As of today, Friday, May 27, 2016, I am leaving my position as Executive Director of the Smart Chicago Collaborative.
Kyla Williams has been appointed Interim Executive Director. She has been with the organization since December 2011. She is a wellspring of knowledge and has been a key person in nearly every program we run. You can contact Kyla at kwilliams@cct.org.
Please contact Kyla Williams at kwilliams@cct.org with any questions, comments and concerns.
On a personal note, I look forward to keeping up with you— find me over here on Twitter and see my writing here. Otherwise, I greatly look forward to seeing the great work of Smart Chicago continue!
Love, Daniel X. O’Neil & the Smart Chicago Collaborative
Glynis is a Master of Public Policy candidate at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government where she has been transitioning from international development work to focus on helping local governments make the best use of data and technology. Before arriving at the Kennedy School she was a Research Analyst for Innovations for Poverty Action, working on randomized control trial program evaluations for poverty reduction interventions.
Please join us in welcoming Glynis Startz. Follow her @glssea on Twitter!
Leslie Durr joins the Smart Chicago Collaborative as a Project Coordinator.She will serve as the point person for projects including Chicago Health Atlas, Smart Health Centers, Foodborne, Hive Learning Networks and Youth-Led Tech. She will also be working to add several new projects to our portfolio.
Her experience includes program development and grant management in the non-profit sector, most recently with the Southland Health Care Forum as the Project Director for the State of Illinois Get Covered Campaign.
Leslie has her Master of Science in Human Service Administration from Spertus College and Bachelor of Science in Mass Communications from Jackson State University.
Smart Chicago has always relied on small teams. Now we’re doing an organization-wide evaluation of our work. This photo is from November 2014.
For the last few months, Smart Chicago has been engaged with our partner ORS Impact to “conduct an evaluation of the Smart Chicago Collaborative’s programs and facilitate a robust strategy development process”.
Purpose of Evaluation
Smart Chicago has reached a time in its evolution when it is ready to take a step back and think critically about its path forward. A clear evaluation of what has been accomplished from inception to the present, coupled with a robust strategy development process, will help Smart Chicago make decisions about goals, growth, funding, structure, governance, partnerships, and programmatic strategies aligned with the specific outcomes and impact that Smart Chicago wants to achieve.
This document is focused on the first part of this project, which is the evaluation design phase. The evaluation findings will inform a subsequent strategy development process. ORS Impact has been contracted to help with both the evaluation and the strategy development process.
Key Evaluation Questions
The evaluation is designed to answer the following key questions:
What roles has Smart Chicago played within the community over the past four years?
What contributions has Smart Chicago made in the space in which it has operated?
Toward specific goals
On other actors in the community
On the ecosystem
What work has been most effective and why?
What has not been working well and why?
How has the Chicago-area landscape in which Smart Chicago operates changed over the past four years, and what are the implications for Smart Chicago?
Together, the answers to these questions will inform the strategy going forward.
In this context, consultants from ORS Impact will be kicking off interviews with dozens of Smart Chicago stakeholders.
We’ve settled on a number of representative projects to frame these discussions:
Today our partner, Uturn Data Solutions, launched Open Grid for Smart Cities, with support from Smart Chicago.
Here’s a snip from Uturn’s press release:
Today, Uturn Data Solutions, a Chicago-based Amazon Web Services (AWS) Consulting Partner in the AWS Partner Network (APN), in partnership with Smart Chicago Collaborative, launched a new civic tech product in AWS Marketplace: OpenGrid for Smart Cities. Based on an open source project by the City of Chicago, Uturn has optimized and packaged OpenGrid as an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) making it easy for any city to adopt the platform for its own use and quickly deploy it on the AWS Cloud.
OpenGrid AMI on the AWS Marketplace is an interactive, map-based platform to explore publicly-available open data sets in an easy-to-use-interface. OpenGrid enables municipalities to offer residents, businesses and communities a better way to interact with public data. Users can perform advanced queries to filter data and search within custom boundaries or based on the user’s location.
For a monthly subscription fee of $750.00, and by following these setup instructions, you can have a fully-functional map-best website in your city.
OpenGrid enables municipalities to offer residents, businesses, and communities a better way to explore and interact with publicly-available data about their city or region. It was originally developed for internal use by the City of Chicago as a way to gain situational awareness by viewing information from different city agencies on a single map.
In January 2016, Uturn and Smart Chicago created opengrid.io, the first publicly-accessible version of OpenGrid with data from Chicago’s Open Data Portal. “We wanted to create a new model for open data and civic technology that can be replicated in other cities and organizations,” said Dan O’Neil, Executive Director at Smart Chicago Collaborative, a civic organization devoted to improving residents’ lives in Chicago through technology. “Now, instead of forking code and paying developers for custom implementations, people can just complete a form and put existing software to work immediately.” Funding for the development of opengrid.io was provided by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and through Smart Chicago’s Developer Resources Program, with support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
“The code for OpenGrid is available online but adopting open-source solutions still requires in-house expertise and infrastructure to host the application,” said Tom Schenk, Chief Data Officer for the City of Chicago. “The OpenGrid AMI enables any city to start using the platform with a click from AWS Marketplace so they can quickly deploy on a low-cost infrastructure. We hope to move the needle from producing open source software to thinking about how it can be easier to adopt and reuse.”
Increasingly, governments, public institutions, and commercial organizations are looking for ways to be more agile as well as save money. “The AWS Marketplace 1-Click® deployment model gives both commercial and public sector customers the ability to use software running on the cloud, without having to make large capital acquisitions”, said Adam Dillman, Founder and Managing Partner at Uturn Data Solutions. “Uturn Data Solutions will provide technical support including the latest updates and releases to OpenGrid customers as part of their paid subscription. Uturn also offers consulting services to help organizations get the most out of OpenGrid and further expand their data capabilities.”
A focus on all, not just the most technical people
As we’ve grown, we’ve moved away from a focus on the highest-capacity tech people in the space. That move was pretty well-covered here in Civicist: The Real Heart of Civic Tech Isn’t Code. We simply think there is more good to be had by focusing on minting new tech workers in programs like Smart Health Centers, Documenters, and Youth-Led Tech.
An unprecedented technical infrastructure program
Yet we continue to quietly serve the needs of developers— in the footer, without fanfare, for free. Again, no other organization— local or national— has anything like this program. Some of the best developers in the city—Chris Gansen and Scott Robbin— have run it for us over the years, and we’ve been helpful to dozens of local developers.
Uturn Data Solutions has been maintaining the Developer Resources program for the last year or so. Amazon introduced us to Uturn because we were the largest customer in their government division— that’s no small measure of impact. Uturn continues to help us grow the program, as the Illinois Sunshine project from the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform is coming on board this month, adding more tech to our infrastructure.
We can’t ignore the lack of impact for civic tech tools
But I have watched with growing concern the lack of impact of pure tech. The tools we’ve made in civic tech have, frankly, not amounted to much. There are no break-out successes with millions of users. There is very slow uptake and re-use of new tools. And yet we still code.
I think there are a number of modes of operation that preclude big impact— holding our events on the high floors of expensive downtown real estate, for instance. This keeps us far away from people in need.
Another reason is the way we propagate our work product.
Civic tech people love code. They love making code, they love talking about code amongst themselves, and they love publishing code on Github. The culture, since the inception of our movement, has been focused on code and tech rather than functionality and need.
This means that in order for a non-technical person to duplicate the functionality they see in a new “fork our code!” website, they have to hire a developer to do so. There’s just too much friction here— we have to fix it.
Amazon’s AWS Marketplace is better than Github for deploying civic tech websites
An Amazon Machine Image (AMI) contains all the information necessary to boot an Amazon EC2 instance with your software. An AMI is like a template of a computer’s root volume. For example, an AMI might contain the software to act as a web server (Linux, Apache, and your web site) or it might contain the software to act as a Hadoop node (Linux, Hadoop, and a custom application)
From our perspective, an AMI is just a Github bucket that delivers on the promise of the raw code. We can conflate the two separate tasks we’ve been supporting for years (helping developers create code and helping organizations host their sites) into one simple experience.
AWS Marketplace is an online store that helps customers find, buy, and immediately start using the software and services they need. To date, it has been used mainly for pieces of functionality that corporations need to run an IT infrastructure— security, business processes, Sharepoint, whatever.
But when I look at the AWS Marketplace, I see a new way to get the great work we’ve done in civic tech in the hands of the people who need it most. With a software product listed in the AWS Marketplace, anyone can set up their own site by providing a credit card and filling out a form.
This week, Uturn Data Solutions, in partnership with Smart Chicago, will be launching their first civic tech AMI in the AWS marketplace. It will be the first, but hopefully not last, civic tech product of this kind to be packaged and distributed this way. A change for the better, stay tuned for more!”
I believe in the power of bringing regular Chicago residents together to plan our collective future. I also believe it’s easy to have easy conversations— to create a private space among friends to talk about and celebrate our shared work.
But we just can’t afford to do that in Chicago today. We are in the middle of a series of crises around policing, education, the use of public space, and how to pay for the things we need. On The Table is far too important a tool to use for discussions that don’t go to the core.
The October 20, 2014 shooting death of Laquan McDonald at 4100 S. Pulaski was a seminal event in this city. The reverberations are still being felt in the publication of recommendations from the Chicago Police Accountability Task Force, in the Pattern or Practice Investigation being conducted by the Department of Justice, and in continued protests in the streets and at the doors of power. This conversation will focus on one aspect of power: video surveillance. Our venue will be the Burger King where 86 minutes of recording went missing on the morning after McDonald’s death.
Today marks the launch of a new project, Task Force Tracker: “an annotated, updated and independent hub for public use that will measure the ~200 individual recommendations against existing contracts, policies, potential conflicts and public discourse; such as the Fraternal Order of Police contract, local legislation and media reports.”
The result, a little more than a week later, is this independent project by two of the most principled journalism outfits in the country, working to bring community voice to bear on some of the most important issues we face in this city.
One of the first speakers of the first community forums that we documented held by the Chicago Police Accountability Task Force said something that has stuck with me:
“I’m going to put it where the goats can get it — at the heart of this is racism and racist officers and their behavior.”
It stuck with me because it is such a good approach— if you want someone to hear your message, you have to put it where they are and make it easy to consume. It also stuck with me because what this resident said maps the thrust of the actual task force report, which wrote, “We arrived at this point in part because of racism.”
When there is communion— when we are all working from the same foundation, when we’re all talking, with specificity, about the same ideas and approaches— we win, together. This project, in my view, helps bring that communion.
This work was done in the context of our KCICDeep Dive, where we are part of a Knight Foundation cohort representing a diverse set of approaches to expanding community information and increasing community engagement.
Brenna Berman speaks at the launch of Connect Chicago.
Today we launched Connect Chicago, our initiative to make Chicago the most skilled and connected digital city in America. Following is a roundup of the day.
MAYOR EMANUEL LAUNCHES CONNECT CHICAGO INITIATIVE TO HELP CLOSE THE DIGITAL DIVIDE IN CHICAGO
Initiative Will Make Digital Skills Training Available at Nearly All Chicago Public Libraries
Mayor Rahm Emanuel and a coalition of public and private partners today launched Connect Chicago — a civic leadership initiative to make Chicago the most skilled and connected digital city in America. Connect Chicago will expand digital skills training throughout the city, and to nearly all Chicago Public Library locations.
“By teaching digital skills, we give Chicago a stronger and more dynamic economy,” Mayor Emanuel said. “Connect Chicago will allow us to expand digital skills training throughout the city and benefit residents of all ages in every neighborhood.”
Connect Chicago will expand digital access and training resources across the city by expanding evidence-based programs in partnership with trusted institutions with a history of serving low-income Chicagoans. Initial investments announced today include the citywide expansion the Chicago Public Library’s CyberNavigator program, which provides computer tutors who help provide access to information resources for adults and youth. The expansion will take CyberNavigators from 48 public library branches to nearly all of the 80 branches across the city, creating an additional 350-400 new training hours per week across Chicago.
“The Library has made it a priority to provide critical tools and resources for adults to learn digital skills,” said Chicago Public Libraries Commissioner Brian Bannon. “This exciting collaborative approach will allow CPL to serve as an access point to digital skills in every neighborhood, through our 80 locations across the city.”
Connect Chicago will also fund the integration of digital skills training into Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) Chicago Financial Opportunity Centers’ programming. Under this investment, LISC Chicago projects to train 1,000 more residents in digital skills during 2016 – 50 percent more than their current capacity. In 2011, LISC Chicago found that patrons who participated in digital skill training alongside other support services at financial opportunity centers were 50 percent more likely to get a job than those that didn’t.
Connect Chicago is the next chapter in Chicago’s commitment to digital access and skills. It is rooted in two recent citywide plans created under Mayor Emanuel’s leadership: the City of Chicago Tech Plan as well as World Business Chicago’s Plan for Economic Growth & Jobs.
“Through investments in coordination, programs, and innovation, we believe Connect Chicago will expand and sustain a thriving digital ecosystem that unleashes Chicago’s economic potential and improves the lives of its residents,” said Jeff Malehorn, President and CEO of World Business Chicago.
Connect Chicago brings together the public and private sectors to focus on neighborhood economic development. Private sector partners include Cisco, Clarity Partners, Comcast, Get IN Chicago, Gogo, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Microsoft, Motorola Mobility Foundation, The Otho S.A. Sprague Memorial Institute, and Sprint. Over the next three years, Connect Chicago aims to raise at least $10 million to strengthen Chicago’s digital foundations and expand this network of programming.
“By bringing these partners together, we are able to do something unique for Chicago,” said Dan X. O’Neil, executive director, Smart Chicago Collaborative. “It allows an unprecedented alignment and coordination of the city’s technology assets.”
“Internet access is important, because it helps kids succeed in school and families participate more fully in their communities and in the economy,” said Matthew Summy, Comcast’s regional vice president of External and Government Affairs. “Comcast is deeply committed to closing the digital divide and to that end in 2011 launched the nation’s largest broadband adoption program for low-income families, Internet Essentials. Since then, nearly 35,000 Chicago families – or about 140,000 individuals – have gained access to the Internet at home through the program.”
“Connect Chicago is a shining example of Chicago’s commitment to digital access and skills,” said Shelley Stern Grach, Director of Technology and Civic Engagement at Microsoft. “We’re proud to be a founding supporter of this innovative initiative to expand 21st century resources across our city.”
The citywide expansion of CyberNavigators through Connect Chicago builds on the support of the Chicago Public Library Foundation, which has supported the CyberNavigator Program since 1998. There is high demand for CyberNavigator assistance across the city. The expansion will take CyberNavigators from 48 public library branches to over 75 branches, creating an additional 350-400 new training hours per week across Chicago.
By Marwa Eltagouri, Chicago Tribune In 2013, broadband adoption on home computers and devices was lowest in neighborhoods such as West Garfield Park, Burnside and Brighton Park, as well as other African-American and Latino neighborhoods where poverty rates are high, according to the study. While the majority of people without broadband still connect to the Internet with their smartphones or public computers, the research showed they’re limited in their Internet use and are far less likely to use online courses or access online job applications.
By Mike Krauser “It’s not dependent on your zip code, it’s not dependent on your neighborhood, it’s not dependent on your race or income,” Emanuel said. “Everybody will have the access to be part of the 21st century in the sense of what technology is and be conversant.”
Today 
Today our partner, Uturn Data Solutions, launched 
