2015 – Smart Chicago

Christopher Whitaker Presents at Japan’s Civic Tech Conference

Smart ChicagoMarch 24, 2015

Our own Christopher Whitaker will be giving a keynote speech in Tokyo this weekend at the Civic Tech Forum.

The Civic Tech Forum is a billed as a place to talk about resolving regional issues through the hands of citizens who take advantage of the technology. It is organized in partnership with Code for Japan and will feature civic innovators from around Japan to talk about the future of civic innovation in Japan.

Christopher will talk about the Chicago experience in helping build a civic innovation ecosystem and how it takes collaboration from both government agencies, non-profit foundations, civic technology startups, and community activists to make it work.

Here’s his slides from his talk:

You can get more information about the event on the Civic Tech Forum website or follow along on Twitter using the hashtag #civictechjp.

Center for Technology & Civic Life at 1871 Through Smart Chicago’s Developer Resources Program

Smart ChicagoMarch 23, 2015

Today we’re launching a new partnership with the Center for Technology & Civic Life, a non-partisan, non-profit that uses technology to improve the way local governments and communities interact. Three of their key team members— have recently moved to Chicago from Washington, DC:

There are three of their team members in Chicago: Tiana Epps-Johnson (Founder and Executive Director), Whitney May (Co-founder and Director of Government Services) and Donny Bridges (Co-founder and Director of Civic Data). Smart Chicago has issued each of them reserved seats in our space at 1871. They are setting up shop there to focus on three main areas:

Training local government on how to use technology to enhance the civic livelihood of their communities;
Developing free/low-cost tools for government where there are clear needs; and
Aggregating civic data sets and developing infrastructure that enables the flow of information and interactions between government and the people they are serving.

Donny Bridges, Whitney May, and Tiana Epps-Johnson in the Garage of The Chicago Community Trust.

This is an important partnership for us through our Developer Resources program. We’re able to be helpful to an important national organization, expand our network of partners that “respect the vital work of public servants”, and help steal smart people from Washington DC, all in one swoop.

Fingerprint Terminal at Cook County Juvenile Center

Sonja MarzianoMarch 20, 2015

As part of our continued work in connection with our Expunge.io product, we secured a fingerprint terminal to be stationed at the Cook County Juvenile Center. This is one of the ways we determined, with our partners at LAF, Cabrini Green Legal Aid, the Juvenile Justice Division of the Circuit Court of Cook County, the Clerk’s Office and the Cook County/Juvenile Probation and Court Services, that we could make the expungement process work more efficiently.

The fingerprint terminal became available on March 15 and is being used and create a better process for individuals looking to expunge their juvenile records. By having the terminal in the same location as the Juvenile Expungement Help Desk, we hope to drive more people to expunge their records.

Current process can be cumbersome

If you have been arrested in Chicago, you can get your arrest record for free at the Records and Services Division of the Chicago Police Department located at 3510 S. Michigan Ave every Monday through Friday from 8:00 – 12:00.

Once you have your rap sheet, then you must fill out three forms: a petition to expunge juvenile arrest record, a notice, and an order of expungement. Once these forms are filed you will need to submit the forms to the Court Clerk’s Office. Then you will receive a court date and you will have to come back to attend court at the Cook County Juvenile Center.

The Juvenile Expungement Help Desk, located in the Cook County Juvenile Center, is the best place to go to get help in filling out these forms for free. They are also able to assist in filing fee waivers for their clients.

We understood when working on this issue that there were some issues with the current process:

Visiting the Chicago Police Department and then going to the Cook County Juvenile Center, located at 1100 S. Hamilton Ave, can be a cumbersome experience
We also heard that getting a rap sheet is the most important step before seeking help at the Juvenile Expungement Help Desk, but some individuals go to the help desk first

Fingerprint terminal at the Cook County Juvenile Center adds another option for obtaining rap sheet

Smart Chicago assisted in securing the Cogent FBI-Certified USB Fingerprint Scanner 3M CS500e for the Cook County Juvenile Center. The fingerprint terminal will help individuals on their first step of getting their rap sheets.

The biggest limitation the turnaround time to receive the rap sheets that last from a couple of days to a couple of weeks. The lawyers of the Juvenile Expungement Help Desk are working on a release form so that individuals can release their rap sheets to the lawyers at the Help Desk and not have to come back in to fill out the petition paperwork.

The new fingerprint terminal at the Cook County Juvenile Center will allow individuals to go through every step of the process of getting their records expunged, right there at the Cook County Juvenile Center. Individuals will need to visit the information desk and then be directed by a staff member to the fingerprint terminal. A probation officer will be LEAD-Certified and available to operate the fingerprint terminal.

LAF and CGLA are working on a process in which individuals can release their rap sheet directly to the lawyers at the Juvenile Expungement Help Desk. They will be able to complete and submit the petition paperwork on their behalf.

ICLEAR System

After on-going discussions with the Chicago Police Department, trained staff at the Cook County Juvenile Center also have access to the ICLEAR system, which would assist with receiving a rap sheet immediately for some people.

Members of the Chicago Police Department developed a technology integration application called Citizen and Law Enforcement Analysis and Reporting (CLEAR). CLEAR provides an unprecedented amount of information about criminal offenders in Chicago and Cook County. CLEAR makes this data available throughout the State and our neighboring states.

Access to the ICLEAR system allows staff at the Cook County Juvenile Center to use a name-based search to find rap sheets and print them immediately. There are some limitations of this system, since it cannot find records of individuals arrested outside of Chicago, arrested by multiple agencies, or who have older arrests. These individuals will still be able to use the fingerprint terminal to gain access to their rap sheets.

There is still more to come as we figure out this work, but these steps are getting us closer to an efficient process to get more juvenile records expunged.

Digital Divide Funding and the Power of Public Meetings

Smart ChicagoMarch 19, 2015

Here’s a story in the Chicago Tribune about the proposed cuts in state funding for the Eliminate the Digital Divide grant program: Proposed Illinois budget threatens digital literacy program. Here’s a snip related to the impact of the proposed cuts in Chicago:

Michael Matos, director of adult education programs for Albany Park Community Center in Chicago, said elimination of the program would hurt people who “do not typically have opportunities to use computers in their everyday lives, for advancing in the workplace, or to progress in their education.” Matos said many are “low-income families and individuals, limited-English immigrants, especially Hispanics, adults with limited education, and unemployed and underemployed individuals,” including military veterans.

“If the Eliminate the Digital Divide program didn’t receive funding for fiscal year 2016, we would have to discontinue eight training classes that run every six weeks and 12 hours weekly of open community access to the computer technology center,” Matos said.

Matos said about 1,800 people use the center, funded mostly by a $75,000 grant that ends in June.

The State of Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity has been an enormously important funder in this space. People and organizations all across the state have relied on these funds to improve skills, get job training, and generally improve their lives.

Here at Smart Chicago, access to technology & the internet and digital skills for all are important areas of focus. The Connect Chicago Challenge, an effort to make Chicago the most dynamic digital city in the country, aligns citywide digital leadership to coordinate and activate digital access and skills development interventions to enable every Chicagoan to fully participate in digital society.

This is an important issue that affects us all. Here’s a helpful cache of public documents about the work of the committee and grantees of the program, including up-to-date notes about the current status of funding and the results of a recent meeting of the Digital Divide Elimination Advisory Committee.

The reporter who wrote this story attended a public meeting held by this committee last week. She joined dozens of people, in person and on the phone, who work in this nascent field. As chair of the committee, I shared my thoughts on the cuts:

Dan O’Neil, an advisory committee member who also is executive director of Smart Chicago Collaborative, whose mission is to increase Internet access, said at the meeting that he believes funding should be doubled.

The digital divide is most certainly not closed, the work is not even close to done, and the librarians, social workers, and trainers who serve on the front lines deserve our support.

Kennedy-King College Public Computer Centers

18F and the Movement to Show Your Stats

Smart ChicagoMarch 19, 2015

Today, 18F launched an analytics dashboard for government websites and opened sourced both the dashboard and the app they use to collect the data from Google Analytics.

The data comes from a unified Google Analytics account for U.S. federal government agencies known as the Digital Analytics Program. The dashboard shows how many people are on government websites that are registered with the program (about 300) as well as top 20 data. (Right now, people want to know where their IRS refund is)

Other organizations that show their stats

The federal government isn’t the only one who now shows their stats. Several organizations either publish their stats or have dashboards of their own.

Government Digital Service (United Kingdom)

The GDS set the bar high for government digital services and continues to influence federal policy on this side of the pond with the creation of 18F and the USDS. The GDS operates several different performance dashboards on a wide variety of government functions. Their web traffic performance dashboard can be found here.

Code for America

Code for America has been experimenting with a website traffic dashboard. It shows what is being searched on the site, active pages, and most popular pages. It also shows the website traffic for the last 24 hours. This website dashboard is open source and can be deployed by anyone. (In fact, this dashboard was fork from the GDS dashboard project.)

Smart Chicago Collaborative

We are big fans of the show your stats mentality. We use Compte.com to better understand our own metrics. Here’s a sampling our web traffic for our website and the sites we help host.

Our hope is that this trend continues and that more organizations will publish their statistics.

Mode #2: Use Existing Tech Infrastructure

Laurenellen McCannMarch 19, 2015

This is the second piece in a five-part series exploring how to develop civic technology with, not for communities. Each entry in this series reviews a different strategy (“mode”) of civic engagement in civic tech along with common tactics for implementation that have been effectively utilized in the field by a variety of practitioners. The modes were identified based on research I conducted with Smart Chicago as part of the Knight Community Information Challenge. You can read more about the criteria used and review all of the 5 modes identified here.

MODE: Utilize Existing Tech Skills and Infrastructure

“Innovations” and technologies don’t have to be brand new in order to be leveraged for civic impact. Some successful tools are the product of simply using or encouraging the use of tools that communities have ready access to or already rely on in new ways.

It’s important to note that here, when we talk about “technical infrastructure” we’re talking about both physical elements, like wireless network nodes, radio towers, and computers, as well as digital elements, like social media platforms, email, and blogs — the tech tools a community uses to support everyday activity and public life.

Remix, Don’t Reinvent

Jersey Shore Hurricane News is a collaborative news “platform” built on a standard-feature Facebook Page. The site is run by Justin Auciello who co-founded it with friends in 2011 during Hurricane Irene. Seeing the need to share hyperlocal info during the hurricane and curious about ways to use tech to spur civic engagement, as the storm took hold, Auciello decided to start a hub for emergency information that anyone could contribute to. Rather than create a separate blog or media site, Auciello went where New Jerseyans were already gathering to learn and share info: Facebook.

Over time, the platform has expanded both in terms of the content (it now covers real-time daily news), the role it plays in the community, and the network of volunteer contributors involved in reporting and sharing. But the tool remains the same.

This is the art of the remix: the recombination of familiar, ordinary elements to create something extraordinary.

As part of their ELECTricity project, the Center for Technology and Civic Life (CTCL) recombined familiar elements of free website templates (using Google Blogger) to help local election administrations modernize and share information. The idea of working with Google Blogger and creating a new template (rather than developing an entirely new tool) was the result of a listening tour: for nearly 7 months, the ELECTricity team discussed points of pride and pain with local election administrators around the country. After the tour, CTCL realized that, in order to support administrators’ needs, the ideal online platform would need to be (almost) free and require minimal amounts of technical knowledge to get up and running while still enabling opportunities for more complex technical developments in the future. Blogger templates fit the bill.

Use One Tech To Teach Another

Free Geek is a non-profit organization model that was started in Portland, Oregon in 2000 and has been implemented in 12 other cities in the US and Canada. Free Geek takes old computer parts and works with communities in underserved areas (particularly those with low access to digital technology) to use this e-waste to build new computers and electronics. These electronics are then made available for free plus community service time.

Although the Free Geek system is ultimately about making computers available to those in need, Free Geek has built out programs that leverage this tech to teach and develop additional tech skills. For example…

Along with supplying free hardware, Free Geek also supplies software and offers basic digital skills training.
Along with supplying free software, some Free Geeks also offer training in code and web design and development at a variety of different skill levels.
Since community members “buy” their free computers through volunteer time, Free Geeks offer the chance to “pay” for computers by volunteering to build new electronics and trains interested community members in a variety of hardware, wiring, and refurbishing skills.

By focusing on the lifecycle of technology use, Free Geeks feeds into and strengthens the basic technical infrastructure of the communities they inhabit and provide platforms for partnerships and individual incentives (see Mode #1) that support public goods, like job training.

Portland volunteers at work. Image by Free Geek.

This is kin to the structure that the Red Hook Initiative (RHI) in Red Hook, Brooklyn, New York uses to manage Red Hook Wifi, a community wireless network. Red Hook Wifi is maintained through a youth program, Digital Stewards, which trains residents age 19-24 to install and maintain a wireless network that serves neighborhood homes and businesses. On top of that skill base, Digital Stewards are also taught how to do software and hardware troubleshooting as well as community organizing and public relations — skills necessary to keep the network up and running both technically and socially. Like Free Geek, the Digital Stewards program focuses on technology from an ecosystem perspective, stacking the development of new tools so that they can sustainably integrate into existing community structures.

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Up next is Mode #3: Create Two-Way Educational Environments

Year: 2015