#civichack

Written by Maggie Diaz-Vera

Our Civic Hacking Brigade is always open to inviting those with ideas on how to create ease in communication with citizens and government. This week, we were joined by a like-minded group, the Cortadito Computer Club (CCC). The name is a play off the Hombrew Computer Club which started in Silicon Valley. The CCC meets monthly to brainstorm and develop ways to get Cuba and its citizens more connected to information and the internet. This group formed shortly after a hackathon which took place in January at the LAB Miami with the same purpose.

Natalia from Roots of Hope, the organization which sponsored the original hackathon, and organizer of the CCC Jose gave us some insights on the complications on Cuba's current issues with connectivity. "Cuba is the least connected country with the lowest internet penetration, including post-earthquake Haiti."

Cortadito Computer Club is in the house at hack night to tell us how we might help hack for Cuba. pic.twitter.com/foNY8JGrts

— Code For Miami (@CodeForMiami)

July 21, 2014

The goal of the Cortadito Computer Club is to circumvent these communication issues using technology within the legal bounds of Cuba. Cuba has a very limited internet connection, where having a 56k connection can only be found a good day. Because of this, the CCC is brainstorming solutions that require little data usage such as text, email, and RSS. 

One of the winners of the January hackathon, Salvi Pascual, joined us to explain his idea. He created an email system in which people n Cuba can send an email with a subject line indicating the type of information they wish to receive, for example the subject line "weather." They would then receive a response from a server that crawls web pages with the information requested, in this case a weekly weather report of Cuba. Salvi says this system is gaining attention and can use assistance in maintaining and developing the platform.

As a civically engaged audience, Code for Miami is a great ally in assisting the Cortadito Computer Club with ideas and projects to help them accomplish their mission. Through the use of mesh networks, text-based or offline communication, we can work together towards providing solutions for some of the tough issues being faced by Cuban citizens.

Every Monday, Code for Miami meets at the Lab Miami at 7pm to talk civic hacking and eat some pizza. However this past week stood out from the ordinary Monday routine. We had a very special guest, Commissioner Juan C Zapata, visit our group. We also got to hear from one of our members, Diana Espino, experience at Google I/O and how Google plans to help with civic engagement and open data.

Diana started off the night sharing some tips and tricks she learned while visiting San Francisco for the Google I/O conference. “The purpose of what we do as hackers for good is to make life safer and make society better though our ideas,” Diana shared. One way we can go about hacking for good is utilizing the APIs Google has made available. The Google Civic Data API allows developers “build applications that display civic information.” This is API is currently use in our repMiami project. Another resource to consider is the Google Crisis Map which “aims to put critical disaster-related geographic data in context”. It’s great to see that large companies are making efforts towards creating and establishing open data trends.

Diana offered 3 great tips we should keep in mind as we work on our community projects.

1. Make Open Data more Accessible

Let’s work towards making community data high quality and easier to read and maintain. It is not uncommon to receive important data through PDFs or even faxes! Best practice is to share and create this data as JSON objects.

2. Make Data Interoperable

While our focus is on Miami and South Florida, we want to make this data open so anyone can have access to analyze and interpret! Focus on using standards when obtaining and creating data.

3. Think of these Projects as a Start Up

We have lots of great ideas that flow through our weekly meetings. It’s very possible that there are venture capitalists willing to invest on good ideas and applications that help the community. Keep that in mind as you collaborate with others and develop new projects.

We then had the pleasure of hearing from Commissioner Juan C Zapata in regards to the current issues facing the taxi system and transit in general. He stated his frustration with the county’s current way of dealing with issues through technology. “The current mentality is to protect the status quo,” he shared. We need to spend less time on non-adaptive procedures and focus on incorporating new technologies.

As the commissioner stated, taxis are “the first thing people are exposed to after the airport”. However, the current system in place in regards to taxis has become something of a monopoly. In order to become a taxi service, you need to obtain a medallion which can cost $500,000. Because of the extremely high cost, it becomes difficult for small competitors to obtain these medallions. There are new car-sharing services, such as Uber and Lyft; but Miami-Dade has actually putting legislation into place to stop these companies from being viable transportation options.

With this information given to us, Commissioner Zapata challenged the Code for Miami volunteers to find ways to disrupt the current system and gain feedback from the community on the transportation options currently provided. “We should be a community that is open to adopting new technologies.”

This week was a great meeting and it looks like we are getting close to the finishing steps on some of our great projects. We had a full house tonight which was absolutely wonderful. Here is the news on some of our key projects and where we currently stand.

The Local Business Data Tax Set has been organized thanks to Juan and Emily. Mike Sarsati from Miami Dade County has shown the progress to the City of Miami business tax collector and they were rather impressed by the amount of work in such a short amount of time! Hopefully now they will understand the benefit to making information open! ;D

The new goal with this project is to create a visual map to locate paid vs unpaid taxes by zip code. Let us know if this is something you want to work on!

For Open311, apparently our work was so exceptional, that the code for the main Open311 app is going to be updated to be a little more future-proof for any information that may be submitted later. So while there may be some initial downtime for those improvements, it's great to know that we are moving forward.

TextMyBus testing is going to be on April 14 during our meeting. 2 groups will meet at Government Center and Dadeland South Station and test the sticker design that has been created. Ben Manley has also made a premilnary promotional video for the TextMyBus app. You can download it on this thread. 

We are currently working on creating content for MiamiWiki. Maggie has drafted a stock letter to send to different local interest groups reaching out about local wiki and how they can contribute. Jeremy Roth stopped by with an idea of making a GPS-based Walking App of Miami that will pull information from MiamiWiki to educate locals and tourists of the geographical area they are in. We are currently looking to add historical content about Miami. As well, feel free to add information about your favorite places and what gives Miami it's flavor. Anyone can add to it!

by @robdotd

It isn’t very often that you get the opportunity to brainstorm about the future. You may daydream here and there about it, but do you ever really consider the potential?  How would things be different? What are the steps for us to get there?  And more importantly, who will be involved in creating it?

These were the types of questions posed at the Code for Miami’s Open Data Jam held last Saturday. An afternoon accompanied by group discussions and sticky-note adventures to help us reflect on something very important, the betterment of our community. This event was part of a much larger effort, an international CodeAcross day to unite people of all backgrounds and skillsets to engage each other in the hope of a better future. How do things get better you ask? Information is part of the answer, and our access to it as well as potential uses not currently being explored made the few hours shared together seem like just minutes.

Yenesco “Nesco” Cobain, an FIU student and one of the other attendees in the breakout group on Land Use and Real Estate had much to add. “What if someone could be alerted if they were entering a dangerous area?” he stated. Tourists could certainly use such a service, and that goes for many other areas outside of Miami as well. Another attendee suggested a heatmap of housing information emailed regularly to show new changes and trends, a useful idea for potential buyers or agents on the hunt. Permitting requirements and the need for contractor “ratings” were also brought up, a practical tool for that could be used vetting qualified and responsible builders.

Ideas blended, borrowing bits and pieces from each other, and grew into unique and actionable items. It was a humbling experience to see citizens (once called “strangers”) largely from different parts of South Florida come together for a common good. We live in these places together, shouldn’t we talk about our experiences too? Although my one regret is that I couldn’t be in two places at once, as I certainly would have enjoyed hearing the other breakout group’s suggestions. Public transportation, campaign finance, transparency in local elections, our wonderful parks, improved walkability, and the need for more “open hearts” made that afternoon time well spent. If you want to contribute to the conversation, join us on Monday night, 7pm at The Lab Miami. Everyone is welcome.

Tomorrow, we will be our hosting our first, Open Data Jam at The Light Box. This is really exciting because this is our chance to show local officials we are serious about data transparency in our government.

Open Data is the idea that government (local, national, or international) should allow individuals access to certain types of data. If this information was open, citizens would be able to better understand what is going on and how they can contribute. 

An example of how open data helps us is the National Weather Service. Because they distribute this information, developers can make programs with 10-day forecasts based on your location and even simple apps like seeing if it will rain today. This information has helped launch a variety of business models from The Weather Channel to Weather Bug. 

This kind of information is vital for citizens to create a productive environment. And the more information we have access to, the better our community can run and develop. There are many different data sets we hope will become available such as Election Results, Crime Statistics, Property Data, Information for Hunting and Fishing and so much more.