What Philadelphia officer makes the most DUI arrests?: Philly Rap Sheet municipal court web scraper launches more features

When Philly Rap Sheet came out last October Technically Philly reported that the municipal court system web scraper was a little light on features. Not anymore.

This week Philly Rap Sheet creator Andrew McGill announced a collection of new updates including more detailed search options, district number of the arrest, and, perhaps most interesting to Philadelphia crime trackers, a new statistical number cruncher (pictured above) that puts the data in perspective.

“Want to know which police officer makes the most DUI arrests? It’s Gregory Dixon Jr. Or which age group shoplifted the most in 2012? 45-year-olds,” said McGill in an email to the press.

There’s more to look forward to, McGill says. Plans to include a mapping tool, historical arrest data back to 1995 and email alerts — for the serious crime wonks — are in the works.

Georgia Inst. of Technology researchers use SEPTA as case study for open transit data implementation in Atlanta

Chart from Georgia Institute of Technology researchers' PowerPoint presentation based on findings from the report.

Open data researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology looked to Philadelphia as an example in a new report analyzing how open transit data could improve the public transportation experience for riders in Atlanta.

Graduate researcher and co-author James Wong interviewed SEPTA officials in an effort to understand how the transit agency worked with developers to build transit applications, he told Technically Philly. The report, “Enabling Transit Solutions: A Case for Open Data,” included case studies of four other transit agencies in major cities including San Francisco, New York, Chicago and Boston.

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OpenDataPhilly: new updates include bicycle rack data, Septa API, city spatial data [UPDATED]

A map of bicycle rack locations, as provided by developer Mark Headd.

Several new data sets, including bicycle rack locations, have been added to OpenDataPhilly in recent months, says Deb Boyer, the Azavea project manager at the GIS development shop Azavea that built the searchable resource of civic data.

Some of the updates were motivated by requests sent into the OpenDataRace, which Technically Philly covered previously and, full disclosure, helped launch.

Here are some of the most recent updates:

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Mayor Nutter visits Code Across America civic hackathon, Lobbying.ph wins first place [VIDEO]

Left to right: Ryan Resella, Michelle Lee, Mayor Nutter, Alex Yule, Liz Hunt, Kevin Curry (Ryan Resella is Tech Lead at CfA, Kevin Curry is Program Director, Code for America Brigade) Photo Credit: Andrew Zahn

If there was ever going to be any friendly competition between the Code for America 2011 fellows and this year’s Code for America crew, the sudden appearance of Mayor Michael Nutter at the Code Across America Civic Hackathon on Saturday probably gave the 2012 fellows — Michelle Lee, Liz Hunt, and Alex Yule — an edge.

“When the Mayor shows up at your hackathon, you know that your city has a civic hacking culture,” said Voxeo Labs developer Mark Headd, who judged the demonstrations.

The hackathon was hosted, for the second year, in the offices of Azavea, the geospatial analysis and development firm based in Callowhill. Mayor Nutter’s arrival in the converted factory office might have put the cap on what was already an unconventional hackathon, as numerous participants commented to Technically Philly.

“We have a lot of policy people actually in our group,” said Indy Hall developer and Young Involved Philadelphia board member Salas Saraiya, who was working in a large group focused on crowdsourcing information on vacant lands in Philadelphia. “It’s weird because usually hackathons are 90 percent developers and you really need the subject matter experts, but this one is inverted somehow.”

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Second generation Code for America fellows benefit from example set by predecessors

The 2012 Philadelphia Code for America fellows: Michelle Lee, Alex Yule and Liz Hunt

For the second straight February, a pack of Code for America fellows is making its presence known throughout civic life in Philadelphia, particularly around technology, in a very simple way: showing up, a lot.

The three 2012 fellows dedicated to the City of Philadelphia — Michelle Lee, Alex Yule and Liz Hunt — only have a week left to learn the ins and outs of this local government and its citizen allies before they return to San Francisco for the rest of their fellowship, but lucky for them, their path has been paved before.

Philadelphia is the only city to host two generations of CfA fellows and so far, and the new fellows think the lineage has been an asset.

“Having an understanding of the players and bringing them into the same room has been an advantage as a second year city.” said Lee, who had lived in Philadelphia prior to becoming a fellow.

In Philadelphia, a city notorious for fierce loyalty to its own, that’s no surprise.

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Open gov movement in Philadelphia: year in review post from Mark Headd

A year in review of the open government movement in Philadelphia from Tropo developer Mark Headd:

The time of year-end reviews and top 10 lists is now upon us, so I’m compiling the details of a watershed year for open data and civic hacking in two cities where I’ve seen huge leaps made in 2011 – Philadelphia and Baltimore.

In this first installment, I’ll focus on the “City of Brotherly Love” and highlight some of the events and developments of the past year that made it such a special one for the open government movement there.

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.]

SEPTA developer showcase puts realtime schedule apps on display for transit agency officials [VIDEO]

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.]

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Open Chattanooga: open data catalog for Tennessee city uses OpenDataPhilly source code from Azavea

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.

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OpenAccessPhilly forum brings civic technology leaders together

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.

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Reported bike thefts, vacant land and college attendance records win 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.