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/

OpenDataPhilly.org source code released

Philadelphia’s open municipal data portal is, transparently enough, now available as an open source download.

GIS firm Azavea announced this morning that it has made available the source code for OpenDataPhilly.org on Github.

The organization is providing the code, written in Django, Python and PostgreSQL, and has renamed the source more generally as the Open Data Catalog, to empower other municipal organizations to create their own central locations for data, according to a press release.

OpenDataPhilly.org launched in April during Philly Tech Week, one of the week’s signature events. It currently houses more than 100 datasets from around the region, and exists as an open catalog of information that anyone can submit to. See our full coverage of the open data initiative. [Full Disclosure: Technically Philly is an OpenDataPhilly partner organization.]

According to a statement from Azavea founder Robert Cheetham, the company wants to “encourage organizations or municipalities to build their own catalogs in order to enable technology communities throughout the world to transform rows of text, numbers and shapes into applications and visualizations.”

Add that to Azavea’s other open source projects which are available, including OpenTreeMap.

Neil Kleinman on OpenDataPhilly: “it is not be too late to demand that we have the right to know who is looking”

As OpenDataPhilly.org moves on, adding new data sets from the City of Philadelphia and other civic agencies, privacy concerns are clear.

While no data on individuals, health providers, crime reports or other particularly sensitive material is included in the data catalog, University of the Arts Professor Neil Kleinman shared the following thoughts last month:

This New York Times article [on the sensitivity of personal data breaches] reminds us of issues we need to face as Open Data Philly moves along.

Open Data Philly promises much in the way of citizen participation in the details of the city – what works, what doesn’t, and what needs to be monitored. It promises the ultimate in a system of checks and balances. It opens up the possibility of a new generation of citizen journalists, who can investigate the business of the city and the Feds without extraordinary access to resources.

Connecting people to data” is good. But let’s remember that corporations are people too. Just like us, they have access to “the data” – both public and private – collected in the course of doing business with the city or the federal governments.

Privacy may be dead. But it is not be too late to demand that we have the right to know who is looking.

This is something the European Union understands. It has been developing guidelines that give individuals the right to know when someone has been poking around in their data – who’s doing it and why. For lots of reasons, the United States has not taken such an approach. When are we going to begin?

Disaster Mapper, Philly SNAP star at Random Hacks of Kindness Philadelphia [VIDEO]

One half of the teams at Random Hacks of Kindness Philadlephia, held June 4-5, 2011. Photo by by Philip Neuffer

The first Philadelphia Random Hacks of Kindness featured six teams working on at least that many projects, including three that were awarded special recognition by judges this weekend.

The weekend-long hackathon focused on climate change and disaster relief management was held at Drexel University and organized by Drexel computer science PhD student Mike Brennan, partnered with Technically Philly. After a kickoff reception at Indy Hall, as many as 50 coders, designers and subject matter experts arrived Saturday morning at Drexel’s computer science building on JFK Boulevard. Photos of the event here.

[Full disclosure: Technically Philly co-organized Random Hacks and this reporter was an event judge.]

Find the three featured hacks and other projects built during the weekend, in addition to getting a video tour of the end of Saturday’s hacking.

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What problems can we solve during Random Hacks of Kindness this weekend?

This weekend, June 4-5, Random Hacks of Kindness will bring together hackers, developers, coders and designers to build at Drexel University, as we told you last month. RSVP here.

This Friday night, at Indy Hall, we want you all to come grab a (free) beer and talk about what we can accomplish — whether you have any development background or not. Free reservation here.

The international weekend hackathon is targeted for practical open source solutions to disaster risk management and climate change adaptation challenges and here in Philadelphia we’re using the recently unveiled resource OpenDataPhilly.org as inspiration. [Full Disclosure: Technically Philly is co-organizing Random Hacks with Drexel PhD student Michael Brennan.]

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Random Hacks of Kindness: hackathon led by Michael Brennan, sponsored by Drexel University and Technically Philly

A 2009 California Random Hacks of Kindness event

Updated: Friday June 3 reception will now take place at Indy Hall.

Michael Brennan owns a big, old West Philadelphia rowhome. He runs a tiny DIY record label.

He also wants to solve global problems with data and technology in small ways. So, when he heard about plans for the third national Random Hacks of Kindness, a weekend hackathon of coders and developers developing practical open source solutions to disaster risk management and climate change adaptation challenges, he thought Philadelphia needed to take part.

REGISTER HERE

“There needs to be a stronger connection between the technology community and the broader problems happening in the world,” said Brennan, 28, a PhD candidate in the Computer Science Department at Drexel University and a technologist for the Division of Privacy and Identity Protection at the Federal Trade Commission. “I don’t think there’s been enough focus on bringing computer scientists and coders into the room for big problems, here or anywhere.”

So Brennan has taken the lead with Random Hacks of Kindness Philadelphia, co-sponsored by Drexel University and Technically Philly, to be held the weekend of June 4 and 5 and kicked off with a Friday, June 3 reception presented by Technically Philly and coworking space Indy Hall.

The reception will be an opportunity for those without the specific technical know-how to use data in interesting ways to be able to come with ideas about what projects could be broadly useful.

Brennan, a native of Long Island and University of Delaware alumnus, is passionate about being a part of the growing development scene here. “Philadelphia is my chosen home,” he says.

“There’s a large tech and a large nonprofit and academic community here and the strong links are coming together,” Brennan said. “I think this can be part of the common ground.”

Mural Guide application finds, details Philly’s ample outdoor art, built with OpenDataPhilly

An iPhone rendering of the Philly Mural Guide, which can be visited on any smart phone or web browser. Click to visit.

OpenDataPhilly.org was unveiled with a roar last Monday as part of Philly Tech Week. But while a catalog of regional data, APIs and applications is a treasure trove to some, it’s a brick wall to many others.

Data, thou art inscrutable.

As a better example of why releasing data is important, two Code for America fellows with help from a third developed and launched the Philadelphia Mural Guide app. Aaron Ogle and John Mertens, with Mjumbe Poe, used the MuralFarm collection of locations, images and other information on the city’s expansive outdoor art, to develop the project. The app received enough attention that Web 2.0 star Tim O’Reilly tweeted its grandeur.

“It’s a web-based application that can be viewed from a mobile device or desktop browser,” says Jeff Friedman, recently named Mayor Nutter’s Manager of Civic Innovation and Participation, noting it also shares details and images of included pieces. “It will locate your position on a map and your proximity to mural artwork in Philadelphia.”

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DATA CRUNCHED: All that’s needed to jump start an open data movement is a city government that doesn’t stand in the way

If you were going to judge the City of Philadelphia’s involvement in the buzzy good government movement of the past five years, you’d need some way to evaluate how much of its agency data is shared. Until the launch of OpenDataPhilly.org this afternoon, it’s not entirely clear where you would have started.

The web and its users, some progressive governments and their constituents have all conspired together in the past half decade to set a precedent troubling for others: the data and information, numbers and calculations, charts and graphs that government institutions have collected for a century or two should be made available for public consumption.

The city governments of Washington D.C., San Francisco and London are leading the way, creating agency workflow that incorporates the Internet and uses it to share its practices and data collection as a norm.

This year, New York City followed its BigApps contest — built to spur third-party development around city data — by unveiling a real-time 311 request map and plans to put QR codes on building permits by 2013. Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake signed an executive order compelling agencies to post its data online, and Raleigh, N.C. has made a case for open source technology.

More broadly, the Canadian federal government has launched a data catalog of its own, following Data.gov, championed by the Obama administration.

Now, with the April 25 unveiling of OpenDataPhilly.org, the City of Philadelphia has made a great, albeit perhaps belated, step forward. The puzzling part seems to be how little the city actually had to do with it.

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OpenDataPhilly.org: city data catalog to launch April 25 during Philly Tech Week

The City of Philadelphia already publicly shares a considerable amount of data and information, but there has never been a reliable place to find what’s available, request more and learn what’s coming, says Robert Cheetham. That’s about to change.

As part of Philly Tech Week on April 25, Azavea, the GIS application development company Cheetham founded, will unveil OpenDataPhilly.org. The searchable site will aim to be the resource for all relevant, civic-orientated tools, applications, data and information in the region from both governmental and non-government groups. Technically Philly and WHYY are also partnering on the project, which has the support of the City of Philadelphia’s Division of Technology.

“Philadelphia has had many public data sources for more than 10 years, but there hasn’t been a place to bring it all together,” Cheetham says. “This is intended to do that, thereby making it easier for developers and other people to use that data in useful and inspiring ways.”

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