Open311

Agenda for OpenGovChicago Meeting, August 2, 2012

Smart Chicago

ANNOUNCEMENTS

  1. Tom Feltner: Woodstock is moving the last 15 years of data to its portal by the end of the year. Licensing restrictions limit what source data can be made public. What aggregate data would be useful and what would be derivative?
  2. Barbara Iverson: Submit stories about Open Gov work in Chicago to Chicago Talks to help connect regular people on the street, “citizens” with civic projects and Open Gov work. Tell your story, and we’ll help you spread the word.
  3. Tom Tresser: Working to establish Civic Lab – Apps for Activists, Activist Speed Dating Night & The TIF Report projects.
  4. George Aye: Announcing the launch of a new crowd-designed transit app for the CTA.
  5. Francesca Rodriquez: Update on the City’s Broadband Technology Opportunities Program
  6. Sharon Burns: The Field Museum, through a generous multi-year grant from the Grainger Foundation is developing new apps, ebooks and other outreach projects to enhance the revenues stream of the Museum. Are open scientific data sets interesting? Ideas welcome!
  7. Tom Kompare: I’d like see if anyone is interested exploring crime and place relationships. An investigation in the 49th Ward shows what may be significant relationships of crime with L stops and package liquor license locations. I need help to explore further.
  8. Derek Eder: Open City would like to announce our latest civic app: Crime in Chicago
  9. John Tolva: Update on the City’s Open 311 project
  10. Simeon Schnapper: Pilots in CPS today centering around youtopia.com

We’ve got a full boat of announcements– hopefully people will get a chance to review some of this material, which will help us get to the evening’s demos. Also: don’t forget that tonight is Urban Geeks at Villains (thanks, Justin Massa!)– there’s plenty of chit-chat to be had there, if you can make it.

DEMOS

  • Jesse Bounds, one of the Code for America Chicago fellows, will bring us up to speed on what the team is working on now— aDaily Brief app and a national 311 labs website to facilitate collaboration around 311 apps— and what they have planned next— beta testing the city’s new open311 api, and releasing their 311 dashboard and service request tracker apps
  • Jay Van Patten, Director of Web Services for the Chicago Public Schools, will demo their new school locator website and chat about why and how it was built. They’re building it all in-house using Google Maps, Google Fusion Tables, and open-source code written by members Chicago’s open gov community.

EFFLUVIA

  • Bring ID and come early– the security is tight in this building
  • If you’ve been to a meetup at the Chicago Community Trust before, keep in mind that we have moved to another building in the same Illinois Center complex– 225 N. Michigan, 22nd Floor
  • Sammiches will be served. Come hungry

Mayor Emanuel Opens Tech Week with Remarks About the Smart Chicago Open 311 Project

Smart Chicago

Here’s a snip from “Rahm’s Latest Accountability Plan: An App That Tracks City Services” on Forbes.com:

Mayor Rahm Emanuel will soon unveil an app Chicago residents can use to request city services—and then track the city’s response—he said this morning in the keynote address at Chicago’s TechWeek 2012 conference.

“We’ve opened up reams of city data for programmers to have at it and come up with the most innovative apps for their fellow residents to use: an app to find a towed car, snow plows, and street closures, an app for 311 calls, including tracking like a fedex shipping order,” he told the gathering of hundreds of digital businesspeople and techies at the Merchandise Mart.

Since 1999, Chicagoans have been able to call 311 to request city services or information. In recent years the service has offered status updates on the web, but Emanuel hopes to implement real-time tracking of citizen requests via a smartphone app as soon as this fall:

“I actually want the ability by by fall, when you call 311 and say you want to get X done—tree trimming, pot holing—you will actually get a tracking number. And so the next time you call it’s not like Groundhog Day at 311. Did they ignore me? Do I start this again? No.

“You may not like where you are in the queue, but you’ll be able to track it. You’ll be able to get information back.”

The Mayor shared this vision of a complete service request view in our recent meeting about the project sponsored by Smart Chicago. More to come!

Smart Chicago and Code for America Meet With Mayor Rahm Emanuel About Open311

Smart Chicago 1 Comment

Last month the Smart Chicago Collaborative, the Code for America Chicago fellows, and our key City partners met with Mayor Rahm Emanuel to discuss our Open311 project. We got some great feedback from the Mayor and we’re excited about moving forward to the next phase of the project. More to come!

Code for America Fellows, Smart Chicago, Chicago CTO, and Mayor Rahm Emanuel

Mayor Rahm Emanuel discusses Chicago’s Code for America (CfA) project with Chief Technology Officer John Tolva, the CfA project team, and the Smart Chicago Collaborative. From the Mayor’s left: Ben Sheldon, Code for America, Rob Brackett, Code for America, Daniel X. O’Neil, Smart Chicago Collaborative, Kathleen Strand, Mayor’s Office, John Tolva, Mayor’s Office, Kyla Williams, Smart Chicago Collaborative, Danielle DuMerer, Department of Innovation and Technology, Angel Kittiyachavalit, Code for America, Jesse Bounds, Code for America.