Posts tagged with "apps for democracy"
Washington, DC Government Pushes for Open Data and Tech Innovation
DC Emerging As a Leader in Opening Up City Data
Today Alex, Jeff, and I had the opportunity to talk with some of the DC government’s leading technology officers about open data at the Apps for Democracy press conference. Washington, DC is emerging as a leader in opening up government data, and I have to say we’re proud. The city opened up more than 200 real time data streams as part of the Apps for Democracy contest, a competition they sponsored that asks local web developers to take this data, analyze it, and put it on a website in a way that DC residents will find useful, and rumor has it that they’ll open more data streams up in the near future.
Here’s a photo of Alex, Jeff, and I with Mayor Fenty at the press conference. We’re psyched to have a mayor who encourages innovation in technology and comes out to give awards for it.
The fact that DC seems to be firmly behind open data is pretty revolutionary – they’re one of the first governments in the United States to do something like this. We spoke with Chief Technology Officer Vivek Kundra and City Administrator Dan Tangherlini and they both see that it’s not only the citizens who benefit from open data and the more information that comes with it, but also city governments who benefit from all the tools that are made with this data too. There was even talk about how our entry Stumble Safely could be repurposed as a tool for police officers to better identify crime hot spots around bars : )
Vote for Drupal in the Apps for Democracy Competition, Only 12 Hours Left!
The Only 100% Open Source Entry Will Show the Government that Drupal Rocks
You can show that Drupal is the platform of choice for governments by voting in the next 12 hours in the Apps for Democracy contest. There’s no login required and voting only takes three seconds, so vote!
This competition is an experiment by the Washington, DC government to see what developers can do with open data streams of city data. If they like the results, they’ll open up more data and make it freely available next year. This is also a great opportunity to show governments that open source software – and Drupal – rock. Our submission is the only one that’s 100% open source.
The site you just voted on is called OutsideinDC, and it’s a guide to biking in Washington, DC. The site makes it easy to find bike routes with bike lanes, monitor bike theft in real time, and find bike equipment on Craigslist. OutsideinDC runs on Drupal and is a great example of the powerful aggregation tools and mapping work happening with the platform. Drupal and Mapnik can do a lot for other government projects as they have very powerful tools for aggregating and parsing data, and we hope this will be a strong example of that. All the aggregation in OutsideinDC is thanks to FeedAPI and Feed Element Mapper, and we could not have built this website in three days without Drupal’s new spaces module
Thanks for voting for Drupal!
OutsideinDC: A Guide to Biking in Washington, DC
Find Bike Routes, Monitor Bike Theft, and Get a Bike
OutsideinDC is a guide to biking in Washington, DC where you can find detailed bike routes for commuting or fun, monitor bike theft in real time, and use Craigslist to shop for equipment. It’s a community space, so if you have a tip or want to sound off on biking in DC, just add #dcbike to a twitter message and it will show up on the front page of this site.
We built this site for the Apps for Democracy competition. If you like OutsideinDC, vote for it!. The competition closes at 11:59 on Wednesday, November 12. The purpose of the competition is to show what great community tools – like this site – are possible when governments open up their data and let people use it. OutsideinDC is built entirely on open source software and is the only app in the competition to be 100% open source. The site is built on Drupal, and there’s no google maps here, just Mapnik, a C++/Python GIS toolkit, which is drawing all the maps and has awesome anti-aliasing rendering.
