MacArthur Foundation

Items related to the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, which is a founder and major funder of the Smart Chicago Collaborative.

Announcing the June 14th Array of Things Public Meeting at Lozano Library

Denise Linn

As part of Smart Chicago’s Array of Things Civic Engagement Work, we’re hosting an event in in Pilsen on Tuesday, June 14, 2016:

Event: Array of Things Public Meeting

Date: Tuesday, June 14. 2016

Time: 5:30pm – 7pm

Location: 1805 S Loomis St. – Lozano Library

The Array of Things project is a collection of multi-purpose sensors that will collect data about the livability factors in our city like air quality, noise pollution, and flooding. These data will fuel new research about Chicago neighborhoods. This is an open meeting. Everyone is invited. No knowledge of technology or sensors is required to be a welcome, meaningful addition to the event.

Here is the flyer for this meeting:

The purpose of the Array of Things Public Meetings is educate the public on the Array of Things project and help facilitate community feedback on the Array of Things Privacy & Governance policy. You can read more about our goals and model for this work in this blog post.

If you are interested in attending the Array of Things Public Meetings or would like to receive more information about the Governance & Privacy Policy, please fill out this form:

Smart Chicago’s Array of Things Civic Engagement Goals & Model

Denise Linn

Smart Chicago has committed to educate and engage residents with the new Array of Things project, which is operated by the Urban Center for Computation and Data (UrbanCCD) — a research initiative of the Computation Institute at the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory — also in partnership with the City. This engagement work aligns with our guiding principles. We want to facilitate a conversation in Chicago about data, sensors, the Internet of Things, and how we can put these things in service to the people.

Put simply, it’s Smart Chicago’s job to make sure that the public knows about this project and that any resident who has questions or input is heard.

Array of Things is an urban sensing project — one of the first of this kind and scale. Sensors will be placed across the city to measure livability factors like climate, pedestrian traffic, air quality, and flooding. The sensors will collect data about our city. That data will then be released publically for residents and researchers to interpret and use.

Smart Chicago Engagement Goals

The first goal is to build citywide awareness around Array of Things. We’ll do this through writing, convening, polling, and otherwise communicating with residents.

The second goal is to aid the operators of Array of Things in their research and community needs. Here’s how we describe that work on our project page:

Specifically, we’re going to work together in the design and implementation stages of Array of Things to consider the general public’s use cases for the network and creating applications relevant to everyday life in Chicago. The main thrust of our work will be to design and implement a strategic plan to inform and engage the public in the deployment and utilization of AoT.

The third goal is to aid the City of Chicago in gathering input on the governance and privacy policy for Array of Things. A draft of this policy will be released in mid-June and a two-week public comment period will follow. This governance and privacy policy was developed in cooperation between the operators of the Array of Things and the City, with input provided by an independent policy board including the American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research.

Managing feedback on the governance & privacy policy

Several methods will be used to collect resident feedback on the policy: public meetings, online forms, and Madison.

The OpenGov Foundation’s tool Madison is a government policy co-creation platform that collects public edits on policy or legislation. Here is how the OpenGov Foundation describes Madison:

Madison is a government policy co-creation platform that opens up laws and legislation previously off-limits to individuals and the Internet community. Launched to battle the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), it has since been used to power citizen participation in government policymaking in the United States Congress. With Madison, you can access the law as it’s being written, leave comments, annotate specific content, and interact with other civic-minded participants. Madison brings the lawmaking process straight to you, and gives you a say in your government’s decisions.

During the public comment period for the Array of Things governance and privacy policy, the text of the policy will be posted on Madison. Interested Chicagoans will be able to sign on to Madison to annotate, comment on, or support the text.

Public meetings to learn, engage, and share

Smart Chicago will host public meetings in which residents can learn about Array of Things from the project’s operators, ask questions, and provide input through polling and community discussion.

These public meetings will have several components:

  • A presentation on Array of Things from the project’s operators
  • Community discussion and Q&A
  • Resources for further action. We will have Laptops set up for residents to see the Array of Things website and provide feedback on the Array of Things governance and privacy policy

We will also have people working through our documenter program to record, archive, and share the proceedings.

We are holding two community meetings during June. The first will be at Lozano Library on Tuesday, June 14th from 5pm to 7pm. The second will be at Harold Washington Library on Wednesday, June 22nd from 5:30pm to 7pm. More details on those events will follow on the Smart Chicago blog.

If you would like to attend a public meeting or stay updated on the governance and privacy policy, fill out this form:

Fill out my online form.

Wired Magazine on OpenGrid and Open 311

Smart Chicago 1 Comment

HWired Magazine Logoere’s a great post about OpenGrid in Wired Magazine today: Conquer Chicago’s Mountain of Data With This Powerful Tool. Here’s a snip about the vast amount of data in the City’s 311 system:

Berman explains that most of the data on OpenGrid is administrative data collected from city systems—like 311 City Services—that are already in place. In essence, these systems are pulling double duty as a civic service and a data funnel. Every time someone calls 311 to complain about noise level, that information is passed on to OpenGrid.

Smart Chicago funded and helped run the creation of the Open 311 system back in 2012.

OpenGrid on the Chicago Public Data Blog

Smart Chicago

WBEZ LogoChris Hagan of WBEZ wrote a good post today on OpenGrid: Chicago launches OpenGrid, latest step in making open data more accessible. Here’s a snip:

Dan O’Neil, executive director of the Smart Chicago Collaborative, which assisted on the project, reminded developers that tools such as OpenGrid are a first step. He pointed out that despite Chicago’s advances in open data, problems such as police misconduct have arguably gotten worse.

“There are no dots on a map that stopped that from happening,” O’Neil said. “There is no set of crime statistics that stopped that from happening. We have to find ways to have communion with people who are not here.”

Maps and tech and data are simply pieces. Communion among humans is what matters.

OpenGrid on the Harvard Data-Smart City Solutions Blog

Smart Chicago

data-smart-city-solutionsSean Thornton of Harvard Data-Smart City Solutions wrote up a great piece on the launch of OpenGrid. Here’s a snip:

Yet in order for DoIT’s OpenGrid and UrbanCCD’s Plenario to interact, additional software—also called a service layer—was necessary.  Enter the Smart Chicago Collaborative, a local civic organization that focuses on improving residents’ lives through technology.

Smart Chicago’s work focuses on three main areas for residents – increasing access to the internet, enhancing digital skills, and expanding the use of meaningful city data.  For Smart Chicago Executive Director Dan O’Neil, supporting a program like OpenGrid is a natural fit.

“A collaborative union between developers, residents, and government – that’s what Smart Chicago is about, and that’s what OpenGrid is about too,” O’Neil noted at the application’s launch. “This is why we’re on it.”  To build the service layer, Smart Chicago commissioned UTurn Data Solutions, a local IT consultancy focused data storage and Cloud computing projects.

Smart Chicago is also helping ensure that OpenGrid is effective in its mission to enhance transparency efforts between the city and the public. One of Smart Chicago’s marquee programs is its Civic User Testing Group, or CUTGroup.  CUTGroup participants, which include residents from all corners of the city, are compensated to participate in focus groups that test civic websites and apps.  The program has given developers numerous insights and has led to the improvement of many local apps, including theEveryBlock iPhone App, FoodBorne Chicago, and the Chicago Health Atlas. CUTGroup will be testing OpenGrid to help DoIT refine the tool and learn how residents can most benefit from its work.

 

 

City of Chicago Launches OpenGrid

Smart Chicago

OpenGrid_Logo_Horizontal_3ColorToday the Smart Chicago Collaborative helped the City of Chicago launch OpenGrid— a free, browser-based, open source mapping platform displaying Chicago’s robust collection of open datasets.

OpenGrid.io was launched this morning at an event at the University of Illinois Chicago Electronic Visualization Labratory. Chief Information Officer Brenna Berman, Chief Data Officer Tom Schenk, and the Smart Chicago Collaborative kicked off the official launch and demo.

OpenGrid is Public

This important work goes back to WindyGrid, the City’s internal tool displaying all past and present city data. Now, through OpenGrid, the ability to see and layer information about Chicago is in the hands of individual residents. Anyone with Internet access can see Chicago’s data come alive in relation to their homes, communities, and workplaces.

Here is the OpenGrid introductory tutorial:

OpenGrid is Open Source

The City first articulated its plans to build a public-facing WindyGrid and open up the application source code in the 18-month Tech Plan Update. The Plan stated OpenGrid would be “the first open source situational awareness system that other municipalities can use and build upon.”

Smart Chicago’s Role in OpenGrid

Through support from the MacArthur Foundation, Smart Chicago supported the OpenGrid project by creating a service layer to plenar.io, a spatio-temporal open data platform. This layer serves as a data feed to OpenGrid— if the data is in plenar.io, it can get into OpenGrid.

We worked with technology partner Uturn Data Solutions to create the code that drives the data. This easy-to-deploy stack can be used by any municipality or organization to display open datasets on a map. This entire project is dependent on our Amazon Web Services account, which is maintained by Uturn. We also serve many Chicago-based technologists via our Developer Resources program,

We’re proud of our continued work with the City to deliver on the Tech Plan, with local developers to encourage their role in the civic tech ecosystem, and with the University of Chicago to support the plenar.io platform for data ingest.

Here’s a set of photos from launch day: