The Smart Chicago Collaborative has a partnership with the Cook County Bureau of Technology to assist them in the creation and publication of open data in the context of the County’s Open Data Ordinance and Open Government Plan.
It’s been about six months since the start of the project, and so we wanted to check back in at the progress that’s been made.
I spoke at City Club on Monday, September 8, 2014. Here’s a video:
Daniel X. O’Neil, Executive Director, Smart Chicago Collaborative from City Club of Chicago on Vimeo.
Here’s the slides:
Sean Thornton has a great post this morning on the Ash Center at Harvard Kennedy School Data-Smart City Solutions Blog: The Chicago School of Data: Building a Framework for Chicago’s Data Ecosystem. Here’s a snip:
There’s the Chicago school of architecture, made famous by Daniel Burnham and Louis Sullivan. The Chicago school of economics, led by Milton Friedman and other economists, has been a highly influential body of thought for decades. The Chicago school of sociology, meanwhile, led by George Herbert Meade and Jane Addams, ushered in modern urban sociological study.
Of course, these disciplines, styles and approaches have little in common other than being developed in Chicago. They were also all largely developed in the 20th century, and are all alive and well today.
The Chicago School of Data is less of an academic discipline and more of a method for cooperative, data-driven progress united by one key principle—that data, as public good, is one that is at the service of all people, not a select few or special interests. Moreover, that cooperative method doesn’t require its players to be major organizations or government bodies; any resident who uses data or works to improve lives is a part of the Chicago School of Data.
This is the best explication of the phrase I’ve heard yet. Bonus: my pic!
Today Smart Chicago was featured in this story in the Columbia Journalism Review: “How civic hackers are helping local journalism“. Here’s a snip:
“We are trying to create and encourage an alignment among all of the amazing players in this movement, so that what they create leads to products and services that people truly need,” says O’Neil, who was also one of the convenors of an early meet-up group, now called Open Government Chicago(-land). “When you move from [working on] ‘projects’ to ‘products,’ you can make an impact. And you can sustain your work.”
This is a core element in how we approach our work. If we don’t start creating popular products that people love, our movement will fade. We’ve been a leader in thinking around this, and we challenge the community to build break-out products.
That’s why we support the workers in the civic innovation sector of the technology industry. Sign up for our Developer Resources today.
This post is the first in a series that take a deep dive into some of our sessions. These sessions are an opportunity to discuss some of the greatest challenges organizations face in using data. Sessions will focus on what Smart Chicago learned (through interviews, surveys, and informal discussions) from organizations that face the same challenges. The first set of sessions are going to take a look at gaps in infrastructure, affordability, and access.
One of the most talked about items in terms of feedback on challenges organizations are facing is the we’ve gotten during our surveys has been about gaps.
One of our programs is Connect Chicago, a loose network of more than 250 places where you can use a computer for free. It is a central part of our work around both access to the Internet and digital skills.
I also serve as the chair the of the Eliminate the Digital Divide Advisory Committee of the State of Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Development Eliminate the Digital Divide Grant Program.
In measuring the impact of the work of Connect Chicago members, we spend a lot of time gathering research. Here’s a look at some of the publications we look to for guidance.
Digital Citizenship: The-Internet society and Participation
Twitter Bot Helps Chicago Officials Find Dirty Restaurants. Snip:
The Chicago Department of Public Health’s Twitter bot, plus a new online complaint form, helped the department identify 133 restaurants for inspections over a 10-month period. Twenty-one of those restaurants failed inspection and 33 passed with “critical or serious” violations. Not a bad haul.
During a 10-month stretch last year, staff members at the health agency responded to 270 tweets about “food poisoning.” Based on those tweets, 193 complaints were filed and 133 restaurants in the city were inspected. Twenty-one were closed down and another 33 were forced to fix health violations. That’s according to a study in the journal Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.[Jenine K. Harris et al, Health Department Use of Social Media to Identify Foodborne Illness — Chicago, Illinois, 2013–2014]
Here’s an article in a leading industry magazine about Foodborne Chicago. Snip:
An added benefit for public health agencies is that FoodBorne Chicago is an open-source framework, which will enable other health departments adopt the application free of charge, Harris said. Richardson said the cost of developing the FoodBorne Chicago program was “minimal between staff time and a few nominal costs for the server, the URL and things like that.”
Funding Civic Technology: A Look at the SmartChicago Collaborative Mode
Read here. Snip:
Such operations show how SmartChicago’s model depends on each founding partner’s unique assets. DoIT, in addition to its federally-funded initiatives, provides a wealth of city data via its open data portal that fuels SmartChicago’s civic tech projects. As host for the organization, CCT provides a home and community-driven pulpit for SmartChicago. MacArthur, meanwhile, sustains crucial SmartChicago initiatives and investments that help create and maintain a strong civic tech network.