Civic HackingUsing Data, Software, and People

to make our Cities Better

Madison Neighborhood Conference, Sept 2014

Erik Paulson

Greg Tracy

James Lloyd

Using a device or a system

in an unanticipated manner

to obtain an interesting

result

(software, biology, laws, etc)

Hacking: A Definition

“Civic hacking is the application of new tools

and approaches to improve the processes

and systems of government for all.”

(Alex Howard)

“Civic hacking is using technology and

design to make where we live better.”

(Kevin Curry)

Civic Hacking

Using data from the government, or

collecting data ourselves, to build new apps

or websites that have a focus on solving a

need

Things that are great but wouldn’t normally

be counted as civic hacking

- neighborhood listservs

- static websites

Civic Hacking, Part 2

Many (though certainly not everyone) has

computers

Computing, storage, and bandwidth for

serving are nearly free

Software is getting easier to write and data is

available

Facebook, Google, Apple are changing

expectations

What’s different now

An informal group of (mostly) Madison area

people who are working on civic apps that

touch life in Madison

Occasional meetups, Google Group, Google

Plus community. Sort of like a book club for

civic hackers

Not a legal entity, not explicitly a service

organization

Hacking Madison

We’re going to talk a lot

about software, but

technology is not strictly

required

Banksy is a Civic Hacker

Pop-Up Parks

are Civic

Hacking

Occupy Madison used the fact that towable “tiny

houses” aren’t regulated by zoning codes - that’s

Civic Hacking

Little Free Libraries

are Civic Hacking

(That could really

use some better

technology)

Guerilla Gardening is Civic

Hacking

● What’s happening in Madison

● Apps that are in use outside of Madison

● Discussion: What could we/should we be doing?

Outline of the Session

SMSMyBusReal-time arrival estimates delivered via SMS

I wasn’t alone

16,560 requests

by

356 individuals

Mother Fool’s Coffeehouse

an app ecosystem emerged

an API was born

1,567,442

API requests in 2012

58,426,824( 2 million per week )

API requests in 2014

second highest in Metro’s history

14.7 million riders in 2013

Milwaukee budgeted $250k

to build a transit API

http://api.smsmybus.com/map

A Civic Epiphany

time + passion = goodness

adopt-a-hydrant

Clean Lakes Monitoring

ccw.cleanlakesalliance.com

A volunteer partnership

Phase 1: Record and Aggregate Data

Phase 2: Market to Madison

Phase 3: Roll out to communities outside of

Madison

Make Music Madison

MuniQA.org

Up next for MuniQA.org

Examples from other cities

New opportunities

Ordinance Search

City Website Search

Development FastPass

Culture Blocks

Parking Understanding

www.willtheytow.me

Textizen

UrbanForestMap

http://istheresewageinthechicagoriver.com/

How can we make connections?

Madison’s Open Data Ordinance

Adopt-a-Hydrant in more neighborhoods

Other thoughts?

Discussion

Thank you!