Big Data

U.S. Ignite Application Summit and the Future of Gigabit Chicago

Smart Chicago

Last year I attended the US Ignite launch event at the White House (see full video here), where a number of Obama administration officials made a series of announcements about programs around broadband policy. It was a wide-ranging and mind-boggling series of speakers, and I wrote up some thoughts about what it all meant for Chicago.

Executive Office Building, Washington DC

This is an age of conception— we are limited only by our imaginations

Since then, I’ve continued to take interest in US Ignite and their efforts to foster the creation of next-generation Internet applications that provide transformative public benefit. The investments made here in Chicago, including the Gigabit Squared project that includes $2 million of investment from the State of Illinois as well as the Broadband Challenge from the City of Chicago— show that Chicago is very much a part of the Gigabit future.

What has struck me most, as I follow this work, is how far we have to go in terms of conceiving what this next-generation network looks like for regular people.

That’s why we’re a sponsor of the US Ignite Application Summit being held in Chicago June 24th – 26th.

What could you build if you weren’t restricted by the limits of network speed and latency? What if your network could support gigabit download and upload speeds? What if the power of cloud data centers wasn’t located on the east coast, but placed in your own backyard? What would you build?  What businesses could you launch if there were no limits?

That’s what we want to find out at this three-day event, running from June 24th to June 26th at the Allegro Hotel and UIC. We’ll be posting regularly from the Summit, so follow along on our Twitter and Facebook accounts.

 

OpenGov Hack Night: Upcoming Events and Sustainable Data

Christopher Whitaker

There was no presentation at this week’s OpenGov Hack Night, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t anything going on.

Here are a few events that are coming up!

  • National Day of Civic Hacking: Save the date! On June 1st and 2nd, Chicago will be joining civic hackers across the country to Hack for Change! We’ll have three events.
    • Immigration Hackathon at Cibola
    • Youth Hackathon at Adler Planetarium
    • Hack for Chicago at 1871

    More information about these events will be released soon.

  • OpenStreetMap Hack Weekend: If you know your way around a compiler, feel comfortable with JSON and XML, or know the difference between an ellipsoid and a geoid, then the Hack Weekend is for you. We’re looking for those with technical know-how to help make a difference in OpenStreetMap’s core software by writing patches and new software to help make mapping faster and easier.
  • Safe Communities Hackathon at Google: The City of Chicago is partnering with Google to host a hackathon centered around community safety on May 11th.
  • Work for Chicago’s Department of Innovation and Technology – Make the awesome happen: The City of Chicago is hiring a new Managing Deputy Chief Information Officer to help run the city’s enterprise applications. The City of Chicago’s efforts in releasing data and leveraging technology have been the keystone to the entire civic innovation effort in Chicago. If you’ve got the chops, drop what you’re doing and apply now.

Datasets of the week: Energy Usage and alternative fuel locations

In honor of Earth Day, the City of Chicago released two new data sets.

The first is a new API that lets users see what the energy usage is throughout the city. This data set uses data aggregated by ComEd and People’s Gas to display energy uses by census track pairs. (For privacy concerns, the City doesn’t want to release data that can point out energy use for just one building. By having the data by census tract pairs, it protects privacy while still giving great information on the city’s energy usage.)

This data set also comes with an API. As with all new API’s released by the City, this API is well documented telling developers what all the fields are, what the error messages mean, and giving samples of code that use the API.

The other data set that was released is alternative fuel locations. This data set will be particularly important to companies that want to make electric cars more viable in the city.

Come join us next week at OpenGov Hack Night! Every Tuesday at 6:00pm inside 1871.

Big Data Week: Video Analytics in the Wild Panel Livestream

Christopher Whitaker 2 Comments

Smart Chicago Collaborative will be live streaming Friday’s Big Data Week panel on Video Analytics in the wild.

The panel will be discussing how video analytics is being used in a wide variety of places including public safety, retail, and health care.

Panelists will include:

  • Cmdr. Jonathan Lewin – Managing Deputy Director of Public Safety Information Technology, City of Chicago
  • Dr. Aggelos Katsaggelos – AT&T Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Northwestern University’s Image and Video Processing Lab
  • Dr. Miles Wernick – Motorola Endowed Chair Professor and Director, Medical Imaging Research Center at IIT. CTO, ADM Diagnostics, LLC
  • Kris Ranganath – Director of Technology & Solutions, NEC Corporation of America

The panel will take place this Friday, April 26th at Motorola Solutions from 11:00 AM to 1:00 PM. If you’re in Chicago, you can register for the event here.

We’ll start our live stream on this page at 10:55 AM.

OpenGov Hack Night: 1 Year Anniversary

Christopher Whitaker

Happy Birthday OpenGov Hack Night!

This week was the one year anniversary of the Chicago OpenGov Hack Night.

The Year in Review (6:30)

Some quick stats on what’s gone on in the past year.

  • 48 Hack Nights
  • 7 Data Potlucks
  • 98 Lou Malnati’s Pizzas
  • 300 unique attendees from 15 cities
  • 24 civic apps (just out of the hack nights)

Chicago’s OpenGov Hack Night has been around for a year!

Congrats guys!

The City of Chicago and the Broadband Technology opportunities Grant

Francesca Rodriquez and Danielle DuMerer gave a presentation on the city’s efforts to close the digital divide.

The City of Chicago was one of the few major cities to receive a Broadband Technology Opportunities Grant. This grant is used to fund a number of projects in Chicago aimed at growing broadband adoption in Chicago.

The City received $16 million in BTOP funds to help build out Public Computing Centers and run comprehensive programs in some of Chicago’s more disadvantaged neighborhoods. In addition, the MacArthur Foundation provided matching funds. LISC Chicago and the Smart Chicago Collaborative partnered with the city to administer the programs.

You can find all the public computing centers that are funded by the grant on WeConnectChicago.org.

EveryoneOn campaign

Chicago’s done a lot of work to close the digital divide and continues to hammer away at the issue with the launch of the EveryoneOn campaign. EveryoneOn is a national program that aims to increase digital literacy and access to the high speed intenet. The program is being piloted in Chicago.

As part of the program, the city is partnering with Connect2Compete. Connect2Compete is a non-profit website where residents can search for affordable internet options near them. Residents simply enter their zip code and answer a few questions in order to see their options.

Previously, the City worked with Comcast to provide low-cost internet as part of the Internet Essentials initiative in 2011. The city has now expanded that option to include FreedomPop.

FreedomPop is a wireless router that uses the CLEAR 4G wireless network. (Smart Chicago is currently testing the devices across the city as part of the Civic User Testing Group.) With the FreedomPop routers, residents can get a gigabyte of free data each month. For $10/month, residents can increase that amount to 10GBs.

FreedomPop Routers

The city has made great strides to close the digital divide in the past two years. Here’s some examples of the work that’s gone on. (From the city’s website)

  • Establish free Wi-Fi at 28 public computer center sites and upgraded free Wi-Fi at 66 Chicago Public Library branches;
  • Provide over 180,000 hours of instructor-led technology training to 29,300 Chicagoans citywide;
  • Help at least 570 Chicagoans find jobs through 180,000 one-on-one CyberNavigator assistance sessions at the libraries;
  • Deliver technology training to over 1,000 small businesses;
  • Provide out-of-school digital media programming to 1,350 youth;
  • Establish the Connect Chicago network to bring together over 250 locations that offer free digital skills training throughout the City; and
  • Install over 1,400 computer stations at 170 public computer centers citywide, located in CHA facilities, CCC campuses, community centers, libraries and Veterans Resource Centers.

We’re excited to see what comes next.

Juan-Pablo Valez: Lessons on civic hacking (25:35)

Juan-Pablo Valez presented his thoughts on how we can get citizens involved in civic hacking.

Juan used a number of examples to help explain the process of civic hacking and how citizens can get involved.

Lesson One: It needs to solve a problem – Flu Shot App

The City’s health department distributes free flu shots every year to help keep Chicago healthy. This year the city heavily advertised on CTA to encourage residents to get a flu shot. However, it wasn’t always easy to find where to get a flu shot.

More civic hackers hard at work

Working with the city’s health department, Tom Kompare built the flu shot finder app. Once the app was built, it was adopted by the city.

Juan explains, “While the flu shot app won’t solve public health, it does solve a particular civic problem – and that’s good!”

Lesson Two: Discovering the bureaucracy – SecondCityZoning.org

As civic hackers start to work on these projects is that you discover the intricate of the way the city works. Secondcityzoning.org is an OpenCity website that lets you explore Chicago’s different zones. The site also educates people on what the zones actually mean.

Lesson Three: Spreading the word – Schoolcuts.org

Josh Kalov and Derek Eder discuss the schoolcuts.org app

The other big lesson is that once an app is built you need to get the word out. Jeanne partnered with Josh Kalov and the Open Data Institute to create a website that helps open up school data in a format easily understandable to parents. By helping to provide guidance to what parents needed, the end result was a site that helps parents and the community understand what’s happening with the school closing in Chicago.

Jean found the groups in Chicago that cared about the school closings and worked with them to help get the word out. Schoolcuts.org has now been featured in several press stories and is one of the most accessed civic apps coming out of Chicago.

LISC Chicago (49:00)

Suzanna Vasquez, Executive Director of LISC Chicago, spoke about their Smart Communities program. Smart Communities works to increase digital access and digital literacy in the Chicago neighborhoods of Auburn Grsham, Chicago Lawn, Englewood, Humbolt Park, and Pilsen. LISC works with local partners to help support local initiatives to close the digital divide. A good example is the work done by Teamwork Englewood. (Who is working to raise funds to increase its Englewood Codes class to 30 students.)

LISC is a semi-finalist for the Knight Foundation News Challenge for their proposal “OpenGov for the rest of us” that hopes to use the same model to help open gov and civic hacking projects in the neighborhoods.

The City of Philadelphia – BTOP Partners and Philly Tech Week (57:55)

OpenGov Hack Night was proud to have Linsey Keck and Ashley Del Bianco as guests at this week’s hack night. They were part of the BTOP conference that was occurring in Chicago this week.

Linsey and Ashley run the BTOP grants in Philadelphia. Philadelphia and Chicago have a lot of similarities in terms of their open data policies, their efforts to close the digital divide and both cities have civic hacking events on a regular basis.

At next weeks Philly Tech Week, the team is running several events aimed at getting people to think about digital access issues. This includes an event designed to get all members of the tech community to talk about how we bridge the gap between the tech world and disadvantaged neighborhoods.

Big Data Week in Chicago (1:07)

Next week is going to be Big Data Week in Chicago. There will be a number of events in the Chicago all during the week with many of these events being streamed online. You can get more information about these events by visiting bigdatachicago.com/chicago.

Road to Government 2.0: Projects and Publications Around Analytics & Technology

Smart Chicago

Road to Government 2.0: Technological Problems and Solutions for Transparency, Efficiency and Participation

Last year I (along with Brett Goldstein, Chief Data Officer and Chief Information Officer for the City of Chicago) participated in the FOCAS 2012: Towards Open and Innovative Governance conference run by the Communications and Society Program run by the Aspen Institute. They recently published this report based on that conference: Road to Government 2.0: Technological Problems and Solutions for Transparency, Efficiency and Participation. Here’s a PDF of the publication and a relevant snip from the portion I worked on:

Solution 4: Alert System

Even with a heavy media push, many government services may slip by citizens, especially the underprivileged. The problem is, “I do not know what public information and services are available to me when I need and want them,” suggested Caitria O’Neill.

Speaking for another FOCAS working group, O’Neill proposed an opt-in government alert system that would signal citizens as they encounter opportunities for government services, such as moving to a different address. Such a system could also prevent duplicating government services and save on wasted advertising spending. The geolocation-sensitive system would be built out in three phases.

Phase 1: Build a framework for the system. The (very) specific checklist for the framework includes: “A large distributed NoSQL architecture that is cloud-based, that is able to answer spatially relevant queries via a RESTful API,” and that is powered by a combination of tools, such as Hadoop, MongoDB and PostGIS. Governmental and nongovernmental data sources can populate the system, and the team recommends public-private partnerships to maximize the available sources.

Phase 2: Develop and gather information about users, what they might use the information for, and what they need. “Units of government gather information about the consumption of services all the time in the normal course of business. They track things like who is obtaining business licenses and for what purpose, who has a driver’s license, who receives a particular benefit, and so on. There’s nothing new about this and no new systems need be made,” suggested Smart Chicago Collaborative Executive Director Daniel O’Neil.

Phase 3: Marketing. The group preferred that the government provide the service but that it be an open platform for others to offer apps to citizens and consumers. They argued that a private-sector solution “will likely not be provided for free or with the same level of integrity.” Thus they suggested the platform begin with government and foundation funding, as a fee-for-service solution is unlikely to be developed unless the government acts first.

Precautions must be made as to who governs the data and how active the government will be in targeting and advertising to citizens.

This overall concept fits into much of the work Brett has been leading here in Chicago, including the Chicago SmartData Platform, which won $1 million from the Bloomberg Philanthropies Mayors Challenge.

Elliot Ramos of WBEZ did a pretty good job of pulling the City’s various projects together in this post: City tech wonks add toys to Emanuel’s utility belt (disclosure: WBEZ is a grantee of the Chicago Community Trust under the Civic Innovation in Chicago project). Here’s a hefty snip:

While there, Goldstein touted several projects his department has initiated. Many were in testing stages, amounting to Chicago’s own version of Google Labs.

Within the the walls of the Daley Center, Goldstein’s department creates tools, utilizing the mountains of data to inform city managers about the inner workings of the city — sometimes in real time.

The project names are whimsical, but their use could very well alter the way city departments respond with services, perhaps pre-emptively.

Among the tools: Project Unicorn, which was recently renamed Chirp, on a submission to the Knight News Challenge. The city seeks to use that program “to act on city service issues identified via social media — eliminating the need to visit City Hall, call 311, or download special applications,” according to the project submission.

The tool, currently being tested by Goldstein’s department, would allow the city to monitor location-based Tweets and then respond to requests such as street-light outages or graffiti removal.

The city’s also testing Project Falcon, renamed on another submission to the Knight News Challenge as Scout.

About the grant submission, Goldstein said Scout would “aggregate data sources based on location … Applications built using this interface will enable residents to interact with data in a way that’s structured around their day-to-day lives.”

This is above and beyond the SmartData Platform, a separate program developed with funds from the Bloomberg Mayors’ Challenge, according to a spokesperson from Goldstein’s department. The platform’s purpose is allow City Hall to analyze millions of lines of data in real-time and, according to the city, make “smarter, earlier decisions to address a wide range of urban challenges.” The city won $1-million prize from Bloomberg Philanthropies to spend on the project.

Another effort aims to better visualize data using unconventional techniques. This one, dubbedProject Batman, will utilize an immersive, multi-display system called “The Cave.”

The Cave, housed at the University of Illinois at Chicago, has already been used by researchers to visualize environments or biological models.

The display is reminiscent of the computer used by Tom Cruise’s character Chief John Anderton in the 2002 movie Minority Report. That movie is often cited for its near prescience in predictingthe touch-and-swipe interfaces common to iPhones and iPads.

Smart Chicago is deeply interested in helping our founding partner, the City of Chicago move forward on these topics as we execute on our own projects like FoodborneChicago.

Data Potluck: 7 Million Rows of Data

Christopher Whitaker

There were a lot of people at this week’s data potluck

Data Potluck is a monthly event occurring the last Tuesday of every month at 6:00pm inside 1871.  Like the OpenGov Hack nights, these events focus on how open data and civic apps can help improve the citizen experience. However, these events have a more non-profit focus to them. Data Potluck was inspired by last year’s DataKind Data Drive which helped gather data for the Chicago area Red Cross. In order to keep the effort moving forward, Young-Jin Kim, Matt Gee and Nicholas Mader started the DataPotluck Meetup group.

DataPotluck’s other advantage? People bring food.

Rayid Ghani, Chief Scientist for Obama for America

At this month’s Data Potluck we had two presentations. The first was from  Rayid Ghani, former Chief Scientist for the Obama for America 2012 Campaign. Rayid explained how the Obama for America campaign used the power of predictive analysis and social media to help win the election. 

Rayid announced that the same model that made the Obama team so effective at their outreach efforts would be made available to non-profits.

Historical Traffic Congestion Data

The second presentation was by the City of Chicago’s Chief Analytics officer to announce the release of a seven million row dataset. Chicago has just released data on traffic congestion by segment.


To get an idea of just how big this data set is, a traffic segment is about a half mile. The city has 300 miles of road that the city keeps real-time traffic data for. The city refreshes the database that lives on the portal every ten minutes.

The city first released the real-time data in December, but civic developers wanted to take a look at historical data.

So, the city worked with Socrata to enable the city’s data portal to be able to handle such a massive volume of data. Now, civic developers can dig into all of the Chicago’s traffic data.

To help developers dig into the data, they’ve created a very well documented API.

This documentation includes code samples in multiple languages on how to access the data as well as definitions on all the different fields in the data set and the possible errors you could get.

Now that this data has been released, we’re excited to see what cool, useful, and interesting things that people will do with this data.

If you want to work with civic data:

For people who are interested in working with civic data, there are two opportunities that they should look into.

The first is the Chicago Data Science Fellowship. The University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory are recruiting people with statistics, programming, and data skills to work with real world data to make an impact on social issues.

The second is that the City of Chicago is hiring a data scientist to help ensure that Chicago becomes the very best civic data team in the world. The City of Chicago is looking to hire a new data scientist to join their team. If you are interested, you should apply on the city’s website.