The document summarizes the work of Code for America's team in New Orleans in 2012 to address urban blight. The team developed BlightStatus, a website that provides residents easy access to information about blighted properties in their neighborhoods and the city's efforts to address them. BlightStatus helped close the information gap between citizens and the city, and empowered more active community engagement in reducing neighborhood blight. It has now been adopted by 15 other cities and the team is continuing its development as a civic startup.
This is a great primer for any municipality, community foundation, nonprofit, and/or civic tech outfit that is interested in replicating the Smart Chicago model.
Learn How to Get Your Residents Online: Digital Inclusion Leadership Awards S...Denise Linn Riedl
This presentation was given on 11.5.15 at the National League of Cities Congress in Nashville, TN. Davidson, NC and Austin, TX - two Digital Inclusion Leadership Award winners shared their work and recommendations to other city delegations. To learn more about the awards, access accesses, and join a community practitioners doing this work, visit nextcenturycities.org/digital-inclusion-awards/
This is a great primer for any municipality, community foundation, nonprofit, and/or civic tech outfit that is interested in replicating the Smart Chicago model.
Learn How to Get Your Residents Online: Digital Inclusion Leadership Awards S...Denise Linn Riedl
This presentation was given on 11.5.15 at the National League of Cities Congress in Nashville, TN. Davidson, NC and Austin, TX - two Digital Inclusion Leadership Award winners shared their work and recommendations to other city delegations. To learn more about the awards, access accesses, and join a community practitioners doing this work, visit nextcenturycities.org/digital-inclusion-awards/
7 31 open data, open gov and community foundationsHack the Hood
Presentation for KDMC USC Annenberg workshop in Portland OR, July 30, 2014; "Community Engagement for Local Funders" on gov 2.0, open data, open gov and getting involved in your city or region.
Open Government and local community foundations: Getting involvedHack the Hood
What is Open Government and what opportunities does it offer for you as a community foundation? Attend this webinar and learn more about how partnerships between technologists and city, county, state and federal governments can result in greater transparency and accountability, more access to data for citizens, and even cost-savings—and what role local organizations like yours are playing.
http://www.knightdigitalmediacenter.org/learning-module/open-gov-and-what-it-means-community-foundations
Know Your Community: Data Power to the PeopleData Con LA
Data Con LA 2020
Description
The City of Los Angeles launched its open data program in 2013, making department-level data open to the public. This initial release of data was welcomed by the research and data science community. However, focus groups and discussions with citizens revealed that it was less accessible to a broad public audience. To address this, the City of Los Angeles is making the data more accessible through the Know Your Community platform which makes neighborhood-level insights and training sessions available for the public.
Speaker
Preston Mills, City of Los Angeles, Community Data Manager
An introduction to Project Audience, a not-for-profit collaboration of arts organizations and individuals working together to connect individuals with creative experiences through tool development and research.
I’m glad you picked up a copy of our third edition of Open Innovation. It’s packed full of examples of how the open
data movement is growing quickly and becoming one of the most dynamic areas of technology today.
In our “Community Report” section, you’ll get to meet people who are bringing open data to more places, like the
executives in Montgomery County who supported the creation of financial transparency apps that educate citizens
on county budget data. You’ll also hear about Code for America’s successful startup incubator program and the
Center for Medicaid and Medicare’s (CMS) innovative use of healthcare data. Finally, we highlight authors in the
community with our new book review section and showcase a few members of the “Open Data Doers Club.” Any of
the doers remind you of yourself?
“There’s an app for that.” We’ve all heard it and it’s becoming more and more true thanks to new public datasets
made available by governments. In our “What’s App’ening?” section, you’ll find out how New York City
encourages citizens to create apps that address the city’s toughest issues and you’ll get an overview of Socrata Open
Expenditures™ and Socrata Open Budget™, financial transparency apps we designed with help from government
finance leaders.
21st Century Cities, Technology & Innovation - An OverviewAbhi Nemani
A "101" primer from EthosLabs.us on what makes a 21st century city work, and what it can accomplish -- including dozens of case studies/examples, and tips on how to get started.
EthosLabs is a government innovation consultancy designed to help cities and startups work together to embrace this opportunity. If your city or company is interested in working together, get in touch: hello@ethoslabs.us
Grounds for objection to the ICANN application for the .nyc top-level domain, focusing on the absence of civic engagement in the preparation of the application, and its lack of integration into a vision of .nyc as a catalyst for a commitment to vision and commitment for New York City as a state-of-the-art digital city.
Rethinking and Reshaping Broken Systems - New Profit Gathering of LeadersCode for America
At the 2015 New Profit Gathering of Leaders (#NPGathering15), Code for America Founder and Executive Director Jennifer Pahlka, Black Girls CODE Founder & Executive Director Kimberly Bryant, and Pigeonly CEO Frederick Hutson talked about the importance of rethinking and reshaping broken systems. Through the lens of technology, they discussed how problems that get solved have everything to do with who’s doing the solving: their experience, perspective, and insights into whom they’re solving problems for.
This is Jennifer Pahlka's deck from the talk. For more details about the event, visit: http://www.newprofit.org/npgathering15-reshaping-broken-systems-rethinking-who-is-in-the-lead/
7 31 open data, open gov and community foundationsHack the Hood
Presentation for KDMC USC Annenberg workshop in Portland OR, July 30, 2014; "Community Engagement for Local Funders" on gov 2.0, open data, open gov and getting involved in your city or region.
Open Government and local community foundations: Getting involvedHack the Hood
What is Open Government and what opportunities does it offer for you as a community foundation? Attend this webinar and learn more about how partnerships between technologists and city, county, state and federal governments can result in greater transparency and accountability, more access to data for citizens, and even cost-savings—and what role local organizations like yours are playing.
http://www.knightdigitalmediacenter.org/learning-module/open-gov-and-what-it-means-community-foundations
Know Your Community: Data Power to the PeopleData Con LA
Data Con LA 2020
Description
The City of Los Angeles launched its open data program in 2013, making department-level data open to the public. This initial release of data was welcomed by the research and data science community. However, focus groups and discussions with citizens revealed that it was less accessible to a broad public audience. To address this, the City of Los Angeles is making the data more accessible through the Know Your Community platform which makes neighborhood-level insights and training sessions available for the public.
Speaker
Preston Mills, City of Los Angeles, Community Data Manager
An introduction to Project Audience, a not-for-profit collaboration of arts organizations and individuals working together to connect individuals with creative experiences through tool development and research.
I’m glad you picked up a copy of our third edition of Open Innovation. It’s packed full of examples of how the open
data movement is growing quickly and becoming one of the most dynamic areas of technology today.
In our “Community Report” section, you’ll get to meet people who are bringing open data to more places, like the
executives in Montgomery County who supported the creation of financial transparency apps that educate citizens
on county budget data. You’ll also hear about Code for America’s successful startup incubator program and the
Center for Medicaid and Medicare’s (CMS) innovative use of healthcare data. Finally, we highlight authors in the
community with our new book review section and showcase a few members of the “Open Data Doers Club.” Any of
the doers remind you of yourself?
“There’s an app for that.” We’ve all heard it and it’s becoming more and more true thanks to new public datasets
made available by governments. In our “What’s App’ening?” section, you’ll find out how New York City
encourages citizens to create apps that address the city’s toughest issues and you’ll get an overview of Socrata Open
Expenditures™ and Socrata Open Budget™, financial transparency apps we designed with help from government
finance leaders.
21st Century Cities, Technology & Innovation - An OverviewAbhi Nemani
A "101" primer from EthosLabs.us on what makes a 21st century city work, and what it can accomplish -- including dozens of case studies/examples, and tips on how to get started.
EthosLabs is a government innovation consultancy designed to help cities and startups work together to embrace this opportunity. If your city or company is interested in working together, get in touch: hello@ethoslabs.us
Grounds for objection to the ICANN application for the .nyc top-level domain, focusing on the absence of civic engagement in the preparation of the application, and its lack of integration into a vision of .nyc as a catalyst for a commitment to vision and commitment for New York City as a state-of-the-art digital city.
Similar to 2012_New Orleans End of Year Report (20)
Rethinking and Reshaping Broken Systems - New Profit Gathering of LeadersCode for America
At the 2015 New Profit Gathering of Leaders (#NPGathering15), Code for America Founder and Executive Director Jennifer Pahlka, Black Girls CODE Founder & Executive Director Kimberly Bryant, and Pigeonly CEO Frederick Hutson talked about the importance of rethinking and reshaping broken systems. Through the lens of technology, they discussed how problems that get solved have everything to do with who’s doing the solving: their experience, perspective, and insights into whom they’re solving problems for.
This is Jennifer Pahlka's deck from the talk. For more details about the event, visit: http://www.newprofit.org/npgathering15-reshaping-broken-systems-rethinking-who-is-in-the-lead/
Presentation about 2014 Code for Americal Fellowship project, Citygram.
Watch the video online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpO32d5IUTI&list=PL65XgbSILalVoej11T95Tc7D7-F1PdwHq&index=20
Get involved with Code for America: www.codeforamerica.org/action
Whether they are websites, town hall meetings, or customer service counters, designing interfaces to government to work for real people requires both deep empathy and acute analytic skills. This session dives into some of the ways that local governments are starting to integrate a user-centered approach to delivering services — and what becomes possible when they do so.
Jess McMullin, Centre for Citizen Experience
Watch the video online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFxOfw536Ms&index=56&list=PL65XgbSILalWFStqV0z0N9pvftstJ8AAh
Get involved with Code for America: http://www.codeforamerica.org/action
Alternative Funding Models for Civic Projects- Rodrigo DaviesCode for America
When a community needs to reinvent itself, who funds the transformation? Are the established tools— municipal bonds, CDFIs, and foundations among them— working in the new era of lean urbanism? Learn about innovative financing mechanisms— like social impact bonds and crowdfunding— that can help drive civic innovation at scale.
Rodrigo Davies, Center for Work, Technology and Organizations, Stanford University
Watch the video online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6roHOXEjtc&list=PL65XgbSILalVoej11T95Tc7D7-F1PdwHq&index=6
Get involved with Code for America: http://www.codeforamerica.org/action
Alternative Funding Models for Civic Projects- Neighbor.lyCode for America
When a community needs to reinvent itself, who funds the transformation? Are the established tools— municipal bonds, CDFIs, and foundations among them— working in the new era of lean urbanism? Learn about innovative financing mechanisms— like social impact bonds and crowdfunding— that can help drive civic innovation at scale.
Jase Wilson, Neighbor.ly
Watch the video online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6roHOXEjtc&list=PL65XgbSILalVoej11T95Tc7D7-F1PdwHq&index=6
Get involved with Code for America: http://www.codeforamerica.org/action
Zac Bookman, OpenGov CEO, and Jonathan Reichental, Palo Alto CIO, discuss the technological challenges governments face, and new solutions that help administrators save time, improve decision-making and build trust. Join the session to learn how leading governments across the country are finding innovative ways to be more digital, data-driven and efficient.
Open Your Government to the Promise of Cloud-Based Innovation and Collaboration
Peak Academy: Building a Culture of Innovation in GovernmentCode for America
The Denver Peak Academy trains employees throughout the City and County of Denver how to identify and eliminate waste and improve their daily municipal operations. In this training, learn techniques based on lean and agile principles that build personal initiative to help government staff reform and innovate their department’s internal processes. Be prepared for a hands-on learning experience to understand how Denver has helped create a culture of innovation with their City colleagues through the Peak Academy.
David Edinger, Chief Performance Officer, City & County of Denver, CO
Scotty Martin, Peak Academy- Peak Analytics, City & County of Denver, CO
Watch the video online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUnUXlF4oWc&index=3&list=PL65XgbSILalVoej11T95Tc7D7-F1PdwHq
Get involved with Code for America: http://www.codeforamerica.org/action
Civic Design: User Research Methods for Creating Better Citizen Experiences
Building tech tools informed by input from real users is essential. Without feedback from the intended users, you’re making design and tech decisions in the dark. User testing can help! Learn how to carry out effective user testing to build better civic tools.
Cyd Harrell, UX Evanglist, Code for America
Kavi Harshawat, 2014 Code for America Fellow
Watch the video online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipjLBcBD21I&index=21&list=PL65XgbSILalVoej11T95Tc7D7-F1PdwHq
Get involved with Code for America: http://www.codeforamerica.org/action
How you can develop open data under the constraint of limited resources. Presented by Emily Shaw, National Policy Manager, Sunlight Foundation; Alish Green, Policy Associate, Sunlight Foundation, and Councilwoman Natalia Rudiak, Pittsburgh City Council
Watch the video online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bPtIfWSkLY&list=PL65XgbSILalVoej11T95Tc7D7-F1PdwHq&index=11
Get involved with Code for America: http://www.codeforamerica.org/action
Cities are leveraging technology to better connect with its constituents. However, cities are at risk of isolating key segments of its populations without closing the digital divide. We will explore the digital divide’s impact on civic technology and the role of cities in increasing access to high-speed Internet.
Sheila Dugan, Marketing and Communications Manager at EveryoneOn
Watch the video online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yUi_dKovJ8&list=PL65XgbSILalVoej11T95Tc7D7-F1PdwHq&index=1
Get involved with Code for America: http://www.codeforamerica.org/action
Cities and Startups: Cultivating Deep EngagementCode for America
Cities and Startups: Cultivating Deep Engagement
FastFWD, City of Philadelphia
Story Bellows, co-director of the Philadelphia Mayor's Office of New Urban Mechanics
Watch the video online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRKUCCHj-08&list=PL65XgbSILalVoej11T95Tc7D7-F1PdwHq&index=4
Get involved with Code for America: www.codeforamerica.org/action
Sam Hashemi and Ryan Shepard share how the City of Atlanta is working to reduce the number of people receiving infractions for missed court appearances in Atlanta by using technology to get the right information to the right people at the right time.
Watch the video online: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwJplmFgVZo&list=PL65XgbSILalWFStqV0z0N9pvftstJ8AAh&index=3
Get involved with Code for America: www.codeforamerica.org/action
City of Charlotte 2014 Fellows Tiffany Chu and Twyla McDermott share their work on Citygram, an app to help local government make open data about neighborhoods useful and relevant to residents.
Watch the video on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFu8BJHmrEM&index=27&list=PL65XgbSILalWFStqV0z0N9pvftstJ8AAh
Get involved with Code for America: http://www.codeforamerica.org/action
140 Characters, Not Flying Cars: Maybe We Got Just What We Needed After All- ...Code for America
140 Characters, Not Flying Cars: Maybe We Got Just What We Needed After All
John Lilly, former CEO of Mozilla, gives a keynote addressing how technology is changing the relationships we have with each other, and what this means for how we think about the division between government and citizens.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVVrc75QHKo&list=PL65XgbSILalWFStqV0z0N9pvftstJ8AAh&index=58
Defaulting to Open: How Open Data Can Build Trust in Government
Ryan Buell, Assistant Professor, Harvard Business School on learnings from Boston about how open data can increase residents' trust in their local government.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CofaLJZB1ag&index=45&list=PL65XgbSILalWFStqV0z0N9pvftstJ8AAh
Sascha Haselmayer, CEO, Citymart on efforts to pilot outcomes-based procurement in Barcelona.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1mQW80YCzE&index=22&list=PL65XgbSILalWFStqV0z0N9pvftstJ8AAh
2014 Code for America Fellow Jeremia Kimelman and Senior Advisor & Chief Policy Officer of City of Chattanooga Stacy Richardson present their work on open data standards in Chattanooga and how the impact it's had on the community and coalition building.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBAf2kwLx4k&index=38&list=PL65XgbSILalWFStqV0z0N9pvftstJ8AAh
2014 Code for America Fellows Sam Hashemi and Tiffany Chu demo TransitMix, an intuitive tool to help transit planners quickly design routes, identify tradeoffs, and communicate with the public.
Watch the video online: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enMF-bbQOp8&index=51&list=PL65XgbSILalWFStqV0z0N9pvftstJ8AAh
Get involved with Code for America: www.codeforamerica.org/action
City of Lexington 2014 Fellows Lyzi Diamond and Jonathan Hollinger discuss what became possible when they joined datasets already held by the City to create a richer, fuller picture of a specific place.
Watch the video online: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jh-cpTGCuTQ&list=PL65XgbSILalWFStqV0z0N9pvftstJ8AAh&index=25
Get involved with Code for America: www.codeforamerica.org/action
Epistemic Interaction - tuning interfaces to provide information for AI supportAlan Dix
Paper presented at SYNERGY workshop at AVI 2024, Genoa, Italy. 3rd June 2024
https://alandix.com/academic/papers/synergy2024-epistemic/
As machine learning integrates deeper into human-computer interactions, the concept of epistemic interaction emerges, aiming to refine these interactions to enhance system adaptability. This approach encourages minor, intentional adjustments in user behaviour to enrich the data available for system learning. This paper introduces epistemic interaction within the context of human-system communication, illustrating how deliberate interaction design can improve system understanding and adaptation. Through concrete examples, we demonstrate the potential of epistemic interaction to significantly advance human-computer interaction by leveraging intuitive human communication strategies to inform system design and functionality, offering a novel pathway for enriching user-system engagements.
GDG Cloud Southlake #33: Boule & Rebala: Effective AppSec in SDLC using Deplo...James Anderson
Effective Application Security in Software Delivery lifecycle using Deployment Firewall and DBOM
The modern software delivery process (or the CI/CD process) includes many tools, distributed teams, open-source code, and cloud platforms. Constant focus on speed to release software to market, along with the traditional slow and manual security checks has caused gaps in continuous security as an important piece in the software supply chain. Today organizations feel more susceptible to external and internal cyber threats due to the vast attack surface in their applications supply chain and the lack of end-to-end governance and risk management.
The software team must secure its software delivery process to avoid vulnerability and security breaches. This needs to be achieved with existing tool chains and without extensive rework of the delivery processes. This talk will present strategies and techniques for providing visibility into the true risk of the existing vulnerabilities, preventing the introduction of security issues in the software, resolving vulnerabilities in production environments quickly, and capturing the deployment bill of materials (DBOM).
Speakers:
Bob Boule
Robert Boule is a technology enthusiast with PASSION for technology and making things work along with a knack for helping others understand how things work. He comes with around 20 years of solution engineering experience in application security, software continuous delivery, and SaaS platforms. He is known for his dynamic presentations in CI/CD and application security integrated in software delivery lifecycle.
Gopinath Rebala
Gopinath Rebala is the CTO of OpsMx, where he has overall responsibility for the machine learning and data processing architectures for Secure Software Delivery. Gopi also has a strong connection with our customers, leading design and architecture for strategic implementations. Gopi is a frequent speaker and well-known leader in continuous delivery and integrating security into software delivery.
Search and Society: Reimagining Information Access for Radical FuturesBhaskar Mitra
The field of Information retrieval (IR) is currently undergoing a transformative shift, at least partly due to the emerging applications of generative AI to information access. In this talk, we will deliberate on the sociotechnical implications of generative AI for information access. We will argue that there is both a critical necessity and an exciting opportunity for the IR community to re-center our research agendas on societal needs while dismantling the artificial separation between the work on fairness, accountability, transparency, and ethics in IR and the rest of IR research. Instead of adopting a reactionary strategy of trying to mitigate potential social harms from emerging technologies, the community should aim to proactively set the research agenda for the kinds of systems we should build inspired by diverse explicitly stated sociotechnical imaginaries. The sociotechnical imaginaries that underpin the design and development of information access technologies needs to be explicitly articulated, and we need to develop theories of change in context of these diverse perspectives. Our guiding future imaginaries must be informed by other academic fields, such as democratic theory and critical theory, and should be co-developed with social science scholars, legal scholars, civil rights and social justice activists, and artists, among others.
Dev Dives: Train smarter, not harder – active learning and UiPath LLMs for do...UiPathCommunity
💥 Speed, accuracy, and scaling – discover the superpowers of GenAI in action with UiPath Document Understanding and Communications Mining™:
See how to accelerate model training and optimize model performance with active learning
Learn about the latest enhancements to out-of-the-box document processing – with little to no training required
Get an exclusive demo of the new family of UiPath LLMs – GenAI models specialized for processing different types of documents and messages
This is a hands-on session specifically designed for automation developers and AI enthusiasts seeking to enhance their knowledge in leveraging the latest intelligent document processing capabilities offered by UiPath.
Speakers:
👨🏫 Andras Palfi, Senior Product Manager, UiPath
👩🏫 Lenka Dulovicova, Product Program Manager, UiPath
DevOps and Testing slides at DASA ConnectKari Kakkonen
My and Rik Marselis slides at 30.5.2024 DASA Connect conference. We discuss about what is testing, then what is agile testing and finally what is Testing in DevOps. Finally we had lovely workshop with the participants trying to find out different ways to think about quality and testing in different parts of the DevOps infinity loop.
Builder.ai Founder Sachin Dev Duggal's Strategic Approach to Create an Innova...Ramesh Iyer
In today's fast-changing business world, Companies that adapt and embrace new ideas often need help to keep up with the competition. However, fostering a culture of innovation takes much work. It takes vision, leadership and willingness to take risks in the right proportion. Sachin Dev Duggal, co-founder of Builder.ai, has perfected the art of this balance, creating a company culture where creativity and growth are nurtured at each stage.
Kubernetes & AI - Beauty and the Beast !?! @KCD Istanbul 2024Tobias Schneck
As AI technology is pushing into IT I was wondering myself, as an “infrastructure container kubernetes guy”, how get this fancy AI technology get managed from an infrastructure operational view? Is it possible to apply our lovely cloud native principals as well? What benefit’s both technologies could bring to each other?
Let me take this questions and provide you a short journey through existing deployment models and use cases for AI software. On practical examples, we discuss what cloud/on-premise strategy we may need for applying it to our own infrastructure to get it to work from an enterprise perspective. I want to give an overview about infrastructure requirements and technologies, what could be beneficial or limiting your AI use cases in an enterprise environment. An interactive Demo will give you some insides, what approaches I got already working for real.
Accelerate your Kubernetes clusters with Varnish CachingThijs Feryn
A presentation about the usage and availability of Varnish on Kubernetes. This talk explores the capabilities of Varnish caching and shows how to use the Varnish Helm chart to deploy it to Kubernetes.
This presentation was delivered at K8SUG Singapore. See https://feryn.eu/presentations/accelerate-your-kubernetes-clusters-with-varnish-caching-k8sug-singapore-28-2024 for more details.
Key Trends Shaping the Future of Infrastructure.pdfCheryl Hung
Keynote at DIGIT West Expo, Glasgow on 29 May 2024.
Cheryl Hung, ochery.com
Sr Director, Infrastructure Ecosystem, Arm.
The key trends across hardware, cloud and open-source; exploring how these areas are likely to mature and develop over the short and long-term, and then considering how organisations can position themselves to adapt and thrive.
Smart TV Buyer Insights Survey 2024 by 91mobiles.pdf91mobiles
91mobiles recently conducted a Smart TV Buyer Insights Survey in which we asked over 3,000 respondents about the TV they own, aspects they look at on a new TV, and their TV buying preferences.
Transcript: Selling digital books in 2024: Insights from industry leaders - T...BookNet Canada
The publishing industry has been selling digital audiobooks and ebooks for over a decade and has found its groove. What’s changed? What has stayed the same? Where do we go from here? Join a group of leading sales peers from across the industry for a conversation about the lessons learned since the popularization of digital books, best practices, digital book supply chain management, and more.
Link to video recording: https://bnctechforum.ca/sessions/selling-digital-books-in-2024-insights-from-industry-leaders/
Presented by BookNet Canada on May 28, 2024, with support from the Department of Canadian Heritage.
2. OUR APPROACH IN NEW ORLEANS
Unlike some 2012 partner cities, The City of New Orleans had a very specific focus
for its partnership with Code for America on the issue of urban blight and chronically
vacant property. Community organizations and local residents were already actively
working to monitor and contribute to the revitalization of their own neighborhoods,
but communication between these active community members and the local
government was not as effective as it could be.
During our 5-week residency in New Orleans in February, we met with hundreds of
individuals to gain a multi-faceted understanding of this complex issue, including
active residents and neighborhood leaders, city staff and elected representatives, local
non-profit organizations, and the local tech community.
From these diverse needs-finding discussions, we identified two main objectives for
the year. First, we needed to find a way to bridge the information gap, and improve the
conversation between citizens and City Hall about blight. Second, we wanted to try
to connect groups who were all working independently to make New Orleans a better
place, so that they could begin collaborating and sharing resources, knowledge, and
best practices.
And in our pursuit of these two main objectives, we made a concerted effort to take
any opportunity we saw to make our City partners — and by extension, City Hall
itself — look good.
Code for America, Team New Orleans
Team Members: Alex Pandel, Amir Reavis-Bey, Eddie Tejeda, Serena Wales
3. Blighted and abandoned properties are more than just
eyesores - they attract crime and decrease neighboring
property values, and citizens are motivated to play an
active role in improving their neighborhoods. However, to
be most effective, citizens need to know what the city is
alread doing to reduce blight in their neighborhoods so
they can coordinate and target their efforts.
As we discovered during our February residency in New
Orleans, if a citizen wants to know what’s happening
with an abandoned property in their area, they currently
have two choices: either spend hours on the phone with
multiple City departments, or wade through numerous
dense and confusing websites to try to track down the
information they need. Both options are frustrating,
time-consuming, and often create more confusion and
work for all parties involved.
In an effort to close this information gap, we spent most
of our fellowship year working closely with the City
of New Orleans to create BlightStatus - a simple and
publicly-accessible website that provides quick and easy
answers to residents’ questions about the City’s efforts
to reduce blight in their neighborhoods.
With BlightStatus, anyone can:
• search for any property to view its case history
in a clear and simple format;
• create a Watchlist to track the progress of
multiple properties;
• receive email alerts whenever a property on your
Watchlist moves forward in the blight process;
• analyze blight citywide or down to the block
level using interactive maps and charts; and
• learn more about the blight process itself with
our FAQs and glossary
Since its launch last month, over 360 users have created
Watchlists, the application has gained widespread buy-in
from all levels within New Orleans City Hall and the local
community, and 15 cities across the US have expressed
interest in redeploying BlightStatus in their cities thus far.
Three of our original four team members are creating a
business around BlightStatus to continue development
and begin implementing the application in additional
cities.
BlightStatus
blightstatus.nola.gov
Accurate and up-to-date information about blighted properties in New Orleans
PROJECTS: focus on BlightStatus
BlightSTATUS
Update:
1614 Monroe St
received ajudgment of
GUILTY on9/18/12
Learn more >
6. To support the City of New Orleans’ emerging open data policy, we wanted to help
make it as easy as possible for the City’s data stewards to publish the data they
manage to the City’s open data portal, data.nola.gov. Any data published to
data.nola.gov needs to meet a certain standard of quality and accuracy to be eligible
for public release, which usually means the steward of each dataset has to spend time
manually cleaning up the data, which creates a major obstacle to new datasets being
added to the data portal. Doc2Soc automates this process using macros, making it
significantly faster and less labor-intensive. After the initial, one-time configuration of
the macro for a given dataset, the application will automatically clean the data and
push it to Socrata, the platform that supports data.nola.gov, with just the click of a
button.
IMPACT: Doc2Soc makes it much easier for information to make it onto
data.nola.gov as well as stay up to date once it is there, which is a huge step
for the City’s open data initiative.
Doc2Soc
github.com/amirbey/DocToSoc
Automated publishing of datasets to New Orleans’ open data portal
PROJECTS (continued)
In preparation for the 2012 hurricane season in New
Orleans beginning June 1, the City of New Orleans was
launching a new preparedness campaign, and needed
a compelling, iconic logo to anchor the campaign.
Unhappy with the designs presented by their hired
design contractor, CfA produced several alternative
designs, and worked with the Office of Homeland
Security and Emergency Preparedness to finalize the
chosen design. During Hurricane Isaac in August 2012,
the NOLA Ready logo served as the hero image on the
City’s homepage, and as the Mayor’s Twitter avatar,
where hundreds of thousands of residents received
emergency information during the storm.
IMPACT: CfA’s work saved the City thousands
of dollars in contractor fees and resulted in a
graphic campaign that will help keep residents of
New Orleans prepared for hurricanes and other
emergencies for years to come.
NOLA Ready Branding Campaign
ready.nola.gov
Logo design for new emergency preparedness campaign, NOLA Ready
7. Presentation at February Net2NO Meetup
At the beginning of our residency, local tech meetup
Net2NO featured Code for America at their monthly
meetup. The fellows gave a short presentation about our
partnership with the City of New Orleans, and set the stage
for the City to announce several new relevant positions
opening up inside City Hall. Several attendees from the
event expressed interest in the software developer and
web content positions, and indicated that hearing about
the CfA engagement definitely changed their opinion
about what working for City Hall could mean.
IMPACT: Changed the way the local tech community
views City Hall, and sparked newfound interest among
this group in several relevant roles within City Hall.
Code: NOLA Hackathon
We hosted a two-day hackathon called Code: NOLA during
our residency in February. 52 people attended our kickoff
happy hour on Friday, where we released a new dataset
to the City’s open data portal. Eight city staffers attended,
including CIO Allen Square. At the Saturday hackathon,
25 attendees split up into six teams, which yielded four
distinct deliverables after only eight hours of work.
Several projects initiated during the event include:
• OpenTreeMap
New Orleans’ Department of Parks and Parkways
has been working to restore the 100,000 trees that
were killed during Hurricane Katrina, but an outdated
map of the city’s existing trees has made the effort
very difficult. One team worked to implement
OpenTreeMap to allow citizens to help update the
City’s map.
• My504HealthNet (read more in “Stories,” below)
Another team worked to create a mobile website
for a local public health non-profit.
• Doc2Soc (read more in “Projects,” above)
Another team worked to make it easier for City data
stewards to clean up and post their datasets onto the
City’s open data portal.
• NOLA Ready logo (read more in “Projects,” above)
Another team brainstormed a series of logo designs
for the City’s new emergency preparedness campaign,
NOLA Ready.
IMPACT: Created a space for groups who don’t
ordinarily interact with each other (city staff,
technologists, and local non-profits) to work together
on civic projects to make their city a better place.
EVENTS
8. Post-Launch Community Gathering
Throughout the year, the team attended and hosted dozens
of meetings with individual community members for needs-
finding research, user testing, and general feedback. Once
the site was live, we wanted to bring together all of these
individuals into a group setting, both to gather feedback
about the site, but also to provide an opportunity to share
ideas and best practices in the fight against blight.
Many individuals who had never actually met before began
collaborating and sharing strategies, and exchanged contact
information to keep working together in the future. We
gathered lots of valuable feedback about how to make
the application even more useful to their work, and plan
to incoporate that feedback into future iterations of the
application.
IMPACT: Gained insight into the needs of local residents,
as well as connected people working towards a common
goal to share best practices and strategies.
Unexpected Connections at Code: NOLA
At our hackathon in February, one team worked to create
a mobile website for a local public health non-profit,
504HealthNet. The organization’s executive director,
Lindsay Ordower, made a plea to the tech community at our
kickoff to help her make information about free and low-
cost health clinics more readily available to citizens from
their mobile phones, and a determined team of 5 quickly
assembled around her.
Lindsay explained that while many NOLA citizens without
health insurance do not have reliable access to the internet
via a computer, a large percentage do have web-enabled
mobile phones, which would allow for much quicker and
more widespread distribution of this valuable information
than her current paper booklets can provide. The team
got straight to work and made great headway, presenting
a working MVP at the end of the day, which allows users
to search for health clinics in their area by location and
insurance accepted.
IMPACT: Before this event, the local tech community
didn’t think to volunteer their skills to local nonprofits,
and local nonprofits weren’t aware that the tech
community in New Orleans was interested in helping
out. This event shed light on a new way that these two
groups could work together to make New Orleans a
better place.
EVENTS (continued)
STORIES
9. Changing the Conversation at BlightSTAT
On our launch day in New Orleans, we debuted BlightStatus at the City’s monthly
public meeting about this issue, called BlightSTAT, where City administrators from
every relevant department report on that month’s progress, and citizens ask questions
and help hold the City accountable.
A community member from a particularly low-capacity neighborhood, Zion City, had
been attending the BlightSTAT meetings for months, but never raised a question or
engaged in the dialogue. While we were doing a demo of how BlightStatus works, she
suddenly interrupted us and began asking specific questions about the property on the
screen - why was there so much time between the inspection and the hearing? Why
wasn’t it judged guilty of blight?
Before this meeting, she had never engaged in a productive dialogue with City
representatives or administrators. But once she had specific information about her
neighborhood at her fingertips, she began a specific and productive conversation with
her government.
IMPACT: Not only does BlightStatus equip active citizens with the information
they need to be most effective in the fight against blight, but it activates citizens
who had never previously felt empowered to take an active role in shaping their
communities.
Thanks to our successful launch and widespread buy-in throughout New Orleans, the
City of New Orleans is planning to extend our contract into 2013 to allow us to futher
tighten integration with the City’s internal data systems, as well as build out additional
features to make BlightStatus even more robust, such as integration with 311, the ability
for users to upload photos and comments, and a more optimized mobile interface.
Additionally, many additional cities across the US have expressed interest in bringing
BlightStatus to their communities, so three of our original four team members
are planning to move forward as a civic startup. With initial support from the CfA
Incubator, we will continue development on BlightStatus, begin contracting with
additional cities to redeploy BlightStatus, and even explore the potential to expand
the application beyond the topic of blight.
STORIES (continued)
MOVING FORWARD