The Smart Chicago Collaborative has helped to run several civic hackathons including last year’s National Day of Civic Hacking events in Chicago. To help with this year’s National Day of Civic Hacking, we wanted to post how we organize and set up these events. We also wanted to go over tips and hazards to look out for when organizing these events.
Safer Communities Hackathon at Google Chicago
On February 25th during Chicago OpenGov Hack Night, Cathy Deng talked about Expunge.io, a guide to help youth in Cook County erase their juvenile arrest and/or court records through the legal process of juvenile expungement.
This morning Smart Chicago Executive Director Dan O’Neil participated in the OpenGov Panel at the Knight Foundation Media Learning Seminar along with the Waldo Jaquith, U.S. Open Data Institute; and the Honorable Karen Freeman-Wilson, Mayor of Gary, Indiana.
Alberto Ibarguen, President & CEO of the Knight Foundation, gives opening remarks to attendees. Image courtesy Knight Foundation
If you missed the panel, the Knight Foundation has the video below:
At the last Chicago OpenGov Hack Night, Charles Watkins from Get Covered Illinois talked about the Affordable Care Act and its implementation here in Illinois.
Get Covered Illinois is an effort by the State of Illinois to make sure that all residents in Illinois get health insurance. Here’s Charles Watkins explaining the effort.
The Affordable Healthcare Act brings about several benefits that weren’t available before including a restricting insurance companies from denying claims based on pre-existing conditions, allowing residents to remain on their parents insurance until age 26, and more coverage for preventative services. Watkins explains the benefits of the ACA below:
There are a number of websites that people can use to get information about the Affordable Healthcare Act and get pre-screened for benefits. Those sites are:
Charles explains the details of each site below.
After presenting Charles also answered questions from the civic innovation community.
You can find out more about Illinois’ efforts to implement the ACA by going to GetCovered Illinois.
The Smart Chicago Collaborative, the Illinois Science and Technology Coalition, the State of Illinois and the City of Rockford are pleased to announce the winners of the Illinois OpenTech Challenge.
The Illinois OpenTech Challenge for Rockford consisted of three challenges.
Patrick Zuroske, Capital Program Manager for the City of Rockford explains the first challenge
Challenge One: Create an app that will alert Rockford residents of road and lane closures.
Rockford is undergoing several improvements to local infrastructure. As a result of these projects, roads and lanes have to close in order to complete construction inconveniencing residents trying to drive through Rockford. The City of Rockford is interested in an app that would alert residents to road closures. Currently, the city gets hundreds of phone calls asking about this issue.
WINNER: Barrel Dodger! An app that sends alerts to residents when the city indicates a lane or road has been closed.
Jen Hall talking about the “Moving the Needle” Campaign
Challenge Two: Create an app that allows users to view, post and promote community service projects in Rockford. This challenge was issued by Rockford EDEEN as part of their moving the needle campaign.
WINNER: rockford.What-When-Where.org! An app that lets community members post events and where residents can share what community event people are going to.
Rockford Director of IT Glenn Trommels demoing Rockford’s data portal
Challenge Three: Build an app that solves a civic problem or educates the public using government data. This challenge was a ‘wild card’ challenge that gave civic innovators wide latitude in coming up with creative ways to use data to help solve civic problems in Rockford.
WINNER: RaiseUp Rockford! An app that lets make service requests to the City of Rockford.
More details to come!
IDPH Chief of Staff Stephen Konya speaking at 1871 during the “Making Public Health Data Work” event
This past weekend, health care policy makers, practitioners, and technologists gathered together at 1871 to talk about how we could make public health data work here in Illinois.
The event was hosted by a number of partners including the Health Data Consortium, Illinois Department of Public Health, the California HealthCare Foundation, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
