Civic Works

You are the data. The data is you.

Smart Chicago

When I was on the cross-country team at Gordon Technical High School, we had a running joke-slash-motivational line. After we warmed up, stretched, and started to get ready for the afternoon’s workout, someone would say, “where is the line?”. What they meant was, “where are we going to start running from?” More specifically, “where will we be when we know to stop running?”

The answer would come from someone else (it was a different person every day who asked and answered, but it was never planned). The answer was always the same: “You are the line. The line is you”.

Then we would all line up next to and behind the person who asked where the line was. Someone would set their watch, say “go”, and we’d start the run.

Running Under the Overpass

People often ask me if civic data, like the stuff available at data.cityofchicago.org is accurate. Tony Sarabia asked me this recently on his Morning Show. It’s a good question, especially from good journalist, because you should know your source. But the answer is that civic data is a messy manifestation of the agony and the ecstasy of the human condition: people crying out for help after being victims of crime, people submitting a service request because the lights are out on their block, someone pulling a building permit to turn a porch into a baby’s room.

When I look at PlowTracker or ClearStreets, I don’t see the fun icons or the crisp lines. I see hundreds of city workers who get into trucks and spread salt in dangerous conditions. That’s not just data. That’s human beings— our neighbors— doing their jobs; feeding their children. We can download raw data sets, send them through hoops and massage tunnels, load them on our own servers, and it’s not really ours.

Civic data is a civic treasure. Something that represents all of us. We talk a lot in government, philanthropy, and communications about “engagement”. There is nothing more engaging than a line in a spreadsheet that has us in it.

You are the line. The line is you.

Kicking off Civic Innovation in Chicago on WBEZ’s Morning Shift

Christopher Whitaker

On Wednesday, Smart Chicago Executive Director Dan O’Neil joined WBEZ’s Matthew Green and Tim Akimoff to talk about data journalism. Here’s the broadcast, which started with an amazing in-studio song by Dolly Varden:

Data journalism is the art and science of finding truth through big data produced by the day to day operations of governments and other large entities, then taking that day and using it to tell a story.  Data journalism also involves creating visualizations with data such as WBEZ’s gang map.

The Smart Chicago Collaborative is partnering with WBEZ to not only take part in data journalism, but also to raise awareness of the impact data has on our daily lives.

This will be done through WBEZ’s new data blog Day X Datum as well as by Smart Chicago’s efforts to support civic apps such as Chicago’s flu shot app and Second City Zoning.

Through this effort, Smart Chicago and WBEZ hope to connect the community to data and civic hacking efforts. Smart Chicago encourages those interested in learning how to use data to tell stories and solve civic problems are encouraged to contact the Smart Chicago Collaborative.

 

Turning Civic Hacking into Civic Innovation

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The civic hacking community in Chicago has produced a variety of civic web applications based on open data provided by local government here in Chicago. These apps do things like show economic indicators in fun ways, let you know if your car was towed, and how & where to get a flu shot.

There are lots of reasons why civic hacking works here in Chicago— a rich baseline of data and technology, an engaged developer community, real discussions with government about policy and data, and the support of institutions are all important factors.

But what we’re missing most is sustained engagement with the residents of the city of Chicago. That’s how we can turn mere hacking into real innovation. The magic combination of government, developers, and community members is what we’re after.

First, let’s take a look at what’s working in the civic hacking world.

A rich baseline

Chicago has a long history of public data projects. I outlined a lot of this in a 2011 blog post, “Incomplete Take on the History of Open Data in Chicago”. Examples come from journalism (the Tribune’s 1986 series “American Millstone: An Examination of the Nation’s Permanent Underclass” used data to back up the narrative), government (the Chicago Police Department’s groundbreaking Citizen ICAM (Information Collection for Automated Mapping) database, and pioneering groups like the Illinois Data Exchange Affiliates.

Other elements include a recent history of influential data projects like Adrian Holovaty’s 2005 Googlemap mashup, Chicago Crime, which helped lead to the Googgle Maps API, Harper Reed’s 2008  “unofficial” Chicago Transit API, which helped unleash a slew of innovation around transit apps internationally, and the work of the Chicago Tribune News Apps team, which set a new bar for data journalism and created useful generic tools upon which other hackers can build.

An engaged developer community

A central component of the civic hacking scene is Open Gov Hacknights started by Derek Eder and Juan Pablo-Valez. They run the hack nights every Tuesday at 6:00pm in space provided by Smart Chicago at 1871 in the Merchandise Mart building. Beginners are welcome, and there is a continuity of work, as people share their progress from week to week.

Government that cares

There wouldn’t be much civic hacking without the support of government. Huge troves of state, county, and city data can be found at http://metrochicagodata.org/. Government officials and workers like are critical members ot the developer community. This past Tuesday, Kevin Hauswirth from the Mayor’s office stopped by to talk about digital.cityofchicago.org. OpenGovChicago has hosted presentations from Chicago CTO John Tolva, State of Illinois CIO Sean Vinck, and staff at the County Clerk. This month we’re working with the Ilinois Department of Employment Security.

Support from institutions

I’ve come to appreciate the key role of institutions, underpinning and financing this work. Thanks to them, we provide civic hacker community a guaranteed space to work at no cost to civic hackers. We provide server space for many of these civic apps. Our Civic Innovation in Chicago project is a good example. The project is funded by a Knight Community Information Challenge grant provided jointly by the Knight Foundation and The Chicago Community Trust. The MacArthur Foundation provides additional funds, as well as strategic guidance, for our work. This allows Smart Chicago to directly pay developers like Derek Eder, giving day-job pay on what used to be a nights and weekends pursuit.

What’s currently missing? The people.

All of this is great. Two important components for civic innovation, government and developers, are here in force in Chicago. But dozens of developers looking at each other in conference rooms over pizza is never going to lead to making lives better in Chicago without the active involvement of real residents expressing real needs and advocating for software that makes sense to them. The good thing is that Chicago has assets in this area as well.

We have a long history of citizen-led battles for just policies that are informed by data. Consider that the fight against redlining was centered in Chicago:

Following a National Housing Conference in 1973, a group of Alinsky-style Chicago community organizations led by The Northwest Community Organization (NCO) formed National People’s Action (NPA), to broaden the fight against disinvestment and mortgage redlining in neighborhoods all over the country. This organization led by Chicago housewife Gale Cincotta and Shel Trapp, a professional community organizer, targeted The Federal Home Loan Bank Board, the governing authority over Federally chartered Savings & Loan institutions (S&L) that held at that time the bulk of the country’s home mortgages. NPA embarked on an effort to build a national coalition of urban community organizations to pass a national disclosure regulation or law to require banks to reveal their lending patterns.

Everyone loves CTA Bus Trackers apps, but few people know that the GPS satellite technology making that possible is the result of lawsuit brought by a group associated with the Americans Disabled for Accessible Public Transit. Their case, Access Living et al. v. Chicago Transit Authority, required “installation of audio-visual equipment on buses to announce bus stop information to riders who have visual impairments or are Deaf or hard of hearing”. When you hear the loudspeaker system announce the next street the bus is stopping at, you have defacto data activists to thank.

We need you. Your city needs you. Write me at . Call me at (773) 960-6045. Get a mitt and get in this game.

ClearStreets: Another Great Project Benefitting from Space on the Smart Chicago EC2 Account

Smart Chicago

As we noted in the launch post about Adopt-A-Sidewalk, tonight marks the first storm here in Chicago this winter. That means it is the first time this season that snowplows have been deployed by the Chicago Department of Streets and Sanitation. Here’s a list of all the 669 employees in that department with the word “driver” in their job title:

Drivers in Streets + San

These are the people doing the essential work that keeps our city safe and operating smoothly. They deserve a lot of credit.

So plows on the street mean the City’s PlowTracker is in action, showing the plows in real time:

PlowTracker 2012 -- Start of Winter Storm Draco

New this year– works in mobile!

PlowTracker on a Galaxy Note II

And PlowTracker up and running means that ClearStreets has data to show you where the plows have been:

ClearStreets

Yesterday the people behind ClearStreets, including Derek Eder, who works as a contractor for a number of map-focused Smart Chicago projects, including Chicago Health Atlas, Chicago Early Learning (along with Azavea out of Philly), and Connect Chicago, needed a place to run some scripts that help ClearStreets run. They’re using civic data, are helping make lives better, and otherwise meet our criteria for inclusion in our free hosting program, so they’re up and running on our account.

We host a number of other projects there, including Twitter classification experiments that track illness and learning management systems that store free digital training. We’ve got 17 instances with our own projects and those from the larger OpenGov community in Chicago.

This is where Smart Chicago sits— founded by the municipal government and some of the City’s largest philanthropic institutions, directly funding civic developers to work on important projects, hosting gatherings where developers get together to talk policy and write code, providing real (through our seats at 1871) and virtual space for innovation.

Let it snow.

Adopt-A-Sidewalk is Re-Launched Along With Mayor Emanuel’s Chicago Shovels Program (Just in Time!)

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Mayor Emanuel Announces Chicago Shovels for 2012

The Smart Chicago Collaborative is proud be a part of Chicago Shovels, Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s initiative to help connect the public with City winter resources and empower neighbors to come together to help Chicago navigate winter. We worked with the City of Chicago and the Chicago Code for America Brigade to re-launch of Adopt-A-Sidewalk.

As part of the Race for Reuse Campaign at Code for America, local civic hackers helped to move the City of Chicago’s Adopt-A-Sidewalk app onto servers hosted by the Smart Chicago Collaborative, document the code, and publish it as a fresh instance to Github. This means that developers can continue to improve the site by adding new features and continuing to integrate additional data sets as the city expands on its data offerings.

The Race for Reuse is a nationwide effort to help redeploy civic apps all across the country with 28 cities helping to deploy 31 civic apps. Adopt-A-Sidewalk was originally built as the Boston-focused Adopt-a-Hydrant app that lets citizens adopt hydrants that they agree to take care of in the event of snow.

Chicago has modified this code and added map files of every sidewalk in the city. Residents can claim sidewalks during snow events (like tonight!)– pledging to shovel their own walks or take care of a neighbor’s 25 feet of love. If you can’t shovel your walk and need help, The app will also let people indicate that they need help with their sidewalk. Volunteers can then go into the app and adopt that particular sidewalk.

This Vista Never Fails Me: Lincoln Park Zoo Nature Boardwalk in First Snowfall, December 2010

Lots of people worked on this app. Chief among them is Ryan Briones. He is an IT Director for Software Architecture and Design at the City’s Department of Innovation and Technology, but he worked to configure the server and document the code on his evenings, civic hacker-style. He is longtime member of OpenGovChicago and just flat-out cares about this stuff.

Christopher Whittaker, the Code for America Brigade Captain here in Chicago, shepherded the entire process and did a goodly amount of tweaking as well. He is a tireless organizer and he’s been a a continued link to the key national Code for America organization, from which all of this sprung.

When Adopt A Sidewalk launched last February, it was set up mainly by a group of dedicated team centered around the Obama for America tech team. This included Scott VanDenPlas,  Aaron Salmon, Arun Sivashankaran, Ben Hagen, Chris Gansen, Jason Kunesh, Jesse Kriss, Nick Leeper, Ryan Kolak, Paul Smith, and Scott Robbin.

This time around, Michael Barrientos and Emily Rosengren worked to get us to launch. Derek Eder gave some advice, Rebecca Ackerman enabled zoom, and Joe Olson of Tracklytics helped with DNS configuration.

Chicago is no stranger to community technology for the wintry mix. In 2011, a great group of people emanating from the Chicago Tribune news apps team that created and worked the ChicagoSnow Crowdmap (Ask for help, lend a hand: Blizzard 2011). We spent a couple nights managing and mapping 984 snow help reports for the blizzard of February 1, 2011. Here’s a super-detailed writeup. It was a great test case in community building around a weather event.

People interested in civic hacking are encouraged to meet to talk policy, data, and technology at the OpenGovChicago meetup group. You can also head over to the Open Gov Hack Nights at 1871 located inside the Merchandise Mart. These growing gatherings, hosted and supported in part by Smart Chicago, are a great way to get a mitt and get in the game on civic hacking.

Here’s a video explaining the program:

Help Improve Adopt-A-Sidewalk

Smart Chicago

In February of 2011, a massive blizzard hit the City of Chicago effectively shutting the city down for a day and a half. Lake Shore Drive, Metra lines, and business closed down as the city was buried under 20 inches of snow.

In the storm’s aftermath, Chicago cleaned itself up with neighbors helping neighbors shovel out the snow. In that same spirit of being good neighbors, Chicago is joining Race for Reuse to push adoption of the Adopt-A-Sidewalk app.

Adopt-A-Sidewalk is Chicago’s implementation of the Adopt-A-Hydrant application. Users adopt a sidewalk that they agree to shovel after a snow event. Through the site, you can also share resources like snow blowers and salt as well as let people know that your sidewalk has been cleared. More importantly, those that need help clearing their sidewalk can do so through the app. This will let volunteers, who sign up through the city’s Snow Corps app, know which sidewalks also need to be cleared.

Through a partnership between the City of Chicago and Code for America and the Smart Chicago Collaborative, the Adopt-A-Sidewalk app is getting overhauled for the new winter season. The app has been open sourced on GitHub and civic hackers are invited to help improve the app. The app will be hosted on the Smart Chicago Collaborative AWS account in order to make it easier to implement improvements to the Adopt-A-Sidewalk code.

Christopher Whittaker ([email protected]), the Code for America Brigade leader here in Chicago, is leading this effort. Civic hackers interested in working on Adopt-A-Sidewalk are invited to come to the OpenGov Hacknights Tuesdays at 6:00pm inside 1871. There we’ll discuss needed improvements and enhancements to the app.

Adopt a Sidewalk