http://codeforamerica.tumblr.com/

We want You to Code for America!

Tue, 14 May 2013 20:39:13 -0700

We want You to Code for America!

National Day of Civic Hacking Norfolk: Creator Lookmai Rattana:...

Mon, 13 May 2013 16:05:13 -0700

National Day of Civic Hacking Norfolk: Creator Lookmai Rattana: Co-Captain of Old Dominion University Student Brigade #hackforchange

NYC OpenData: #CivicHackNight Meets the Beta NYC Developer Platform

Mon, 13 May 2013 16:04:17 -0700

NYC OpenData: #CivicHackNight Meets the Beta NYC Developer Platform:

nycopendata:

On Wednesday night, we launched a beta version of NYC’s Developer Platform - a hub for talented civic developers, offering tools, documentation, code samples, peer-to-peer support, and more!

We shared the prototype at the #betaNYC Meetup, a weekly HackNight hosted by Code for…

The following article was posted in Time magazine; it’s a great introduction to Code for...

Mon, 13 May 2013 16:01:43 -0700

The following article was posted in Time magazine; it’s a great introduction to Code for America. I want to say someone posted it on the Brigade mailing list, but I don’t recall exactly. I’ve thrown it up on github, if anyone needs a copy.

Monday, Apr. 15, 2013

Peace Corps For Geeks

By Bryan Walsh

The Gumbo is great, and the nightlife is even better, but let’s face it: no one is ever going to mistake New Orleans for a tech hub. But that’s exactly why Amir Reavis-Bey knew he could make a difference in the Crescent City. In 2012, Reavis-Bey left a well-paying job as an investment-banking technologist in New York City to join Code for America, a fledgling nonprofit group that puts civic-minded techies to work in city governments around the country. He felt some culture shock at first—the tech infrastructure “was very different than in New York, to say the least,” he notes—but before long, Reavis-Bey and his three fellow team members figured out how to use their digital know-how to make a mark on New Orleans. After a monthlong survey of residents and officials, they focused on the problem of urban blight: the damaged and abandoned properties that afflict large portions of New Orleans. Over their year of service, the Code for America fellows built BlightStatus, an app that uses city data to allow residents to instantly find out the status of properties in their neighborhoods and helps officials keep on top of the spread of blight. “We were able to solve a problem that citizens brought to us,” says Reavis-Bey. “This was a huge chance to make an impact.”

That kind of impact—using digital tools to make a real-world difference—is exactly why Jennifer Pahlka founded Code for America several years ago. After nearly a decade of organizing Web- and game-development conferences, Pahlka was searching for her next project in 2009 when she had a conversation with Andrew Greenhill, then the chief of staff for the mayor’s office in Tucson, Ariz. The tech world’s focus had turned to Washington—it was energized by Barack Obama’s innovative campaign—but Greenhill told Pahlka it was local governments that really needed help. Municipalities sit on vast amounts of data—think of all the paperwork an urban bureaucracy can create—but lacked the technical expertise and the money to make it accessible and usable. Meanwhile, smartphone-enabled citizens were increasingly expecting city services to be delivered by the Web. “It was a moment where you could see what the principles and the values of the Web could offer government,” Pahlka says.

Government 2.0

Code for America brings those values and skills to government service. Programs like Teach for America and the Peace Corps recruit smart college graduates into education and economic-development work, but there were few ways to channel young people with a tech background into public service—even though digital skills are becoming more and more important at every level of government. Pahlka wanted to build a similar model for tech but wasn’t sure if it would work. With Silicon Valley companies throwing money and perks at the best engineers, would techies be willing to take a year off from the private sector to work at not much above minimum wage? (Code for America fellows receive a $35,000 stipend.) “I was very worried that it would be a tough sell,” she says.

She needn’t have been. In 2011, the program’s first year, Code for America received 360 applicants for just 20 spots. It turned out that there was no shortage of coders, engineers and designers out there who were looking for a chance to use their extremely valuable skills for something bigger than the next hot mobile-gaming app. (It also helps that most of the fellows were already fairly-well-compensated professionals.) By 2013, the program had grown to include 28 fellows operating in 10 cities, ranging from Oakland, Calif., to New York City. In February it received a $5 million donation from the Knight Foundation. “It’s such a neat way to learn how cities work,” says Ariel Kennan, a designer who is now working on the Kansas City, Mo., team. “I never thought I would work with the government, but it’s been really inspiring.”

Once they’ve had about a month of training—mostly to prepare them for the culture shock of moving from Silicon Valley to city hall—the fellows are dispatched to work in their chosen cities, which themselves have to apply to earn a spot in the Code for America program. The work is meant to go deeper than just improving a city’s official website or putting the mayor on Twitter. City governments generate a vast amount of data, everything from bus routes to property-tax records to police reports, but much of that information tends to molder away in archives, untouched except by those motivated citizens willing to make public-records requests. Code for America, which is part of a broader movement to improve the way governments function, aims to liberate that information and find creative ways to use it—and to do so inexpensively. With municipalities under increasing financial pressure from a combination of sagging tax revenue and federal spending cuts, that’s a powerful draw for city officials. “We can no longer do things in the old way,” says Karen Boyd, communications director for Oakland, who notes that the city has seen staffing reduced by 25% over the past 10 years. “Technology is moving in a new direction, and government needs to move that way too.”

In Oakland, Code for America is helping create a Web-based outlet for public records and an online public tracking system for city procurement spending. Cris Cristina, a former design manager at Cisco and an Oakland resident for more than five years, notes that the city government has sometimes had an uneasy relationship with its citizens—especially since the violent reaction to the Occupy protests in 2011. For Cristina, his work as a Code for America fellow isn’t just about streamlining city services via the Web; it’s also about restoring public trust. Before his three-person team even began programming, they spent a month in consultations with citizens and officials, trying to gauge what they wanted and what they needed. “We started with the city staff and went down to people on the street,” says Cristina. “There’s a level of transparency that the public is looking for, and that’s what we’re trying to provide.”

Dot Give

Technology alone won’t fix America’s cities. You may be able to design an app to track blighted buildings, but you’ll need more than software to repair them. Still, the success of Code for America demonstrates the latent desire among some young techies, who are usually assumed to be too rich and busy to do volunteer work, to do something for their communities. “You can walk by your neighbor and ignore their problems, or you can build an app to help them,” says Reavis-Bey. “You just need to be a person interested in improving the city where they live.”

Happening now: “BROADBAND DISCUSSION WITH SUSAN CRAWFORD...

Mon, 13 May 2013 14:48:00 -0700

Happening now: “BROADBAND DISCUSSION WITH SUSAN CRAWFORD [LIVE]”

"Think globally, hack locally."

Fri, 10 May 2013 05:34:00 -0700

“Think globally, hack locally.”

- Code for America Brigade

National Day of Civic Hacking

Why do I civic hack and why should anyone care?

Thu, 09 May 2013 10:36:00 -0700

You know what we need right now is a major boost of “Can do!” attitude. Things are tough all around and there are some heavy issues that demand our undivided attention. The things that have universally lifted us up when we are down and propelled us when we are climbing come from inside of each and all of us when we embody that “Can do!” attitude. If you believe and care about that then you should care about civic hacking.

You should care about civic hacking because it is creative problem solving and there is no better engine for people of free society than creative problem solving. Though there has been activity and growing momentum for years, we are at the beginning of the evolution of civic hacking in the United States and around the world. There are compelling resources available now to fuel diverse motivations in major sectors like health, energy, justice, law, population and economic development. Our cities, especially our mega metro regions are teaming with complexity. One way or the other, you can’t ignore civic hacking so you might as well pay attention to it. To me, civic hacking is a way to create opportunity.

There’s a propensity to link civic hacking with technology and perhaps even more with coding and software. There’s validity in that for sure, but civic hacking is also turning a parking space into a sidewalk lounge for the day.

I’m a civic hacker because it to merges my tech background with my passions about where I live and serving my local communities. I get to work on open source, civic tech challenges large and small with groups locally, across the country and around the world. Civic hacking provides me a new and appealing means of civic engagement. Civic hacking is a motivation to learn how my city works and what my role can be in making it better, particularly in my case through technology and the web. When my local brigade, Code for Hampton Roads collaborates with our municipal partners, like Hampton Roads Transit, City of Norfolk and City of Virginia Beach, we get to understand each others’ perspectives.

Service is something I do on the side. I like business and making and selling. I sometimes wonder if some day I will make a business from my experience in civic hacking. That might be cool. But I civic hack because no matter how I approach it I know it makes me better and makes where I live better. Think globally, hack locally, right?

Many I know have worked hard, with meager compensation, fleeting recognition and at various risks of failures for years to get to where we are today in commemoration of National Day of Civic Hacking. I civic hack for them, too.

Open Oakland Meetup

Tue, 07 May 2013 19:10:48 -0700

Open Oakland Meetup

codeforseattle: Citizens, software developers, entrepreunuers,...

Tue, 07 May 2013 08:57:04 -0700

codeforseattle:

Citizens, software developers, entrepreunuers, and government staff collaborating to solve challenges relevant to Seattle, WA using publicly-released data, code, and technology.

Sign up for the event on meetup.com.

stevespiker: Join us to help ReWrite Oakland - city information...

Mon, 06 May 2013 19:23:00 -0700

stevespiker:

Join us to help ReWrite Oakland - city information shouldn’t be a nightmare to find - we need you to help us make our city more open and accessible for all!

Just another Code for Asheville hacknight at Mojo Coworking in...

Mon, 06 May 2013 15:27:45 -0700

Just another Code for Asheville hacknight at Mojo Coworking in Asheville, NC.

Photo

Wed, 01 May 2013 20:22:57 -0700

Code for Hampton Roads Deploys One Bus Away

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 07:58:00 -0700

Code for Hampton Roads is in the process of standing up OneBusAway to provide real time bus data to Hampton Roads Transit bus riders. Today we gave the system it’s first real world test and it worked flawlessly! The bus arrived exactly 2 minutes late, just as the app had predicted.

Stanley Zheng, founder of the first university student chapter...

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 18:37:31 -0700

Stanley Zheng, founder of the first university student chapter of Brigade, was featured in our local paper, The Virginian-Pilot

We’re savin’ the Chesapeake Bay! Well sorta. Kevin...

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 18:31:11 -0700

We’re savin’ the Chesapeake Bay! Well sorta. Kevin Curry and Bret Fisher represented the Code for America Brigade for Hampton Roads Virginia at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s Celebration of Bay Restoration event April 24th.

The Chesapeake Bay is a 200-mile estuary in Maryland and Virginia that’s fed by 50 major rivers and streams. It’s a vital resource for the region, its environment, and its economy. Code for Hampton Roads partnered with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation to build a web app. For the very first time ever thousands of volunteers for Clean the Bay Day (June 1) from 50 city, state, and federal partners will be enabled to use mobile and online reporting to collect and share their clean-up statistics. Cigarette butts, plastic bottles, plastic bags, tires, paper, furniture, bicycles, and other crazy amounts of debris will be logged using our app. “In 2012, approximately 6,800 volunteers from communities throughout the Commonwealth removed more than 150,000 pounds of debris from nearly 500 miles of streams and shoreline.” (CBF.org/clean)

This year marks the 25th anniversary of this massive Virginia-wide clean up and Code for Hampton Roads is proud to a part of it!

Buenos Aires Data Catalog 2.0

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 11:25:46 -0700

Buenos Aires Data Catalog 2.0:

Simple, beautiful, and easy-to-use data catalog from the city of Buenos Aires.

Captains’ Hangout

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 17:06:16 -0700

Captains’ Hangout

Muppets for America

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 13:40:04 -0700

Muppets for America

Thomson Nguyen, Chief Scientist at Causes, dropping knowledge on...

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 13:13:06 -0700

Thomson Nguyen, Chief Scientist at Causes, dropping knowledge on data science @codeforamerica

On App Deployments

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 05:45:34 -0700

Deploying apps and recruiting people to them doesn’t work. Recruiting people and incentivizing them to deploy apps does work but only after the time has been given to understand the reasons why an app should be deployed at all.