This webinar introduces the "open data" movement and discusses the implications for NNIP partners. The webinar was organized to prepare for the Open Data and NNIP session at the Detroit partners' conference.
(Inactive) Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (Chicago)
May 2011
The Metropulse website is 100% web-service driven. Since we are already maintaining these web services, it will be relatively easy to make them openly available. With the exception of a few proprietary data sets, all 20,000 data points will be open for public use. Related to this, we will participate in providing technical support to participants in the upcoming apps contest sponsored by MCIC.
(Inactive) Metropolitan Chicago Information Center (Chicago)
May 2011
Through a collaborative arrangement with the MacArthur Foundation, the Chicago Community Trust, Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP), the City of Chicago, and Cook County, we are spearheading a competition that will build applications that use city, county and CMAP data to help communities become better informed. After MCIC cleans the data, application designers will have access to the data collected by various government and quasi-government agencies about their areas. Additionally, this work encourages the City of Chicago to publicize its data, furthering the open data moveme
(Inactive) Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (Chicago)
May 2011
The Metropulse website is 100% web-service driven. Since we are already maintaining these web services, it will be relatively easy to make them openly available. With the exception of a few proprietary data sets, all 20,000 data points will be open for public use. Participants in the upcoming apps contest sponsored by MCIC. This is important for anyone wishing to use the API.
Several NNIP partners organize gatherings each year to highlight ways that data has been used to improve neighborhoods and to allow local users to network and learn from each other. Some are solely data-focused; others have a broader agenda. This guide is in development, but for now presents basic information and links to the past and present user conferences.
University Center for Social and Urban Research (Pittsburgh)
April 13, 2012
Communities around the world are releasing public data in an open data framework. We would like your input as we explore ways to extend the availability and use of public data (including mobile applications) in Pittsburgh.
We have launched a new version of our innovative web mapping and data analysis platform, InfoAlamedaCounty.org. This fully redesigned system allows us to not only deliver beautiful web maps via a browser-based viewer, but also to offer up our extensive collection of local data as an API feed or as downloads to other desktop and web users. The new site effectively opens up our data warehouse for public access, instead of building another isolated, inaccessible silo of proprietary data.
The Piton Foundation is currently working on several projects which has required using new technology to build data systems (Citizen Atlas and StoryBase Project). This has meant hiring new staff and consultants with particular technological expertise. Matt Barry described their new approach to developing technology at the NNIP Portland meeting (video to be posted at http://www.neighborhoodindicators.org/activities/meetings/strategic-planning-technology ).
Since the mid-1990’s, NNIP’s member organizations have worked to “democratize data.” The innovative strategy the early partners developed included negotiating formal data agreements between their organization and each government agencies and then transforming the raw data to neighborhood-level indicators to share with community groups, government agencies, and the public. The politi
See all NNIP items related to the issues: Open Data
Audio to come soon. Presented at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia's Reinventing Older Communities Conference with CityCourced and Code for America/Open Plans staff on new ways to encourage innovation with information in a modern US city. Focused heavily on the benefits and strategies of OpenData to support engagement, accountaiblity, investment growth and new business incubation.
Related Links:
Presentation on Civic Innovation at the Fed Res Philly Conference
InfoWorks is a collaborative effort between the Rhode Island Department of Education and The Providence Plan. The InfoWorks site is designed as user-friendly, easily accessible resource for anyone interested in Rhode Island's schools. Available data includes achievement results, demographics, funding, and opinion data.
Center on Poverty and Community Development (Cleveland)
March 6, 2012
The Poverty Center's Neighborhood Stabilization Team Web Application (NST Web App) was selected as a Leadership in Community Innovation Award finalist. Four finalist groups competed for the award which included $25,000, funded by Key Bank, to go toward continuing projects. While the Center did not win the final award, it was an honor for the NST Web App to be recognized and selected as a finalist.
University Center for Social and Urban Research (Pittsburgh)
February 24, 2013 to February 25, 2013
UCSUR’s Pittsburgh Neighborhood and Community Information System (PNCIS) is helping to organize the first ever Steel City Codefest on February 24 and 25. Codefest will challenge software developers to turn public information into an application that benefits area residents, visitors, and businesses. Codefest participants will be given access to city, county, state, and federal datasets and will have one day to create their software applications.
Public Health - Seattle & King County (PHSKC), the NNIP partner organization for the Seattle area, is collaborating with other local open data organizations to make data more accessible and understandable. One of these partners is Public Data Ferret, a project of the non-profit Public Eye Northwest, which works to advance digital civic literacy, voluntary government transparency, and civic engagement.
Visualizing Neighborhoods is a day-long event to bring together neighborhood leaders, technologists, data visualizers, designers, artists, scientists, civil servants, and anyone else interested in exploring how data can be used for research, analysis, mapping, outreach, engagement, and communication in our neighborhoods. The goals are to start conversations, build community, experiment, and prototype projects for neighborhoods.
Our continual effort to share information expeditiously has found another portal. We are pleased to launch the Data Sharing Hub. The website uses the CKAN 2.0 and is designed to accommodate an array of file types allowing CMAP staff to post data for discovery by anyone with access to the internet. No passwords or usernames are required to view or download the data. Users are a point and a click away from much desired data.
(Inactive) Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (Chicago)
July 8, 2013 to June 30, 2014
The Data Sharing Hub project has cleared the preliminary planning stage and is transitioning into an iterative cycle. Migration plans include hosting data previously shared via other CMAP platforms as well as publishing new datasets of interest to stakeholders. The project demonstrates a number of CMAP’s suggested best practices for open data in government. Municipal staff, CMAP partners and private citizens will have access to the same data simultaneously.
PlanningCamp is an unconference in Oakland sponsored by the Urban Strategies Council and OpenPlans for those working at the intersection of technology and the hard effort of making better cities -- on the technology side, or the planning side, or a bit of both.
University Center for Social and Urban Research (Pittsburgh)
February 22, 2014 to February 23, 2014
The Steel City Codefest is a city-wide app building event that brings together coders, designers, and innovation enthusiasts to create apps for local government, citizens, and community organizations over a 24-hour period. Participants form teams, tackle challenges and compete for prizes. Codefest 2.0 will allow teams to use their creativity to develop and build innovative apps.
University Center for Social and Urban Research (Pittsburgh)
May 31, 2014
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Pittsburgh Neighborhood and Community Information System is participating in the National Day of Civic Hacking next Saturday (5/31) with an “Open House” event in Homewood with Open Pittsburgh. Many great activities on-tap.
As part of the National Day of Civic Hacking, OpenDataSTL organized Build for STL, a weekend-long event which included a hackathon, training sessions, and the launch of the Code for America Brigade in Saint Louis. In addition, OpenDataSTL partnered with other local organizations who organized co-events, including a community garden project and an OpenStreetMap Editathon.
(Inactive) Center for Economic Information* (Kansas City)
May 31, 2014
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City Camp KC, Kansas CIty's annual civic unconference occurred this year on May 31, to coordinate with the National Day of Civic Hacking. The theme was Startups and the City, and topics included startup communities, ridesharing, the DIY city, Code For America Brigade, open civic data, women in tech and startups, the wired city, civic tech, social media and advocacy, adaptive reuse, and the tech workforce. The National Day of Civic Hacking activities included helping increase digital literacy.
(Inactive) Nonprofit Center of Milwaukee (Milwaukee)
May 31, 2014 to June 1, 2014
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The Milwaukee Data Initiativein coalition with local developers, the City of Milwaukee, the County of Milwaukee and BucketWorks to tackle local data projects as part of the National Day of Civic Hacking. Participants included open data supporters, designers, programmers and data analysts from around the state, who created open data applications, data scrapers, maps and data sets.
(Inactive) Network Center for Community Change (Louisville)
May 31, 2014
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Hack for Change Louisville was organized to conencide with the National Day of Civic Hacking. This day-long event focused on building five projects: WFPL Radio's Curious City project, a pet adoption search based on information from the City's open data portal, a recreation of Louisville with Minecraft, and two projects for NNIP Partner Network Center for Community Change: a neighborhood explorer built through Open Street Map, and Shareabouts, a way for locals to share positive locations and memories in their neighborhoods.
Oakland Answers 2014, held in coordination with the National Day of Civic Hacking, was a combined writeathon and civic hackathon. The event invited writers to contribute information to the Oakland Answers website, in addition to inviting coders to contribute to current Code for America projects, including adoptadrainoakland.com, open budget oakland, oakland data, oakland wiki, and others.
For the past two years, the NNIP network has explored how our mission of democratizing data intersects with the growing open data movement. The project encourages more NNIP partners to actively participate in the call for governments to release data and to take the next step in using open data to improve their communities. We have learned that local NNIP partners and open data advocates have complementary strengths and should work together to more effectively advance open government data that benefits all residents.
This full-day workshop offers hands-on examples of how data and art shape and impact our community’s health. Join us in this exciting conversation where we will have the opportunity to build skills in data visualization, exchange best practices in community health, and explore different ways of using various art forms to tell the story of our region’s data.
• Steven Adler, Information Strategist, IBM • Jerry Paffendorf, Co-Founder and CEO, LOVELAND Technologies • Erica Raleigh, Director, DataDrivenDetroit • David Edinger, Chief Performance Officer, City of Denver
One of the most important new means for sharing data with the public is our Open Data Site, launched in “beta” form in the spring of 2014. We have been using the tool to publish existing data in our warehouse, prioritizing new content uploads as data requests come from the community through “Ask D3” and as project-related files are completed. We leveraged the Motor City Mapping project to strengthen our ability to provide accessible data to the community at large.
Institute for Urban Policy Research (Dallas) Urban Strategies Council (Oakland) The Polis Center (Indianapolis)
April 8, 2015
The White House Domestic Policy Council, in collaboration with the Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Laura and John Arnold Foundation are sponsoring a discussion titled "Technology and Data Innovations for Transparency and Accountability in Policing." They are bringing leaders from police departments and data/analytics offices around the country and are including technologists and local data intermediaris in the discussion.
The White House Domestic Policy Council, in collaboration with the Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Laura and John Arnold Foundation are sponsoring a discussion titled "Technology and Data Innovations for Transparency and Accountability in Policing." They are bringing leaders from police departments and data/analytics offices around the country and are including technologists and local data intermediaris in the discussion.
At Data Driven Detroit we’ve created a new data portal front page that is more aesthetically pleasing, simpler to navigate and more intuitive. The redesign simplified the site, taking away extraneous purposes. Instead, we focused on three major functions:
University Center for Social and Urban Research (Pittsburgh)
December 2014
The Pittsburgh Regional Data Center will provide an open data platform for our partners in local government and community organizations across the region. The Data Center will also provide an array of services to both data publishers and data users.
GlobalHack teams will work together with the Civic Tech for Social Impact Collaborative - including St. Louis County, Rise Community Development, and OpenDataSTL - to create technology solutions to make it easier for people to navigate the criminal justice system and resolve their issues faster. GlobalHack hopes that the solutions developed during these civic hackathons can be implemented not just locally, but nationally as well.
From 2014 to 2018, the Civic Tech and Data Collaborative (CTDC) brought together local government officials, civic technologists, and community data organizations across seven communities to explore how to harness data and technology to benefit low-income residents. Three national organizations with local networks - Living Cities, Code for America, and the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership – guided the initiative Local collaboratives in Boston, St. Louis, and Washington, DC created products that use data and technology in new ways to improve services or programs in their cities.
University Center for Social and Urban Research (Pittsburgh)
October 15, 2015
University of Pittsburgh Senior Vice Chancellor for Engagement and Chief of Staff Kathy Humphrey, Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald and City of Pittsburgh Mayor William Peduto announced the launch of the Western Pennsylvania Regional Data Center.
Matthew Martin, Charlotte regional executive, Amy Hawn Nelson, Director of Research at NNIP partner UNCC Urban Institute, and Rebecca Hefner, Comunity Research Manager at the City of Charlotte, spoke with Mike Collins on "Charlotte Talks." Follow the link below to learn more about the event and to hear the podcast.
Community matters as the forum for bringing people together to solve problems. Geography matters because community concerns are tied to a place. Technology matters because it provides a tool to examine and address community concerns.
June 4 marked the 2016 National Day of Civic Hacking, when citizens in cities around the country came together to code, write, learn, and otherwise contribute to the production of open data, knowledge and civic tools. Organized by Code for America, this day saw hundreds events in hundreds of cities around the country. Events ranged from single-day civic hackathons to two-day unconferences, and
This event is designed to solicit input from stakeholders from non-profits, religious organizations, city and county government, industry partners, foundations, healthcare providers and academia on key areas of focus where DSI can use big data analytic techniques to both evaluate the effectiveness of social good efforts and inform policy makers.
Given the threat that government datasets may be removed from the open web, Rice University’s Fondren library, with involvement from the Kinder Institute's and other Rice faculty, is joining an initiative from the research library community to:
Center on Poverty and Community Development (Cleveland)
March 2, 2017 to March 4, 2017
Cleveland's first annual celebration of civic technology, data, and the doers working to improve the region through civic tech and open data. Data Days: CTL+ALT+CLE was held March 2-4, 2017 and included presentations for hands-on data and skills training, exploration of the use of data in civic engagement, and interacctive opportunities.
NNIP Partners shared lessons with nonprofit and advocacy organizations participating in the Citi Community Progress Makers program from Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, San Francisco Bay Area, and Washington, DC.
Integrating Data for Equity (April 27, 2017)
Seema Iyer, Baltimore Neighborhood Data Alliance
Somala Diby, Urban Institute, 11th Street Bridge Park: Integrating Data to Advance Equity in DC
Organizations like NNIP Partners acquire data in several ways. Some government data sets are not confidential or sensitive and should be publicly available through open data. NNIP urges all our partners and other community organizations to be active advocates for open data. For more information on open data, see our 2012-2014 Open Data Cross-Site Project and examples of our partners championing open data.
The Civic Switchboard project develops partnerships between libraries and local data intermediaries to better serve data users, further democratize data, and support equitable access to information. The Project team includes the Western Pennsylvania Regional Data Center, The University Library System at the University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, and the Urban Institute's National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership.
See all NNIP items related to the issues: Open Data
(Inactive) Institute of Portland Metropolitan Studies (Portland)
April 2018
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We have launched the Northwest Open Data Exchange (NODE), a platform that pulls together the immense quantities of open data generated by PSU faculty, staff, and student research. Built on the open-source CKAN framework, our platform offers easy search and analysis tools, fast harvesting of outside datasets, and an API data engine that can link to Geoserver, R, and Leaflet.
On Thursday, March 15, the Sunlight Foundation hosted The State of Open Government, a series of panels and talks about open government at the federal level as well as open data projects in the District of Columbia.
Joining them to discuss federal challenges were some of the nation’s foremost experts on ethics and open government, including:
At the request of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, which funds the KIDS COUNT network, the authors conducted research to explore how these state data efforts couldbring greater benefits tolocalcommunities. Interviews with child advocates and open data providers confirmed the opportunity for child advocacy organizations and state governments to leverage open data to improve the lives of children and families. But accomplishing this goal will require new practices on both sides.
Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy (New York)
May 2019
Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy (New York)
The NYU Furman Center's CoreData.nyc platform includes a database of over 12,000 subsidized housing developments, as well as neighborhood indicators that allow users to explore the demographics, land use, housing market, and economic conditions in each of New York City's 59 Community Districts.
Center on Poverty and Community Development (Cleveland)
April 15, 2019
Data Days CLE 2019 will be held at the Case Western Reserve University Tinkham Veale University Center on April 15. Keynote speaker Troy Thibodeaux will share his experience using data to tell stories as Associated Press Data Journalism Editor. Find the agenda and register here.
The purpose of Sunlight Foundation's Community Data Dialogues playbook is to help jump-start community action, providing stories about how open data advocates have co-designed, collaborated, and solved problems together using open data. It features two NNIP partners: the Urban Institute's Data Walks and Data Days Cleveland. Read more here.
The Civic Switchboard program funded two NNIP Partners in 2020, DataWorks NC and The Polis Center. Learn more about their projects and local partnerships below! For others interested in working with public or academic libraries, check out the Civic Switchboard guide.
In 2019, Innovate Memphis launched the quarterly Civic Data Forum to convene local neighborhood data stakeholders and partners, to change the culture of ad-hoc and “one-off” data sharing commitments from local leaders into a sustainable and long-term data-sharing culture that celebrates open data and efforts to improve data.
Dorothy A. Johnson Center for Philanthropy (Grand Rapids)
May 4, 2022
Community Insight is a platform for displaying data about local communities, understanding community opportunities and needs, and targeting efforts for advancing equity. We draw on multiple datasets from a range of systems and institutions on topics such as education, health, economic opportunity, population demographics, and more. Much of the data is available at a community level or lower (e.g., Census tract).
As part of the Regional Data Agenda with the Regional Data Advisory Committee, MORPC and Ohio University are partnering to present Data Day: Driving the Region Forward with Data on Wednesday, March 1, 2023. Data Day will be a one day event held at Ohio University Dublin Integrated Education Center in Dublin, Ohio.
Neighborhood data counts people. It counts the places that our communities hold dear, and it counts the tragedies that we wish never happened. Neighborhood data counts how many of us have library cards, how many songs we sing along to on the way to work, and how many new mothers received prenatal care. It counts how our neighborhood is changing - when a new apartment building is constructed, a coffee shop is opened, or a new mural is painted.
Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance (Baltimore) Community Information Now (CINow) (San Antonio) Neighborhood Nexus (Atlanta)
September 2024
In late 2023 the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership (NNIP) launched an Impact Storytelling Fellowship to support NNIP partner staff with developing an impact story. Three Impact Fellows were selected to receive technical assistance and develop an impact story. They worked through the first half of 2024, defining impact ideas for their stories and talking to community partners to document evidence of impact.
