Jim Querry: City of Philadelphia GIS is among country’s best, part of open gov future [Q&A]

Jim Querry at center, with the City of Philadelphia Office of Innovation and Technology GIS services group that he leads, including, starting at his right, GIS specialist Sarah Cordivano, GIS manager Brian Ivey, GIS application developer Adam Conner and system and database manager Julia Jia

In 1996, when Jim Querry started at the then called and still evolving Mayor’s Office of Information Services, there was a single Internet connection, an Apple dial-up tool at 1234 Market Street.

“That’s where you met to get on the web,” he said.

Fifteen years ago, Querry, who now leads the city’s geo-spatial information systems group that is responsible for mapping, tracking and evaluating city services, was joining an effort by some in the city to get ahead of what was already being billed as the digital revolution, a chance to bolster transparency and efficiency of government systems.

The Planning Commission, Querry said, led the charge to put the City of Philadelphia in a position to be setting the standard for what municipal use of GIS could yield.

To create the foundation on which the city’s crime analysis evaluations, trash collection routes and 311 complaint locations are determined, early city leaders chose platform tools from Calfornia-based Esri, now the global gold standard for GIS products. After early hesitance, Philadelphia became a leader in publishing its longitude and latitude-based map layers to state clearinghouse PASDA. By 2000, the city had won the prestigious Esri President’s Award, an honor again earned in 2008 — a two-time win that no other organization or level of government has yet duplicated.

Though other big cities have caught up in the GIS space in the last 10 years and the surging open data movement has captured public attention in other ways, Querry says the City of Philadelphia maintains some of the most dependable map layers around.

If accuracy is at the heart of making impact with data, then, Querry might argue, Philadelphia has a lot of reason to be a leader again.

Below, Querry speaks to Technically Philly, flanked by his young, four-person team, about the past, present and future of city GIS.

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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.]

Gov Fresh Awards 2011: Philly runner-up as City of the Year, wins in four categories

The City of Philadelphia was named a runner-up as City of the Year and was represented in several other categories by other initiatives in the 2011 Gov Fresh Awards, celebrating open government initiatives.

The honors, offered by the three-year-old online news site, followed an outpouring of support in online voting and final decisions by a panel of judges. The City of Philadelphia, which had almost double the number of online votes of second place New York City, lost to the 67th ward after judging and was tied in a runner-up slot with Chicago.

Local data catalog OpenDataPhilly.org won in two categories — Best Government/Citizen Collaboration and Best Open Data Platform — the Code for America team-built ReRoute.It won Best Transit App and the recently unveiled Sheltr.org won Best Social Services App. Runner-up nods were given to ElectNext for Best Civic Startup and Septa.mobi, built by the Devnuts crew.

Updated: As noted in the comments, also the Azavea-built DistrictBuilder tool was a runner-up for the Best Use of Open Source.

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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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.

Vote in OpenDataRace: final days to show support for what city data you want

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.

OpenDataRace: Vote for what City of Philadelphia data set and local nonprofit you want to support

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.

OpenAccessPhilly: civic action group from City of Philadelphia to host forum Oct. 28

A public/private stakeholders group convened by City of Philadelphia representatives charged with moving forward good government initiatives is hosting a day-long forum to develop action for the future.

The OpenAccessPhilly forum, called “Crowdsourcing at the Intersection,” will be held Friday, Oct. 28 at the University City Science Center Quorum space. The winners of the OpenDataRace are scheduled to be announced at then.

RSVP for the free event here.

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OpenDataRace: contest from OpenDataPhilly to partner city data and nonprofits

A new contest launching today solicits votes on what currently obscured city data should be made open.

Dubbed the OpenDataRace by those behind the nascent OpenDataPhilly.org, the project this month solicits nominations of civic-orientated city data sets paired with relevant nonprofit missions. Next month, votes will be cast trumpeting what data sets most interest Philadelphians, with $3,500 in small cash prizes for the nonprofits connected to the three winning entries.

Find the brief nomination form HERE.

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Esri highlights OpenDataPhilly and technology behind Azavea-built project

GIS leaders Esri highlights OpenDataPhilly:

Through the OpenDataPhilly website, the City of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, now provides access to over 100 datasets, applications, and APIs containing authoritative regional information on a wide variety of topics. The site includes a series of map services built with ArcGIS technology from Esri that offer data and imagery related to census tracts, political wards, crime incidents, hydrology, evacuation routes, bicycle networks, and more.

Deb Boyer of Azavea noted a few new open data projects added to the site this week:

• Phind It For Me – http://opendataphilly.org/opendata/resource/166/phind-it-for-me [Technically Philly coverage]
• DisasterMapper.com – http://opendataphilly.org/opendata/resource/160/disastermappercom [Technically Philly coverage]
• Property Owner Search – http://opendataphilly.org/opendata/resource/161/property-owner-search [Technically Philly coverage]
• Philadelphia Dance Calendars – http://opendataphilly.org/opendata/resource/69/philadelphia-dance-calendars/
• Philly Dance Spaces and Dance Directory – http://opendataphilly.org/opendata/resource/165/philly-dance-spaces-and-dance-directory/
• Census Tracts (2010) – http://opendataphilly.org/opendata/resource/164/census-tracts-2010/
• Street Centerlines API – http://opendataphilly.org/opendata/resource/39/street-centerlines/
• Trulia Crime Maps – http://opendataphilly.org/opendata/resource/163/trulia-crime-maps-phila-only/