But finding the closest restaurant is useless if you can’t actually get inside the restaurant — and for many of our fellow citizens, that’s a far-too-common occurrence. Even as our cities continue to become more accessible, people that use walkers, wheelchairs, or mobility scooters still encounter barriers that can interfere with their day-to-day life. AXSMap to the rescue!

AXSMap is a crowdsourced accessibility map — a way for people to share their reviews of restaurants, stores, hotels, and other public venues based on accessibility criteria. Once registered on the site, users can contribute their reviews of a nearby location’s entry accessibility, ramps, elevators, restroom accessibility, Braille menu availability and signage, and other similar criteria. Users of the service can quickly and easily find accessible businesses of a certain type nearby or in a future travel destination.

Like any crowdsourced data service, it’s important to make it as easy as possible for the user community to contribute data — in this case, reviews of one to five stars for each venue. AXSMap uses browser geolocation and Google’s Places API to populate a database of businesses and locations for the reviewer community to build upon. Reviews are entered and published on the public map — and accessible businesses can even get a window placard to indicate their accessibility to passersby.

On May 12, 2012, the AXSMap staff held two mapping events simultaneously — one in New York City’s Union Square neighborhood and one in San Francisco’s SoMa neighborhood (home to the Code for America office). Volunteers assembled at each location for a quick tutorial in the AXSMap platform and how to perform accessibility mapping. They were then given a paper map showing their target streets and set loose to begin mapping.

I shadowed a group of volunteers heading down 8th Street from Howard to Folsom. Our first stop was a local mattress store where, after hearing a short explanation of the project, the staff were quick to let us proceed. The store had a very accessible entryway — no steps, no bumps, no grade, just a smooth pathway from the sidewalk to the retail floor. By AXSMap standards, this is a five-star entryway, and we entered the review accordingly. We left an AXSMap placard for the staff to put in the window, letting neighborhood residents know about the project and the store’s status.

Over a dozen volunteers participated here in San Francisco at the event, mapping dozens of area businesses and venues. I had the chance to speak with the organization’s founder, Jason DaSilva, and the executive director, Alice Cook, about the current status of the project and what the future holds (hint: more reviews, more features, and more visibility). I also got to “geek out” a bit with Senior Technologist Kevin Bluer and showed off some of the paper- and phone-based field data collection projects we’ve built and deployed at Code for America, most recently my colleague Nick’s “Red Pen” addition to Field Papers.

As a neogeographer, someone who wants to see easy-to-use mapping tools in the hands of as many people as possible, this was a very inspiring and exciting event. Watching volunteers build a real-time map of neighborhood accessibility — something that can be useful to so many residents of the area — was a fantastic “Code for America” grassroots experience! To get involved with AXSMap in your area, or to learn more, be sure to visit their website.

One of the first skillshares I’ve contributed to the repository is Git Basics. It’s intended to not be an extensive tutorial on Git (there’s tons of those available already), but more of a set of tips, tricks, and heuristics on workflow for using Git each day. The intent behind it is actually not to be 100 percent textbook accurate in descriptions and explanations, but instead make the content easy-to-remember and give some direction in using Git for your own projects and projects with others.

Hopefully we’ll be able to add other skillshares in the future ranging from design, to open government, to urban planning, to more technology-focused tutorials.

What I’m about to say should not detract from that last sentence. For society to function properly, we must have a far more engaged electorate, and we must have some sense that our vote means something. In fact, we’ve seen that who’s in office — particularly forward-thinking mayors around the country — has a huge impact on the kind progress that Code for America promotes. But I can’t help looking at the incredibly low rates of voting and not feel that there’s something truly fundamentally askew here.

When I worked in the video game industry (from about 1995 to 2004), a colleague used to talk about the disproportionate attention the industry paid to graphics. Around the early 2000s, we had video games with amazing graphics that were starting to look photo-realistic, but then the players would open their mouths and their dialogue and the behavior was so awkward and unrealistic that it was jarring. The storytelling and AI capabilities of the developers fell far short of what they could do graphically, and my colleague described it like a bodybuilder who spent all of his time on one arm, resulting in a body with one giant, powerful limb and the rest skinny and weak. Applying resources unevenly to an inter-connected system leaves the whole system ineffective.

Sometimes I feel like our attempts at engaging citizens in government is a little like that oddly asymmetric bodybuilder. As a society, we spend a lot of time strongly encouraging citizens to vote; some of those messages are highly partisan (as in the staggering amount of money spent on political campaigns), while some are bipartisan and targeted at the general need for an engaged, informed electorate (Rock the Vote, for instance). And we spend a lot of time on understanding the impact of various politicians on legislative and policy outcomes. But we spend relatively little time on the rest of the body of government, so the overall experience disappoints. As I’ve said before, government is a vast ocean, and politics is the six inch layer on top. What’s under that is bureaucracy, and it’s the operating system of our country. We can’t keep fiddling with the interface (electing politicians) when the underlying code base is so bloated and slow. At the risk of being fined for massive metaphor overuse, you could also say that politics is the skin on the body. You can’t fix problems of internal medicine with creams and lotions. Okay, one more, if you’ll forgive me: we’re quibbling about where the car should go instead of realizing that we’re driving a gas guzzler and the tank is almost empty.

I’m obviously not saying that we’re so great at getting people to vote, but maybe one reason we’re not is that when we do succeed in that task, too often voters end up feeling that even if their candidate won, nothing really changed. Which makes them less excited about voting again. In the meantime, the bureaucracies that actually produce the results of government are not featured in television commercials, are not hotly debated by pundits, are not really exposed to citizens except when they stand in line at the planning department or try to ameliorate blight in their neighborhood. Our true citizen engagement capabilities are those weak limbs that mean that no matter how much we work out that one arm, it’s still not going to be able to do the lifting we need it to do. Let’s get make voting better, and let’s make government better.  Both.

Photo credit: Philip Kromer,  Some rights reserved 

Judges, that’s me, will evaluate entries based on the quality of the analysis and design, the compelling nature of the finding, and the utility of the product.

You can still take the challenge, deadline is July 29.

The staff of NCoC asked me a few questions about data, and about my hopes for this challenge. Here’s what I had to say:

What got you involved in the world of civic engagement and social innovation? Was there a defining moment?
I worked at the City of Santa Clarita for more than five years on the Application Development team. We created software and applications that helped citizens interact with the city. At the time I didn’t realize that it was civic engagement, but just ways to both help the employees at the city and citizens interact better with the city. In 2008, a large fire took place just outside the city limits and many homes were evacuated. On our web site we had posted information throughout the week about the fire. Hearing the stories of how helpful that was to residents was a defining moment for me, I knew wanted to continue to work in the civic space.

How has data helped you and your work?
Data has helped me and my work tremendously. Taking data and using it for something good let’s the creative juices flow. I never thought that public transit data would be interesting until I built an app on top of the information. I never thought that voting data was interesting until I created an app that showed precinct breakdowns by votes. Without data the applications that we create wouldn’t be as interesting.

Do you have a favorite infographic, app and/or website?
One of my favorite visualizations is MTA.me. The website shows the different MTA subway lines in New York. Each time the subway crosses over another line in the visualization is plays a sound like a guitar string. This is an example of something really creative with public transit data.

I also really like these new maps released by Stamen. The water color maps are really beautiful to look at.

What would you like to see come out of the Civic Data Challenge?
I would really like to see applications built on civic data that we have not seen before. There are many civic apps out there from different challenges that are great. It would be nice to see applications that can really make people say, “wow, that’s cool.”

Nick Bowden is the co-founder and CEO of MindMixer. MindMixer has transformed the old-fashioned town hall into a virtual community engagement platform, strengthening citizens’ voices while broadening community and governmental leaders’ audience. We had a few questions for Nick about MindMixer. He was kind enough to answer our inquiries. Here is what he had to say:

What is MindMixer? How did it get started?
MindMixer is a web and mobile community engagement platform. MindMixer focuses on citizen-based idea generation and prioritization. Most importantly, MindMixer is dedicated to working with government and quasi-government entities. The existing model, which requires someone to physically attend a meeting, often leads to low turnout, yielding very few insightful ideas. MindMixer is designed to broaden and extend that conversation in a supplemental manner, ideally leading to better participation at the traditional town hall.

MindMixer started in July 2010 as a side project and was self-funded. We got started through previous experience with government as urban planners, designers, and traditional public involvement practitioners. All of the founders have spent their careers servicing municipal clients and facilitating traditional public meetings, leading to a desire to improve the face-to-face meeting experience cities currently employ. As the application picked up traction and new cities began to come onboard, we decided it was in the best interest of the company and its scalability to take on outside seed funding. In March of 2011, we secured a small seed round.

How would you define a civic tech startup and would you consider MindMixer one?
I believe a civic tech startup is a company truly dedicated to providing technology services that improve government efficiencies, better leverage available data, or enhance the constituent engagement process. I definitely consider MindMixer a civic tech startup, as our goal is to creatively impact and improve the citizen engagement process, particularly as it relates to ideas and implementation.

What is the business model? Who are the customers? Has it changed, and do you foresee change?
Our business model is to work with as many cities, government entities, and elected officials as possible to improve their constituent outreach capabilities. Our customer base today includes cities, counties, regional planning organizations, and elected officials. We were initially focused exclusively on cities but have recently expanded into the elected officials market. I imagine our customer base will continue to expand to any government-related entity that does outreach and engagement.

What challenges have you faced?
Our biggest challenge to date has probably been our location (Omaha, Neb.) and having access to the best talent in programming and development locally. We currently house our development team in the Los Angeles area, as it was difficult to attract top class developers to a startup in our area. We haven’t seen significant issues on the IP side, however, like all service providers in the government market, there are always challenges with procurement, time to contract, and ability of the government entity to move quickly and implement programs and policies. Additionally, the fact that each state has different laws on open information acts has proved to be a legal hurdle in each new state.

Is there a story or word of advice?
I think the best word of advice that I can give is keep pushing forward. Oftentimes the speed of government can be discouraging, but the movement is definitely happening. So staying committed to the process and constantly improving your technology is super important.

Currently, software developers and data analysts who are interested in applying their skills as a public service to the City of Oakland often face roadblocks because civic data is not easily available or is primarily accessible in non-consumable formats, such as PDF documents and map images.  If implemented, the proposed open data policy will allow the city of Oakland to leverage its extraordinary talented and vast pool of software developers, designers, and data analysts residing in Oakland at little to no cost of the city to produce resources of imaginable capabilities.

Like many other American cities, Oakland is facing issues of tight budgets and are lacking staff resources. As pointed out in Stoffmacher’s report, a great example is Washington, D.C.’s Applications for Democracy contest in 2008 where local software developers built applications valued at nearly $2.3 million and cost the city only $50K in prize money.

Photo by Steve Spiker.

During Monday’s hearing, Steve Spiker, an Oakland resident and the Director of Research and Technology of Urban Strategies, urged the city to implement an open data policy. The policy would would create opportunities for civic innovation and eventually bring much needed funds to the city of Oakland boosting commerce and grant monies received for civic use.  Following Spiker’s statements, I approached the stand as an Oakland resident and representative of CfA and addressed the council stating numerous CfA goals which include promoting open data and  making local governments more transparent, better connected to its citizens, and more efficient.  I also shared a few examples of various open-source civic software applications including CfA’s Adopt-A-Hydrant and the positive impact these contributions have made in cities around the country.

Councilmember Schaaf followed by recognizing Jennifer Pahlka as the founder of Code For America and proudly claimed her as a Oakland resident and a leader in civic innovation.  The city council proceeded to vote on the data policy and unanimously decided in its favor.  The city is allowing 90 days to devise a plan implement the open data policy ad and all costs and labor involved. Oakland open data is on the way!

Build or Buy?

In this context, “buying the software” refers to the purchase and deployment of an “off-the-shelf” software title — software that was already created, sold to, and used by other organizations. On the other hand, “building software” refers to the process of developing a customized piece of software just for our organization, usually by contracting with a consultant or development firm since the vast majority of nonprofits don’t have their own application development personnel.

Depending on the size, complexity, and uniqueness of the software, deciding whether to build or buy can require significant cost-benefit analysis. Most organizations, for instance, would never hire a programmer to build their own word processor when they could just buy Microsoft Word. But an organization seeking a complicated database application targeted at their specific operational activities might not have commercial options available or might find those options unsatisfactory compared to the features they could demand in a custom application.

Borrow!

About 10 years ago, the rapid increase of Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) gave nonprofit organizations a third option, turning the “build vs. buy” binary question into a branching decision tree: nonprofits could now “borrow” existing software and components from the Free Software community, from a “commons” of free software growing by leaps and bounds. By doing so, these organizations could conserve resources that would have otherwise been directed to “buying” commercial software or “building” out their own customized apps.

The benefits of this model should seem evident by now to anyone already familiar with Code for America and the work we do helping cities adopt modern internet-based technologies with an eye toward citizen engagement. The “Adopta” platform Code for America built and deployed in Boston has spread to Chicago, Honolulu and other cities but you won’t find a purchase order anywhere with “Adopta” as a line item. Every line of code we write is licensed so that it joins our shared commons, so that it can be used and re-used by any city or developer in the world that needs it: it becomes part of our digital heritage.

Every nonprofit is different, yet each have similar needs in common. My time so far at Code for America has proven without a doubt to me that while every city is different, they all have similar needs in common as well. And open source software development is the best way to let us harness our collective energies on meeting these common needs while conserving resources for satisfying our unique needs.

Rent?

Just a few years ago, not long after the FLOSS folks brought “borrow” to the table, we got another massive change in our software procurement options: “rent.” The related marketing terms can be vague and may include or exclude certain features but whether you call it “cloud” or “Web 2.0″ or “distributed computing,” it’s clear that that certain applications, platforms, services, and systems are now being economically provided remotely via the Internet. Maybe you’re running a significant part of your infrastructure on Amazon’s EC2 and S3 platforms or maybe you’re just embedding a single Google map in your city’s website; virtually everyone is now using some software or service that they didn’t buy, build, or borrow (at least in the senses outlined above).

Procuring software-as-a-service or taking advantage of platform-as-a-service offerings are two of the most highly visible ways of using this new model. These are transformative services that are disrupting the IT landscape for all organizations, no matter the size or focus or technical sophistication.

Bringing it all together…

It’s no longer the 1990′s: as the requirements and expectations of our users have grown tremendously in scope and sophistication, so too have the skills and tools in our technologist/developer toolbelts. There really isn’t too much “standalone” software these days — even for the simplest desktop or mobile utility, we (rightfully) insist on centralized management and enterprise integration. Likewise, it’s much too simplistic to expect “build or buy?” to be useful in this environment any longer.

Instead, cities — like businesses and nonprofits and startups and individual programmers and anyone else working with interconnected technical systems — are using hybrid models incorporating all of these procurement and development models. A modern project might involve the customization and use of an open source application to extract data from an existing proprietary database while offloading some storage and processing to multiple Internet-based service providers. These models – combining “buy,” “build,” “borrow,” and “rent” in various ratios – will be the norm for all but the smallest applications within a few years.

Many of our cities are suffering from technological stagnation resulting from several cumulative years of budget cuts and layoffs — how can we help them transform their infrastructure, development, and procurement models? There are no easy answers but here’s what we’re doing in the City of Santa Cruz:

0) Begin transformation of municipal IT culture – specifically, devote time and resources to experimentation, learning, metrics and measurement, user-focused design, etc. Santa Cruz is fortunate to have a City Council and City Manager that understand the importance of these new approaches and they fully support the City’s Chief Technology Officer in his efforts to effect culture change.

1) Begin transformation of municipal IT policies and practices – government IT agencies must not be hamstrung by rigid IT policies or practices with no basis in a modern environment. At the same time, it’s important to maintain traditional focuses on cost-effectiveness, stability, security, and long-term strategy. In Santa Cruz, for instance, the City is working to ensure that any future technology platforms or software purchased from vendors must have methods of interoperability. This policy helps prevent vendor-lockin and promotes integration between systems.

2) Build a learning organization – training, practice projects, skills-sharing, skills-building, etc. — in technology more than any other field, it’s important to continually acquire, build, and refine our skills. And from “Introduction to Ruby” to MIT’s “Community Growth and Land Use Planning,” there are more free learning and training resources available now than at any time in human history. In addition to learning new technologies and skills, giving teams the ability to work together on pilot/development projects is a fantastic strategy for building experience.

3) Build organizational diversity - cross-team, cross-functional, cross-everything. Smashing through barriers, organizational layers, and tech- or discipline-specific silos will be key to successful adoption of these new models. Architecting these types of hybrid solutions requires a high-level “CTO’s-eye view” of the organization’s tech infrastructure as well as deep working-level knowledge of the individual systems and data and departments to be integrated. Team members with an intimate knowledge of an organization’s current infrastructure need to collaborate with team members that are familiar with industry-wide best practices and an ever-changing roster of new products and services.

The best is yet to come…

It’s so exciting to be participating in these conversations at this point in time. As the capabilities of our raw materials — code, data, platforms, services, network — grow rapidly, the solutions we can build from these materials become even more sophisticated and powerful. For cities, this means new applications that help conserve resources and budgets, applications that provide more and more effective services, and apps that just make our cities cooler.

Jonathan Wegener is founder/CEO of Timehop.com, a simple service that answers the question “What did you do this day last year?” Jonathan loves building technology products and is the co-creator of Exit Strategy NYC. We asked Jonathan a few questions about founding a civic startup. He was kind enough to indulge our curiosity. Here are his responses to our inquiries:

How did you get into tech and particularly “civic” tech, and why did you found Exit Strategy NYC?
I’ve always been interested in technology and from an early age was programming, and building my own computers, and then designing and building websites. We founded Exit Strategy NYC because I got tired of not knowing where to stand on the subway when I got to my home station in Brooklyn. I started writing down the information in the notepad of my iPhone and then realized “this should be an app.” I found someone had done it for Tokyo, and as a book in Toronto, but never NYC. I love NYC; I’ve been living here eight years and I couldn’t imagine that I was the only one who would care about a product like this. So we built it.

What were the challenges of creating and maintaining the app and how did you deal with them? How much success did you have (e.g. revenue, etc.)?
The biggest challenge was getting the data. My sister and I bought unlimited metrocards and spent three months riding the subways with a clipboard visiting every station and writing down how each station’s doors lined up with the train cars. We also had to find and hire designers and developers to work on the project with us. We had a lot of success and made enough to repay our expenses and make it worth our time. We also got articles about the product in New York Times, New York Post, Wired magazine, and a host of others.

Could you talk about your current project, Timehop, and what you plan on building in the future?
We’re building Timehop.com right now. It’s an incredibly addictive daily email that tells you what you did a year ago today, based on your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Foursquare content. The real time web has given us all rich archives of our lives, but right now they’re siloed in different services and devices. We’re building Timehop into the ultimate digital history experience.

Your blog says you were told you “think too much,” in job interview. You didn’t get the job, but it was the greatest compliment you’ve gotten. Could you provide some more context about the incident, and explain why it was the greatest compliment?
I was interviewing with a startup in 2008. I was meeting their CEO, a very very smart Russian man with a background in data and number crunching and math. We talked for a long while about the job and about whether I fit. Finally he remarked “you think too much” and later rejected me. It was the greatest compliment because it was an incredibly underhanded compliment. He was basically telling me I was overqualified…I can’t think of a better way to get rejected from a job!

And finally, do you have any words of advice for others who want to start a civic-minded tech initiative such as Exit Strategy NYC, or want to use tech to improve gov’t/community?
Be creative and build cool stuff that the community loves!

We worked with city government arts commissions and departments in Boston, Philadelphia, Seattle, and San Francisco (and a guy from Portland named Matt Blair) to help others find public art via a mobile application; John Mertens and Max Ogden built a way to Tweet images taken with a smartphone to a map (http://www.artmapper.org); we collaborated with Foursquare to allow people to check-in to more than 3,000 pieces of public art in these four cities.

We had plans to do more — to combine all these efforts into one piece of technology — but time and resources ran short. Eleven months quickly came to an end. Max, John, and I moved on to the employment hunt, post-fellowship.

Sometime last summer, a woman named Laurenellen McCann from the Sunlight Foundation emailed us about what she was up to in Washington, D.C. She had built something called Art Around and it was kind of, well, exactly what we were trying to build during our Code for America fellowship.

One thing that a year with Code for America has taught me is that innovation does not belong to any one person. And more to that end, to even begin to create something new, you need to move mountains, and to do that you need villages — no armies — of people pulling in the same direction. You don’t do it alone.

Keeping that spirit with me, months later, Laurenellen and I finally connected, and ever since our first conversation, we’ve been scheming to work together. Today, I’m excited to announce, we launch our Kickstarter campaign to bring Art Around to San Francisco:

The landscape of tools and strategies for engaging citizens is changing rapidly, as more and more governments implement new ways for citizens to make their voices heard in the governance process.

The envelope gets pushed when public sector leaders employ collaborative technologies to make government processes more inclusive and participatory. And those doing the envelope pushing are increasingly putting open data at the center of their efforts.

In Philadelphia, Mayor Michael Nutter recently signed a sweeping Executive Order that will require city agencies to release government datasets to the public. It establishes oversight and a governance structure for the city’s open data efforts and calls for the appointment of a Chief Data Officer.

“The Open Data Policy puts in place the necessary framework, structure and governance that will increase collaboration among City departments and bring citizens closer to their government.”

– Philadelphia Chief Innovation Officer, Adel Ebeid

Philadelphia’s action follows closely on the heels of similar action taken by New York City to implement an open data policy that will guide how city agencies format and release data for citizens, journalists, and developers.

One of the first milestones in the implementation on NYC’s new law is the establishment of policies and technical guidelines for city agencies. In keeping with it’s leadership role in the open data movement, New York City’s Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT) is employing a novel approach in developing these standards – citizen engagement.

DoITT has established a publicly accessible, interactive wiki to encourage input and suggested text for the new open data policy. This unique approach is a first among cities with open data policies or legislation, as is the follow up policy hacking event which will bring together “policymakers, technologists, civic hackers, app developers, academics, journalists and data enthusiasts” to further develop the policy.

DoITT’s approach in engaging a wider audience to provide input into the wording and direction of city policy is reminiscent of the approach taken by the new Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB) in developing its open source policy.

The CFPB – which Code for America was thrilled to host recently for a meetup in our San Francisco office – is using their open source policy as an opportunity to try an innovative way of soliciting input from the public – they are hosting it on GitHub.

CFPB’s open source policy is hosted in the same software sharing site as their open source software tools. Developer and other interested parties can leverage the widely used Git software version control system to fork, modify, and merge changes to the CFPB policy.

It’s a completely novel and very exciting way to manage a government policy, and we’re eager to see what developers – some of whom have already forked the CFPB policy – can do with it.

Not only are cities putting open government data at the center of their citizen engagement strategies, some of them are using their open source and open data policies as engagement tools in their own respect.

Stay tuned to the Engagement Commons site as we add the valuable lessons provided by these bold experiments for other governments to leverage.