The Smart Chicago mission is to improve lives in Chicago through technology. Our main modes are via access, skills, and data. We’ve naturally formed some focus areas around city services, health, education, technology infrastructure, and open data. Here’s a look at all existing projects.

City Services

These projects help Chicago residents find information and resources about city services and interact with City government in meaningful ways:

• Connect Chicago is a network of more than 250 places in the city where internet and computer access, digital skills training, and online learning resources are available – for free. Learn more about this project here
• Chicago Works For You is a citywide dashboard with ward-by-ward views of service delivery in Chicago
• Chicago Early Learning is a tool that displays early learning programs and enrollment availability
• Neighborhood Tools is the series of Web sites for residents to find resources across a wide range of human needs

Health

Smart Chicago’s multiple health projects connect access, skills, and data to provide information and allow residents to take action to improve their own health. We are strong advocates for promoting open data practices in the healthcare field.

• Chicago Health Atlas is a place where residents can view citywide information about health trends and take action to improve their own health in their community. Read more about this project here
• Smart Health Centers are traditional and nontraditional healthcare settings with Health IT Navigators to help residents connect to their medical records and find reliable health information on the web
• Foodborne Chicago is a Web site that connects people who complain about food poisoning on Twitter to the people can can help – the Chicago Department of Public Health. An overview of this project can be found here
• Health Data Liberation is a group devoted to helping providers, insurers, and institutions adopt open data practices in health

Education

We are part of multiple projects where we serve as educators for youth to learn about technology and open data. We also act as a liaison to provide resources to tech providers for technology education and skill-building.

• Smart Chicago is part of the Hive Learning Network – a network of civic and cultural institutions dedicated to transforming the learning landscape by creating opportunities for youth to explore their interests through connected learning experiences
• #Civicsummer is a summer program for teens focused on civics, media, and technology. Smart Chicago partners with three Chicago youth-serving organizations – Mikva Challenge, Free Spirit Media, and Adler Planetarium
• We also host a regularly scheduled group for tech providers at our Connect Chicago locations to convene and share resources with one another

Technology Infrastructure

Smart Chicago cares about supporting the development of innovative civic applications that make lives better in Chicago through technology. We maintain a gallery of applications that we host and develop: http://www.smartchicagoapps.org

•  Civic User Testing Group (CUTGroup) is a set of regular Chicago residents who get paid to test out civic apps. We work with civic app developers to design and run a usability test and then share those results with everyone so that better applications are created
• Web hosting services for civic applications on Amazon Web Services and Heroku accounts
• Here is more information about all of Smart Chicago’s Developer Resources

Open Data

We care about a lot of different things, and it is important that all the work we do is in the open, and that we use open data and technologies.

• We share our work and processes on our blog
• Chicago School of Data: an effort to to lead and provide clarity around how data is used to improve lives in Chicago
• Cook County Open Data Partnership is a contract between Smart Chicago and the County of Cook to assist them in the creation and publication of open data in the context of the County’s Open Data Ordinance and Open Government Plan
• OpenGovChicago: meetups around policy, data, and technology
• Illinois Open Technology Challenge 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
• Crime and Punishment in Chicago is an index of data sources surrounding this criminal justice system as it is in Chicago. We track data sources from the commission of the crime all the way to prison. We aggregate sources of data, provide insight into how this data is generated, discuss how to get it, and expose what data is unavailable.