Philadelphia is looking to re-imagine the way citizens communicate within their city. Code for America fellows will develop a web app that engages individuals and enables them to develop groups and networks that support neighborhood services. Residents will have access to critical information about their neighborhoods, connect with other citizens that are interested in similar issues or services, all while informing and staying connected to government so it can better serve its citizens.

Excited by this project? Good. Because we need you to make it happen. It’ll be up to the Code for America Fellows to translate this concept into a reality in 11 short months, which will include everything from researching county services and working with local officials to designing the user experience and coding the application. As a CfA Fellow, this will your start-up.

If you’re interested in helping with this project, join our corp of volunteers and stay informed about opportunities to get involved.

Your Challenge

• Design a role for government in traditional social networking frameworks.
• The City of Philadelphia’s service districts are not aligned with naturally forming neighborhoods, which hinders the effectiveness of organized neighborhood activism. The challenge is to build a web app that addresses and minimizes the problem.
• Develop a product from concept to delivery in 9 months that can be used daily by 1.5 million users.
• Survey the existing open source landscape to determine how to re-use, re-mix, and develop the product as efficiently as possible.
• Create and document a product so that is easily reusable by other municipalities.

To tackle this project, you’ll have to answer difficult questions, only some of which we know about now, so we want to open that conversation to everyone. What are the tough issues and questions fellows in Philadelphia will have to grapple with, what are some other challenges for this project, and what else will we need to figure out?


(Photo: damonabnormal on flckr)