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dwblair edited this page May 15, 2013 · 39 revisions

Here you'll find locally-grown project ideas, with links to local and non-local resources, for awesome civic hacking projects!

Project ideas

Tree Planting Map

[initiated by: Grow Food Northampton. Related ideas are also in this document.]

The need to replant our region's aging/dying tree stock (the number/volume of trees taken down far exceeds those replanted) especially in light of future severe weather and searing heat, and the challenge to match trees to locations where they can/should be planted. Not just on public property but on private property too. It would be great to have an online way for ordinary citizens to register a location where they would like to receive a tree planting, either on their own property or on city or state-owned property.

Local Ingredient Registry / Delivery

[initiated by: Grow Food Northampton. Related ideas are also in this document.]

A large survey of Northampton restaurants revealed that most of them would like to use more locally grown ingredients. However, a major roadblock is needing to get information in a timely way that indicates what ingredients will be available each week from which farms. Also, having a reliable way to have produce delivered from a variety of farms would astronomically increase the ease of working local ingredients into the menus.

Gleaning Database

[initiated by: Grow Food Northampton. Related ideas are also in this document.]

A Gleaning Database that allows people access to fresh, local food that would otherwise go to waste, like a Freecycle for Food. [Note: this seems like this could be related to the “Local Ingredient Registry” idea above, too!]

Unlocking Prison Phone Data

[initiated by: The Prison Policy Initiative. Related ideas are also in this document.]

Background. A single telephone call home from prison can cost more you would pay for a months’ unlimited long distance. Why? Because the state Departments of Correction and the local jails give monopoly contracts to prison telephone companies in exchange for kicking back the lion’s share of the income. The families of the 1.4 million people in state or federal prison, and the families of the 12 million people who cycle through local jails each year are the ones who pay the price. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is finally considering providing relief to families by banning the kickbacks and regulating the industry, but the industry and the prison systems are fighting back, hard.

Mapping Safety Net Service Needs

[initiated by: Community Action. Related ideas are also in this document.]

A map that compares the location of people receiving safety net services with demographic data that shows where the services are most needed.

Background. Community Action serves over 30,000 people each year and runs more than 40 programs, ranging from home weatherization and financial counseling to youth programs and nutrition assistance. To make the best use of its resources, Community Action uses data to ensure their services are reaching areas that have the most need. This includes keeping internal records of their clients in Franklin, Hampshire, and Hampden counties, including addresses and the programs used. They also use county-level Census data (anything from poverty rates to commuting times) to assess local need. Community Action would like to improve insight into its reach by doing the following: Using more granular level Census data to track need (e.g., use Census tracts instead of county level) Assigning the locations of their clients to a census tract Visually comparing the two items, most likely on a map

Local Impact Calculator

[initiated by: CISA; also, related by Pioneer Valley Local First]

  • A calculator widget that allows people to input how much they purchase locally and the output is what that impact is on the economy and jobs and give specific ideas for increasing their local purchases.
  • A bookmarklet to encourage folks to shop locally
  • Website, public performance art, video
  • Highlighting local banks and their impact using FDIC data

Resources

Civic Hacking

  • Civic Hacking 101 -- from Smart Chicago Collaborative
  • Random Hacks of Kindness: See solutions built at previous RHoK events. Is there anything that could be re-purposed for Western Massachusetts?
  • Code for America apps: Code for America has built many open source civic apps.
  • Civic Tech Patterns: common practices that may help or hinder the conception or design of your civic technology.
  • Hacking is Good for Democracy: article by Gavin Newsom on Wired
  • Roll Up Your Sleeves, Get Involved, and Get Civic-Hacking: the White House call to action
  • Design Resources
  • Agile Designers: collection of resources on design elements, templates, frameworks, icons, fonts, and many other necessary tools for making web projects.
  • Noun Project: open source icons
  • ColorBrewer: planning to color a map? start here!

Open Data Sources

  • Data.gov: catalog of data generated by the Federal Government.
  • American FactFinder: data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
  • Census Bureau APIs: API access to select Census Bureau datasets.
  • National Priorities Project Data Tools: federal spending and tax resources.
  • Sunlight Foundation: transparency tools, data, and APIs related to Congressional activities, political contributions, lobbying, and more.
  • Sunlight Open States (MA): state-level legislative data, also available are bulk downloads, an API, and Python API client.
  • Massachusetts Open Data Catalog: inventory of Massachusetts state-level data.

Developer Resources

  • D3.js: a JavaScript library for visualizing data. See D3 for mere mortals to get started.
  • R: An open source statistical programming language and community.
  • RStudio: A free, open source IDE for R.
  • Enthought Canopy: Python data analysis and visualization distribution (Express version is free).
  • Data Visualization Tools: Comprehensive catalog of tools for mapping, charting, and visualizing data.
  • Flowing Data Tutorials: Step-by-step visualization guides. Many are restricted to Flowing Data members, but some are free to the public, and they are excellent.

Getting, Cleaning, and Analyzing Data

  • Web Scraping for Fun and Profit: A getting-started guide to scraping websites.
  • ScraperWiki: Web-based platform for building programs to extract (scrape) and analyze data from websites.
  • OpenRefine: An open source power tool for cleaning up large, messy datasets.

Mapping Resources

  • TileMill: An open source design studio from MapBox for making interactive, tiled maps from a variety of data sources (ESRI shapefiles, KML, GeoJSON, CSV, etc.). Integrates with OpenStreetMap.
  • Azavea Cicero API: Geocodes and matches addresses to legislative districts and elected official contact information. Also includes non-legislative boundaries like school districts, counties, and watersheds. Free trial, and non-profit credits available through TechSoup.
  • Fusion Table Map Template: Open source template for putting data on a searchable, filterable map. Heroku-ready version also available.
  • Census 2012 Shapefiles: 2012 extracts containing geographic and cartographic information from the Census Bureau's MAF/TIGER® (Master Address File/Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing) database.

Git-related

Other resources

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