The Seattle Project

The City of Seattle has become a leader in the movement towards open government. In just the last year, the city staff has pursued various citizen engagement projects, such as recurring town hall meetings, implementing a platform for citizens to post ideas on improving the city, and expanding direct communication to the public through Facebook and Twitter. At the same time, the city has opened up access to many different streams of data and information ranging from building permits to crime reports. These resources present a valuable opportunity for civic leaders to become more effective and better connected. Code for America and the City of Seattle will work together to make that happen.

The project’s goal is to make it easier for the city to communicate with a variety of civic leaders, including block watch captains and neighborhood council leaders. The end result will provide more effective, efficient ways to offer input and receive responses from these groups, utilizing existing channels of communication, discovering and encouraging new channels of communication, and aggregating all of the above in ways that are useful and meaningful to city employees and civic leaders.