A year in review of the open government movement in Philadelphia from Tropo developer Mark Headd:
Also, O’Reilly Media’s Open Gov correspondent Alex Howard gave a broader year in review, noting Philadelphia’s role in scalable solutions.
[Full Disclosure: Tropo has been a past Philly Tech Week sponsor and this post mentions this reporter.]
Developer Reed Lauber presents NEXTSepta, his application using the SEPTA real time API. A dozen other projects were displayed at the showcase inside SEPTA headquarters to a roomful of transit agency officials.
Those in the open gov movement call it ‘evangelizing.’
By not letting technology be the end but the beginning and taking projects to decision makers to improve alternatives, the civic-minded technologist can make development easier for the next guy (or gal). Philadelphia has seen much more of that in the last year. Friday marked another installment.
More than a dozen local transit application developers held captive an audience of more than 40 SEPTA officials with a clear message: keep providing stable, real-time APIs and related data sources, and we’ll keep building cool, useful tools that the public will use.
The SEPTA developer showcase, organized by the transit agency emerging technologies lead Mike Zaleski, was a follow up to the October Apps for SEPTA hackathon, which Zaleski and SEPTA endorsed and was organized by Voxeo Labs hacker Mark Headd and the Devnuts crew. [Full Disclosure: Technically Philly was a sponsor of the hackathon.]
The OpenAccessPhilly public-private, open gov movement highlighted by April’s OpenDataPhilly.org launch, has helped spur another group in Tennessee.
Months after OpenDataPhilly.org was discussed at the Chaos Conference in Berlin, a group of civic hackers and good government-minded officials used the site’s open source framework built by Azavea to launch OpenChattanooga.com.
Visit OpenChattannooga here.
The site was built during the 48 Hour Launch program from the Company Lab this past weekend and organized by Tim Moreland, an analyst with the Chattanooga-Hamilton County Regional Planning Agency, and Teal Thibaud, a communications director at community vision group Chatanooga STAND.
“Right now Open Chattanooga is just a collection of interested individuals without any formalized structure or support. The group consists of city employees, nonprofit organizations, interested citizens, local tech geeks and people in higher education to name a few,” Moreland tells Technically Philly.
Mayor's office representative Jeff Friedman and Fuzebox consultant Paul Wright kickoff the OpenAccessPhilly forum.
How technology and civic participation intersect in Philadelphia was the central focus of a forum hosted Friday by the OpenAccessPhilly public/private stakeholders group.
Held at the University City Science Center Quorum space, a variety of city and private speakers gave five minute presentations on the work they were doing relevant to the group’s mission of citizen-driven change infused with technology, part of the evolution of the Digital Philadelphia plan from the city’s IT agency.
Those at the podium included Mayor Michael Nutter, communications director Desiree Peterkin Bell, whom we interviewed Friday, new Chief Innovation Officer Adel Ebeid, Dell Boomi general manager Bob Moul, Independents Hall co-founder Alex Hillman and Azavea president Robert Cheetham, who announced the winners of the OpenDataRace.
Three data sets have been announced as winning the most support in the OpenDataRace, a month-long call for Philadelphians to vote for what nominated city information they most seek.
First place, with 596 votes, went to the Public School Notebook, which called for the National Student Clearinghouse Data for Philadelphia, which tracks college attendance from School District students. The Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia’s ask for police data on reported bike thefts by address came in second, with 553 votes, and a vacant land data request from Conservation Pennsylvania came in second with just 295 votes.
The three nonprofits will be awarded $3,000, $2,000 and $1,000 respectively and, more importantly, the organizers behind the event and OpenDataPhilly.org — Azavea, the William Penn Foundation, NPower and, full disclosure, Technically Philly — will seek out the regular release of these data sources by the city. To be sure, all of this data can be requested on a one-off basis on the grounds of freedom of information act requirements, but the initiative seeks more on-going efforts. See the city’s Open Records law details here [PDF].
Overall, people cast 2,445 votes, and the site’s registered users grew from 222 to 2,628, said Azavea project manager Deb Boyer.
The race had recently been covered by TechSoup, the Philadelphia Business Journal and Generocity.
Cast your vote in the last days of the OpenDataRace, the contest that aims to get a sense of what city data most interests Philadelphians.The voting closes Thursday night.
Vote at opendataphilly.org/contest.
Nonprofits nominated some two dozen data sets related to their mission. Find more background on the contest here.
The top three winners will be announced at Friday’s OpenAccessPhilly forum, and small cash prizes will be given to the related nonprofits.
Then, the contests organizers — Azavea, NPower, the William Penn Foundation and, full disclosure, Technically Philly — will work with the city to highlight methods to release that city data.
The Philadelphia version of Change by Us, the “online marketplace for volunteer initiatives” built by a firm from the 67th ward, has launched in beta.
VISIT IT HERE.
The web tool asks users to submit project ideas for their neighborhoods or the city — think ‘plant more trees in Brewerytown’ or ‘convert a portion of the Reading Vidauct to an elevated park’– and to connect and collaborate on suggestions from others. The concept is that city officials and other decision makers would monitor the site to garner insight about what projects have community buy-in. Short of official support, residents can organize and act on their own.
The local version is being developed by the Code for America fellows. See more features listed on the CFA Google Group here.
What ideas will you submit? How can this project be improved in future versions? Do you think any real action will come out of this?
The OpenDataRace, a contest to show support for the release of City of Philadelphia data and the nonprofit missions that need it, has launched open voting. Technically Philly first reported on the contest here.
With an OpenDataPhilly.org registration, users can vote for a single data set — of 21 selected from more than 30 nominated — once a week through the month of October. At the end of voting, three small cash prizes will be given to the nonprofits that nominated the top data sets, and contest organizers will work with the city to have that data released.
VOTE FOR YOUR DATA SET HERE.
The OpenDataRace organizers are Azavea, which built the site, NPower, the William Penn Foundation and, full disclosure, Technically Philly.
An update from Code for America on a national project around civic apps:
Apps for Communities challenges developers and designers with creating apps that improve daily life in cities by making local public information more personalized, usable, and actionable. Led by the FCC and the Knight Foundation, the apps contest is has had over 45 submissions so far, and the deadline is approaching: October 3!
Read more and download the report here. The Business Insider graded the report here.
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