Code for America: open data and hacking the government by Rachel Perkins.
From the post:
Last week, I attended the Code for America Summit here in San Francisco. I attended as a representative of Splunk>4Good (we sponsored the event via a nice outdoor patio lounge area and gave away some of our (in)famous tshirts and a few ponies). Since this wasn’t your typical “conference”, and I’m not so great at schmoozing, i was a little nervous–what would Christy Wilson, Clint Sharp, and I do there? As it turned out, there were so many amazing takeaways and so much potential for awesomeness that my nervousness was totally unfounded.
So what is Code for America?
Code for America is a program that sends technologists (who take a year off and apply to their Fellowship program) to cities throughout the US to work with advocates in city government. When they arrive, they spend a few weeks touring the city and its outskirts, meeting residents, getting to know the area and its issues, and brainstorming about how the city can harness its public data to improve things. Then they begin to hack.
Some of these partnerships have come up with amazing tools–for example,
- Opencounter Santa Cruz mashes up several public datasets to provide tactical and strategic information for persons looking to start a small business: what forms and permits you’ll need, zoning maps with overlays of information about other businesses in the area, and then partners with http://codeforamerica.github.com/sitemybiz/ to help you find commercial space for rent that matches your zoning requirements.
- Another Code for America Fellow created blightstatus.org, which uses public data in New Orleans to inform residents about the status and plans for blighted properties in their area.
- Other apps from other cities do cool things like help city maintenance workers prioritize repairs of broken streetlights based on other public data like crime reports in the area, time of day the light was broken, and number of other broken lights in the vicinity, or get the citizenry involved with civic data, government, and each other by setting up a Stack Exchange type of site to ask and answer common questions.
Whatever your view data sharing by the government, too little, too much, just right, Rachel points to good things can come from open data.
Splunk has a “corporate responsibility program: Splunk>4Good.
Check it out!
BTW, do you have a topic maps “corporate responsibility” program?