National Day of Civic Hacking To Tackle Community Challenges, May 31 to June 1
The second annual National Day of Civic Hacking will be held from May 31 to June 1, 2014, with more than 94 events in 76 cities across the nation that will use technology and publicly released data to solve problems faced by neighborhoods, cities and states. The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation is providing $150,000 in support to the Khadem Foundation, a lead organizer of the event.
Building on the success of last year’s inaugural National Day of Civic Hacking, this second event will bring together the skills and insights of change-makers across the country including, over 5,000 citizens, software developers, entrepreneurs and more. The event will help to increase transparency and allow citizens a chance to collaborate with local, state and federal government agencies to develop solutions to pressing social challenges. Government partners include the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Census Bureau and several others.
Datasets and resources will be available online for people to explore, along with a list of challenges from federal government departments and agencies. Additionally, Knight Foundation will help craft a challenge that calls for ideas to help cities support the needs of a changing workforce, which is increasingly becoming more fluid and independent. Innovators will be asked to prototype new programs, tools and policies that help expand economic opportunity and harness the talent of a rising number of freelancers, entrepreneurs and others, as essential to building more successful communities.
“National Day of Civic Hacking is an opportunity for citizens anywhere to improve their communities, engage their governments and demonstrate the value of civic hacking, as a way to foster innovation and economic growth,” said Ali Llewellyn, lead organizer for the National Day of Civic Hacking.
“National Day of Civic Hacking offers the chance to bring together some of the best and brightest minds in the technology arena to push forward civic innovation and open idea-sharing,” said Carol Coletta, Knight Foundation vice president for community and national initiatives. “We hope to see some promising prototypes come out of the event that will contribute to the success of cities across the country.”
Examples of challenges from last year include: a project proposed by the White House to build a production-ready application using the White House’s We the People petitions system API so developers can build apps using data from petitions and signatures; a Web application proposed by the Peace Corps that allows for volunteers and teachers participating in the organization’s Correspondence Match Program to connect in real time; a project proposed by the Digital Public Library of America to use its dataset of over 2.4 million records to create visualizations, mapping applications and other tools to inform educators, researchers and others.
National Day of Civic Hacking is organized by Khadem Foundation in partnership with SecondMuse, Code for America and Innovation Endeavors.
For more information about National Day of Civic Hacking, or to find the event closest to you, visit hackforchange.org/.
About National Day of Civic Hacking
National Day of Civic Hacking is an annual gathering of the civic hacking community based in the United States but reaching beyond geographical borders.
Khadem Foundation
The Khadem Foundation is a non-profit organization committed to facilitating global prosperity through community facilitation, research and the use of cutting edge technologies. Believing that no single organization can tackle present day challenges alone, the Foundation facilitates collaboration among organizations to address social, economic and environmental challenges. The Foundation operates projects that range from providing humanitarian assistance to suppressed populations by creating jobs and training in technology, to understanding the impact of values to facilitate communities of learning. The Khadem Foundation is a research-based organization focusing in the value of collaboration and partnerships to foster international development.
About the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
Knight Foundation supports transformational ideas that promote quality journalism, advance media innovation, engage communities and foster the arts. We believe that democracy thrives when people and communities are informed and engaged. For more, visit www.knightfoundation.org
