As California's big cities face a growing need for tech answers to infrastructure challenges and quality-of-life issues, they're increasingly turning to hackathons and hobbyists for answers.
Often, the private sector is teaming up with local governments themselves to facilitate this involvement. Here is a look at what some of California's bigger cities are doing to address this 21st-century need.
San Jose:
San Jose has a Code for America brigade, called Code for San Jose. The team is sponsored by Microsoft, the Tech Museum of Innovation and NextSpace. They’ve worked on the city’s Open Data Policy, helped with community testing of the city’s new Customer Relationship Management system, and they are currently working on community projects like Open 311 at San Jose’s regular Hack Nights.
In late 2016, San Jose had a Civic Opportunity Hackathon with PayPal. It produced some useful apps for potential future development — for example, a mobile app to help the youth of San Jose find jobs, new and simpler ways for charities to collect donations, and new ways to share information from city libraries.
“The challenge with hackathons continues to be how we absorb the products into the city’s portfolio," Rob Lloyd, San Jose’s CIO, told Techwire. "Long-term, we are working on a process and development stack approach that will help us better on-board solutions built at hack events into the city’s portfolio.”
Sacramento:
Sacramento’s Code for America brigade has several current projects geared toward improving life in the city. For example, one project is a Web app and website for homeless and low-income people that helps them located the closest necessary resources.
Another, called the Sacramento Housing Data Hub, was created to provide community members with a common set of facts and data around the complex issue of housing affordability. The site, although unfinished, will give Sacramento area residents a comprehensive understanding of the housing market.
Another created a Twitter bot that would post adoptable pets from animal shelters to help them find homes.
San Francisco:
With weekly meetups, the CfA brigade in San Francisco is very active. A current project they have been working on is SF Fire Risk Project. This project attempts to model and acquire data from many sources, including SF OpenData, to predict the relative risk of fire in San Francisco’s buildings and public spaces.
The interactive map allows the user to type in an address and see fire-related risks and incidents in their area. It also provides recommendations from fire safety experts, should that be necessary.
Another project, We Vote, is a nonprofit, volunteer-driven movement intended to combine voting and social collaboration. The app offers voting recommendations for your entire ballot, lets voters create a voter guide that shows which candidates and propositions each voter supports, and connects them with friends and thought leaders.
San Diego:
Open San Diego is currently working on a few projects. One is an app that a parent can use on a smartphone to find nearby city parks. Another is a bike tracking app, We Bike SD, which helps cities plan improvements. It was based on an app from Code for Philly that records bicycle trips. The regional transportation planners use the information to make the city a better place to ride.
Los Angeles:
There are a few civic hacker groups in the Los Angeles area. One is California Data Collaborative, a nonprofit working to bring new data analytics to water managers. They user civic hacking volunteers for their events, which focus on standardizing existing water rate data.
Hack the Beach is an opportunity for civic hackers to come up with solutions that will have a real impact on the world. Last year’s winner, CityGrows, is a workflow and transparency platform for local governments to streamline the transition from paper into the digital world. Their goal is to “make interacting with your local government as easy as tracking a package online or ordering a pizza.”
Davis:
The city of Davis has an organization, Davis Roots, which is a nonprofit incubator. The purpose is to support entrepreneurs with mentors, infrastructure and grant funding.
Additionally, two new organizations like this, Area 52 and Inventopia, have set up in Davis. The city will be supporting the growth of these accelerators and maker spaces to complement Davis’s regional strength in the high-tech arena.
