Illinois Open Technology

State of Illinois Eliminate the Digital Divide Grants

Smart Chicago

Here is a handy spreadsheet of all Eliminate the Digital Divide grants going back to the inception of the program, showing all grants, grants by year (2007 – 2012), all Chicago grants, and all Chicago grants by year. All of this data is  pulled from http://granttracker.ildceo.net/. You can also knock around with the data in this custom view on the State’s data portal.

Here’s a breakdown:

ALL GRANTS STATEWIDE

Year | # of grants | Avg. amount of grants

2007 | 16 | $756,156 $47,260

2008 | 103 | $5,060,661 $49,133

2009 | 91 | $5,079,129 $55,815

2010 | 101  | $4,944,877 $48,959

2011 | 124 | $5,065,137 $40,848

2012 | 88 | $4,102,117 $46,615

TOTALS” 523 grants for a total of $25,008,077 with an average grant of $48,105.

ALL GRANTS IN CHICAGO

Year | # of grants | Avg. amount of grants

2007 | 11 | $460,505 $41,864

2008 | 60 | $3,327,602 $55,460

2009 | 59 | $3,303,522 $55,992

2010 | 60 | $2,519,574 $41,993

2011 | 66 | $2,728,243 $41,337

2012 | 50 | $2,228,595 $44,572

TOTALS:  306 grants for a total of $14,568,041 with an average grant of $46,870.

 

First ILOpenTech Meetup is Set for Governor’s State University

Smart Chicago

The first of four community kickoff meetings for the Illinois Open Technology Challenge is set for next Tuesday, November 27, at Governor’s State University. If you are interested in helping the municipalities of the South Suburban Mayors and Managers Association to use data to make lives better in Southland, you should sign up for the Meetup event here. Here’s the agenda:

6 – 6:15 Introductions

We’ll go around the room, introduce ourselves, and say a brief statement about what you’re interested in achieving. Examples: “I have an idea for a app, and I need to meet a developer”, “I’m an expert at land use and I’m interested in talking with community members”, “I’m a government official and I’m looking to connect with developers”—things like that.

6:15 – 6:30 Kickoff

We’ll hear from ILOpenTech Challenge team about the current state of the contest and review the requirements. We’ll talk about timelines, judging, and so on.  Our role is to manage the Challenge and help guide participants as they form teams and brainstorm ideas, so we want to hear from you.

6:30 – 7 Ideas + Matching

This is the time for anyone with an idea to present it to the group in a more complete fashion and make a pitch for people to join them. We will have lots of materials that will help you express yourselves—easels, large postits, markers, etc. You’ll want to talk about what data you’d like to use and what community issues you want to solve. One way to get an early jump on this is to use post to the discussion on the Meetup page: http://www.meetup.com/Illinois-Open-Technology/events/89383552/. We also ask you two questions when signing up for the Meetup—the more thinking you do before the event, the more you will get out of it

— Do you have an idea for an app that you’d like to submit? Let us know!

— Do you have a community issue you’d like to address through data and technology? If so, can you describe?

7 – 8 Team Work

Teams will split off into groups and start planning their work. Since this is just the planning stage, feel free to walk around and hear from lots of people and teams.

8 – 8:30 Reports

We’ll regroup and hear from each of the groups and plan next steps.

This is all about the south suburbs of Chicago. Take a look at the data available at www.data.illinois.gov, www.metrochicagodata.org, and www.ssatlas.org to start thinking of ideas.

The Launch of the Illinois Open Technology Challenge

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Illinois Governor Pat Quinn announced  the Illinois Open Technology Challenge last week. Here’s an excerpt:

The State of Illinois Open Data site, Data.Illinois.Gov, is a searchable clearinghouse of information from state agencies that is helping inform residents about the operation of state government and encouraging the creative use of state information, including the development of applications for mobile devices that can be built around the data. This site, which the governor launched in June 2011, now contains more than 6,500 data sets.

Sponsors of the Illinois Open Technology Challenge include The Chicago Community Trust, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Google, and the Motorola Mobility Foundation. Additional support is being provided by Comcast. Administrative support for the project is provided by the Illinois Science & Technology Coalition and Smart Chicago Collaborative.

This is an important project for Smart Chicago, and it is deeply embedded into our entire program around data. Smart Chicago is housed at the The Chicago Community Trust, which has partnered with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to create the Civic Innovation in Chicago project, which brings together government, developers, journalists, and nonprofits to better understand data and use it to solve community problems.

The Trust and Knight has jointly pledged $50,000 to support prizes for the Illinois Open Technology Challenge because it brings governments, developers and communities together in a common mission to use public data and create digital tools that will serve today’s civic needs and promote economic development.

If you’re interested in participating,  join our list and let us know.