Applications

Chicago Developers: US Department of Labor Launches Smartphone App Contest Around Fair Labor

Smart Chicago

My colleague Matt Bruce pointed me to this new app contest: US Department of Labor launches smartphone app contest. Here’s a snip:

The DOL Fair Labor Data Challenge, which can be accessed at http://fairlabor.challenge.gov, calls for creating a smartphone app that integrates the department’s publicly available enforcement data with consumer ratings websites, geo-positioning Web tools, and other relevant data sets, such as those available from state health boards.  The winning app is expected to be creative, innovative, easy to use, and will incorporate data from http://ogesdw.dol.gov/index.

“The app we would like to see developed would work with existing social media and would allow consumers to see if an establishment that they want to frequent has been in compliance with federal labor laws,” said Laura Fortman, principal deputy administrator of the Wage and Hour Division. “The app could also prove a useful tool for job seekers and for companies that are deciding which firms they may want to do business with.  It could also help individuals get in touch with the Labor Department if they have any questions.  As we mark 75 years of the job protections afforded by the FLSA, we are looking forward to using new technologies to encourage compliance with the law in the 21st century.”

DOL Fair Labor Data Challenge

Matt runs the just-launched Chicagoland Workforce Funder Alliance (CWFA) that is housed here at the Chicago Community Trust, just like Smart Chicago. One of the issues he’s working on is the deterioration of labor standards in low-wage work.

roc-national-diners-guideA national group called Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (ROCUnited) has the ROC National Diners Guide, which is an app that shows national data around labor practices around national food chains. It would be great if we could see all local restaurants, allow patrons and employees to report issues, and include local labor data in an app that takes this concept further. There is great leadership here at Restaurant Opportunities Center of Chicago (ROC-Chicago) as well.

I’d be happy to look into the types of data available at state, county, and city sources that could be used in such a system  I think this would be a great use of civic technology energy and I hope to find some co-collaborators on this, If you have any ideas or are working on similar issues, hit me up at [email protected].

Moving Forward After National Day of Civic Hacking

Christopher Whitaker

Derek Eder teaching at Migrahack #hackforchange
National Day of Civic Hacking is over. It was a great event that brought web developers, journalists, designers, community activists, data gurus, and government officials together for a weekend civic hacking. Chicago was the most active city with 412 people taking part in events at Cibola, 1871, and the Adler Planetarium.
Youth Hackathon at Adler Planetarium #hackforchange
As a city, we should be proud of what’s we’ve accomplished. And not just for what happened during National Day of Civic Hacking, but proud of how far we’ve come since the days where the data portal only showed FOIA requests. We should celebrate these wins and in the coming days, we’ll be featuring these successes on the blog.
The City of Chicago's @ryanbriones talking about the idea for a civic needs app #hackforchange
However, it’s far more important to ensure that these efforts continue past this weekend. Civic issues are complicated, complex, and difficult to solve. It will take more than a single weekend to find solutions to these problems. As a community, we need to continue to connect civic technologists to community activists who are wrestling with civic issues on a daily basis. We must continue to outreach to every neighborhood in Chicago and ensure that the apps we build help the everyday Chicagoan and not just the geeks. While this weekend has been a fantastic weekend to organize around civic innovation there is still a lot of work to be done.
.@JazminBeltran learning data animation at @migrahack #hackforchange

We met a lot of people over the weekend: Journalists, scientists, community organizers, web developers and designers. We need to connect the dots and form new partnerships to help solve problems in our neighborhoods. We would love to stay in touch with everyone who participated in National Day of Civic Hacking. If that sounds good to you, please fill out this quick contact form so we can reach out to you about different projects.

On our end, the Smart Chicago Collaborative is offering the following to any and all participants of Chicago’s National Day of Civic Hacking.

1) We encourage everyone to continue their projects at the OpenGovChicago Hack Nights. They’e every Tuesday at 6:00pm inside 1871. The events are free and these nights are a great way to work on long term projects.

2) If you have a civic app that benefits the people of Chicago, you can get the app hosted on Smart Chicago Collaborative’s servers for free.

3) Smart Chicago will provide user testing to any Chicago civic app for free. Through the Civic User Testing Group, civic developers in Chicago have access to hundreds of testers to help test your app in order to improve it and make the best app possible.

4) We will help you tell your story. At the national level, the organizers are accepting submissions for stories about what came out of National Day of Civic Hacking. Teams with the best stories will be invited to The White House to be featured at an event in late July. If you need help writing your story, email cwhitaker(at) cct (dot) org and we’ll help you get your story ready. We’ll also help put together a short video to include with your submission.
Youth Hackathon at Adler Planetarium #hackforchange
It’s an exciting time to be involved in this movement. There are more and more cities getting involved in civic hacking thanks to the efforts of the Code for America brigade and through events like National Day of Civic Hacking. We’re looking forward to continuing this effort in the future.
National Day of Civic Hacking Chicago

Thank You

Smart Chicago Collaborative would like to thank all those that made this weekend possible:

Event locations: 1871, Cibola, and the Adler Planetarium.

Lead Organizations: Institute for Justice Journalism, The Adler Planetarium,  and  Code for America.

Event Sponsors and Partners: Azavea, Center for Evidence-Based Mentoring, Chicago Architecture Foundation,  The Chicago Community Trust, the City of Chicago, Free Spirit Media, Hive Chicago, Knight Lab, The MacArthur Foundation,  Mikva Challenge, Rob Paral, and Open City Apps

The Schoolcuts.org teams school us on how to build a civic app (even after launch)

Christopher Whitaker

Since schoolcuts.org first launched two months ago, the team has been working around the clock to add new features and information to the site.

One of the weakness of the civic hacking movement is a tendency to launch a new civic app based on some newly released data set and then never touch the app or the issue again.

It is a rare instance when a civic problem can be solved by one simple app release – particularly when the civic problem is something large and complicated like crime, sustainability, or education.

So while the schoolcuts team launched their app two months ago, they have continued to add more information and features to the site as questions continued around the issue of school closings in Chicago. (Most recently, they’ve translated the site into Spanish.)

The team presented how they went about building the app in three separate acts.

Act One: The Problem

The team started with the problem. (Not the data set) In this case, the team was hearing from Chicago Public School parents who wanted more information about the impending school closing. CPS had released data about each school on the closing list, but the information was scattered across different websites and PDF documents.

The problem was compounded when Chicago Public School announced the list. Not only were certain schools closing, but some schools were having their locations changed. For parents, this meant that even if their school wasn’t closing – their routes to school would still change.

Additionally, the school attendance boundaries were not matching what Chicago Public Schools had designated to be the receiving schools. In effect, your oldest child may be going to a different elementary school that your youngest when they reach school age.

Further, the criteria used to closed schools used an additional value added system that further confused parents and community members.

Act Two: Opportunity

The schoolcuts.org team saw an oppurtunity to use build a site that clearly displayed the data around the school closing issue in a way that was easy for parents to understand.

Because team members already had connections to concerned parent groups, the team was able to understand the needs of the community and build the site around their needs.

Act Three: Solutions and Challenges

To help parents, they decides to try and ensure that the user experience was very localized to their school.

The site not only displays the data around school closings, but also does a good job of explaining what the terms mean.

Since their launch, the team has continued to add features such as a simple way to compare closing schools with receiving schools and has translated the site into Spanish.

Discussion

The schoolcuts team shows the right way to approach civic apps. They address a community concern using open data and educate the public about the issue.

The schoolcuts team will continue to work on this project even after the final school closing list is announced by creating a website that displays data for all schools called schoolcircle.

The site was also just nominated for a Moxie Award for best civic app.

This Week’s OpenGov Hack Night: App Design Workshop with Knight Lab’s Miranda Mulligan

Christopher Whitaker

.@jmm teaching app design at Chicago #OpenGov Hack Night

This week’s OpenGov Hack Night featured an app design workshop by the Knight Lab’s Miranda Mulligan. This design process doesn’t start with the latest data set, but instead starts with establishing empathy with the user.

Everyone partners up for the workshop and takes turns interviewing their partners about a particular problem they face. The workshop encourages participants to dig deeper by determining the user’s needs, insights on how they feel about the issue.

More hacking at the design workshop

Miranda then encourages users to think of radical ways that app designers can meet the users needs. After this, participants get feedback from their partners to help refine their ideas.

Then comes the fun part – arts and crafts time!

Arts and Crafts time at the OpenGov Hack Night

Using a variety of multi-colored paper, participants build mock-up designs of their apps. We then went around the room showing off our work.

Now that's what I call a wireframe

More demos of designs at #opengov hack night

If this sounds like a fun workshop (and it is!) then you’re in luck! Miranda will be giving this workshop again as part of National Day of Civic Hacking June 1st at 1871. The event is free and everyone is welcome. Registration for the event will open up later this week!

And as always, you can join us each and every Tuesday at 6:00 for OpenGov Hack Night at 1871.

Behind the Scenes: Foodborne Chicago

Chris Gansen

Earlier this month the Smart Chicago Collaborative, in partnership with local developers Cory Nissen, Joe Olson, and Scott Robbin, and the Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH), launched Foodborne Chicago, an innovative application that trawls Twitter for mentions of food poisoning in Chicago, enabling a team of administrators to connect with affected people and encourage them to report details of their food poisoning to the CDPH.

The Foodborne Chicago application is a collection of different services that make up a complex workflow. This post explains the overall architecture of the application and the direction that development is headed.

Backend analysis

Foodborne searches Twitter for all tweets near Chicago containing the string “food poisoning”. The ingestion service consumes thousands of tweets, storing them in a large MongoDB instance. A collection of classification servers, running R, churn through the collected tweets, applying a series of filters. The tweets are classified using a model that was trained via supervised learning, which determines if the tweets are related to a food poisoning illness or not. The Twitter crawler, classification machines, and MongoDB instance are all virtual EC2 instances running on the Smart Chicago Collaborative Amazon Web Services account.

Here is a sample of actual tweets and the determination of the classifier:

food poisoning tweets:

  • Knocked down by food poisoning for the second day. Not a good way to start the week 🙁
  • Stomach flu/food poisoning is like eating gas station sushi without the joys of eating gas station sushi
  • I think I ate my food too quick, either that or I sense food poisoning
  • Food poisoning at the first chapter meeting. Awesome..
  • My stomach keeps making the weirdest noise. Possibly food poisoning from Golden Nugget!

not food poisoning tweets:

  • I read that over six million people will get food poisoning this year with 100,000 requiring hospitalization. This is entirely preventable.
  • It’s really hard to snack while watching Honey Boo Boo. It’s the second best diet to food poisoning.

The Foodborne web application, a standard Ruby on Rails application, runs on Heroku, and has a scheduled job that loads classified tweets from the MongoDB instance every few minutes. This administrative interface shows the admin team, a partnership between Smart Chicago and the CDPH, a list of previously classified food poisoning tweets. For each tweet, the application shows if the tweet has been replied to, and if not, a simple mechanism for sending an @-reply to the tweet. The reply can use one of a standard set of replies, or a custom message, depending on context.

Public interaction

When users respond to the Twitter @-reply, they fill out a simple food poisoning report form on Foodborne. This form is submitted to the City of Chicago via its Open311 interface. This submission is equivalent to the person calling Chicago 311 to report their food poisoning. The 311 software routes the submission to the Chicago Department of Public Health, where investigators review the submission and take action, including conducting inspections, based on the report.

Development roadmap

Foodborne has a number of exciting development goals ahead. The backend infrastructure, while adequate, can be optimized and made far more efficient. Joe and Cory are exploring how to use EC2 spot instances and queuing tools to perform the classification work when computing resources are less expensive. The administrative interface will be extended to show more information about suspected food poisoning tweets, including if a person has submitted a request to 311. Scott and Cory are also working on building a feedback loop to the classifier; eventually administrators will be able to flag tweets that are incorrectly classified as relating to food poisoning illness and the classifier model will then learn to ignore similar tweets in the future.

Foodborne is an exciting addition to the collection of applications hosted by the Smart Chicago Collaborative. We’re proud of the work the entire Foodborne team has done, and look forward to supporting future development. If you’re a developer working with open data in Chicago, you may qualify for free hosting, too!

Edit Your Neighborhood On OpenStreetMap

Christopher Whitaker

They’ll be two opportunities for residents to help improve OpenStreetMap. The first is an OpenStreetMap Mapathon designed to help new mappers learn OpenStreetMap.

OpenStreetMap is an open source map that anyone can edit. Users can add data to the map including information about their favorite restaurants, cultural venues, and more.

We took some time out to talk with Ian Dees to show how easy it is to edit your hood with OpenStreetMap. The video is a quick step-by-step walk-through of how to make edits to the map.

OpenStreetMap can be edited using a free tool called idEditor. The editor will automatically find your location when you sign in. At this point, you can search for a location in the address bar or just explore around the map.

For our example, I had noticed that one of my neighborhood restaurants wasn’t showing on the map.

Using the idEditor, Ian was able to show me how to quickly add information to the building.

If you’d like to help edit your neighborhood, then join us this weekend for the OpenStreetMap Map-a-thon.

The  OpenStreetMap Map-a-thon is a national event designed to  teach new mappers the tools to improve the OpenStreetMap in your area.

Chicago’s Map-a-thon  will be April 20th and 21st at 1871 on the 12th floor of the Merchandise Mart, 222 Merchandise Mart Plaza from noon to 6pm. Food and drinks will be provided by the Smart Chicago Collaborative.

You can RSVP at on the Chicago OpenStreetMap meetup page.