expunge Design Day at Stanford d School

Sonja Marziano

On Saturday, November 7, I visited Stanford University’s dSchool to participate in Expunge Design Day to “work with young people in the Bay Area to imagine what more user-friendly ways to clean and seal their record might be.” Chris Rudd, who previously led the Mikva Challenge Juvenile Justice Council (JJC) and laid out plans for Expunge.io, is now a dSchool Fellow who wanted to use Expunge.io as a platform for youth in California to think about what their own expungement website and app would look like.

Twelve youth participated alongside adult coaches, lawyers, and technologists. The goal was first to learn about design thinking methods (such as interviewing and prototyping) and then use those practices to review Expunge.io, plan and wireframe a new piece of technology to get records expunged. Once the youth decided what they wanted to see then the technologists helped create real examples of what those websites might look like.

Review of Expunge.io

In small teams, youth looked at Expunge.io and listed out what they liked about the website, what they didn’t like, what could be better, and what they wanted to add. Overall, youth liked that Expunge.io was simple, easy to use and had a lot of good information. All of the youth teams liked the mission behind the website and thought this helped with an important issue and liked that you could be connected with free legal resources.

There was a lot discussion around making the website more engaging. Some youth felt that completing the questions and form “felt like homework” and was not sure about what would happen afterwards. Also, a few people were confused about the language like the term “rap sheet.” The youth teams had a lot of great ways to make this website better:

  • More photos and videos to make it more engaging (some youth even wanted to see a game!)
  • Help finding lawyers by seeing who they are, a short description of what they work on, and reviews
  • Different ways to talk with lawyer such as text message and Snapchat
  • More youth-oriented language from people (including celebrities) that youth trust
  • Youth also wanted to have more information about resources, their chances for expungement and what they might expect in court. We talked a lot about including success stories from real people about expunging their records and describing why it’s important to expunge your juvenile record

Project ideas & examples

Once all of the youth presented their ideas, they were invited to take a tour of Stanford while a team of tech volunteers worked together to make examples of what their websites might look like. When they came back, the tech teams presented each of their designs and got feedback from the youth.

The first example was a website where the user would view stories from different people who went through the justice system and the expungement process. We added this because we heard from the youth that it was important for them to hear first why they should expunge their record. In addition, they upgraded the FAQs section so that instead of reading a list of questions the format was changed to a messaging interface (like Kik) that allowed you to ask questions and then the answers would show up from a celebrity that the youth wanted to hear from (we heard specifically that hearing answers from Kevin Hart would be a good touch, so we added it!).

Expunge Design Day exampleThe second example focused on a website where youth could read about potential lawyers who could help them expunge their records. Not only would they be able to read about who they are and their reviews, but also be able to message or chat with the lawyer before meeting in person.

The last example would be an ideal solution in expunging records where youth would be able to input their name and birthday and immediately find out if they have a record, what it was for, and if it could be expunged.

Youth-Led Tech

Expunge Design Day was a great example of youth leading tech solutions. It was successful because of the youth’s ideas, but also the coaches and technologists who volunteered their time to work alongside the youth. We need more events like this one, where we as adults are taking a step back and listening to youth, and together are thinking about solutions that really work for youth.

As we continue our Expunge.io work at Smart Chicago, I am also thinking of ways that we can incorporate ideas from youth into our own website to make it a better resource for youth.

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