National Day of Civic Hacking 2013 Final Report

National Day of Civic Hacking
NATIONAL DAY OF
CIVIC HACKING
2 0 1 3

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SecondMuse
Intel
Code for America, Innovation
Endeavors, Random Hacks of Kindness
Rally Software, Edelman,
Socrata, Elance, Code For Good
STRATEGIC & OPERATIONAL LEAD
HEADLINE SPONSOR
ORGANIZING PARTNERS
ADDITIONAL SPONSORS

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3 ..................................................... EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
7 ... NATIONAL DAY OF CIVIC HACKING AT A GLANCE
9 ............... A PUBLIC-PRIVATE-PEOPLE PARTNERSHIP
17 ...................................................... AT THE LOCAL LEVEL
23 ...................................................................... CIVIC HACKS
33 ......................... CIVIC HACKING: LOOKING FORWARD
37 ............................................................................... CREDITS

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
03
On June 1-2, 2013, more than 11,000 citizens
representing government, businesses, nonprof-
its and individuals participated in more than 95
civic hacking events in 83 cities across the United
States as part of the first ever National Day of
Civic Hacking. The event succeeded in uniting
the public sector, private sector, and individu-
als to solve our country’s social challenges with
innovation. This report attempts to capture the
breadth of collaborations, stories and innovations
that emerged to create this civic hacking move-
ment.

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“
demonstrates the value of public
and private investment in civic
hacking initiatives as effective
means to spark innovation and
foster economic growth.
”

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National Day of Civic Hacking inspired
unprecedented government participation
at all levels. Twenty-one federal govern-
ment agencies submitted challenges,
released datasets and attended events.
Six states joined as national partners, and
even more supported individual events.
Dozens of local governments - from San
Diego, CA to Kalamazoo, MI to Asheville,
NC opened data, proposed challenges
and, in some cases, declared official days
of civic hacking. Even the White House
hosted an event, which focused on devel-
oping the We the People petition plat-
form.
Bolstered with compelling challenges,
new data and national partner support,
motivated leaders across the country
planned community specific events that
were varied to say the least. Some cit-
ies hosted their first ever hackathons
while others leveraged the initiative
to grow their already flourishing civic
hacking communities. In Chicago, more
than 300 participants attended mul-
tiple coordinated events, and in Palo
Alto a city-hosted event drew more than
5,000 participants for tech and non-tech
community-building activities.
National Day of Civic Hacking demon-
strates the value of public and private
investment in civic hacking initiatives as
effective means to spark innovation and
foster economic growth. Local innova-
tors used federal and local data to develop
a myriad of solutions to 31 federal chal-
lenges. Two standout projects utilizing
federal data include Urban Fruit.ly, an
urban forager app out of Los Angeles, and
a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
complaint data visualization intended
to aid businesses in understanding their
markets. Standout projects that lever-
aged local data include Keep Austin Fed
from Austin, TX and Parks, Trails, and
Waterways Mapping from Akron, OH.
Increasingly, collaboration is both the
goal and output for defining civic hack-
ing successes, and National Day of Civic
Hacking motivated many new, strong col-
laborations. As examples, the Technol-
ogy Association of Georgia coordinated
the planning of seven diverse events
across the state, and the organizers from
Rockaway Beach, NY and Tulsa, OK

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connected through OpenFEMA to iden-
tify needs and create tools for emergency
search and rescue efforts. Some of the
strongest civic hacks were those that en-
gaged a diversity of people with different
backgrounds, perspectives and expertise.
Though decentralized at the event level,
National Day of Civic Hacking had a
cohesive national strategy determined
and executed by a core team of organiza-
tions active in civic innovation and the
civic hacking space. This initiative was a
public-private-people partnership whose
operational lead was SecondMuse with
organizing support from Code for Amer-
ica, Innovation Endeavors and Random
Hacks of Kindness. National sponsors of
the initiative include Intel, Edelman, Co-
deForGood, Rally Software, Socrata and
Elance.

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NATIONAL DAY OF CIVIC HACKING
AT A GLANCE
SAN FRANCISCO
DAVIS
OAKLAND
PALO ALTO
With multiple events that
had hundreds attending and
one event with thousands,
California had strong citizen
representation. Not only did
citizens participate - the
Mayor of Palo Alto, the
Mayor of Los Angeles, and
the State Governor joined in
the fun too.
CALIFORNIA
11,000
P A R T I C I P AT I N G C I T I Z E N S
$11,143,125
VALUE OF PERSON-HOURS APPLIED TO CIVIC TECH WORK
95
NUMBER
OF EVENTS
TWENTY
ONE
PARTICIPATING FEDERAL
GOVERNMENT AGENCIES
SACRAMENTO
MOUNTAIN VIEW
LA JOLLA
SALT LAKE CITY
PORTLAND
SEATTLE
LAS VEGAS
ALBUQUE
LOS ANGELES
PHOENIX
CHANDLER
ANCHORAGE
HONOLULU

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Asheville, NC took a focused
approach to NDoCH and ran a
“Hack for Food”. Working with the
Asheville-Buncombe Food Policy
Council, Code for Asheville hosted
an event that specifically targeted
challenges to healthy food access
in the community.
After Hurricane Sandy, Jess Klein acted
as an individual first responder for her
parents and their neighbors in Rockaway
Beach, NY. Jess founded an organization
called Rockaway Help, which hosted an
NDoCH event to continue building out
emergency response apps for future
disasters. OpenFEMA later introduced
Jess and Scott (Tulsa) so their teams
could collaborate.
ASHEVILLE
Garrett Wilkin planned NDoCH and
met many individuals who were
passionate about improving their
communities. Following NDoCH,
Garrett became a member of the local
Rotary Club and was asked to join the
Board of Directors for the Eastern
Maine Development Corporation.
BANGOR
PHILADELPHIA
BALTIMORE
WASHINGTON
DC
ARLINGTON
Georgia pulled together with the
help of one central organizer
who enlisted other organizers to
create seven events spread
across the state. No matter
where you lived in Georgia there
was a NDoCH for you.
GEORGIA
Scott Phillips, a Code for Tulsa developer, gave
back to his neighboring town that was torn apart
by tornadoes. He formed a team and created an
Open Search and Rescue application that may
expand to cities around the U.S.
TULSA
BOULDER
DENVER
NEW HAVEN
NEWARK
BROOKLYN
NEW YORK
CHARLOTTESVILLE
ROANOKE
BOSTON
AMHERST
PORTLAND
NORFOLK
VIRGINIA BEACH
ROCKVILLE
PITTSBURGH
ALLENTOWN
ALBANY
ANNAPOLIS
BOCA
RATON
ATHENS
MIAMI
ORLANDO
NEW ORLEANS
HOUSTON
IRVING
FORT WAYNE
DETROIT
ANN ARBOR
ROCHESTER
BURLINGTON
IOWA CITY
MILWAUKEE
KALAMAZOO
CHICAGO
MINNEAPOLIS
RQUE
LEXINGTON
SOUTH BEND
MACON
ATLANTA AUGUSTA
DAWSONVILLE
COLUMBIA
NASHVILLE
LOUISVILLE
RED OAK
AUSTIN
CHATTANOOGA
AKRON
RALEIGH
SAVANNAH
COLUMBUS
KANSAS CITY
ST LOUIS
ROCKAWAY
PUERTO RICO

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A PUBLIC-
PRIVATE-
PEOPLE
PARTNERSHIP
09
Many current social challenges seem insur-
mountable, but when tackled by a public-private-
people partnership, they can be solved, benefiting
society as a whole as well as individual stakehold-
ers. National Day of Civic Hacking is a compel-
ling example of the success of such partnerships.
GOVERNMENT PARTICIPATION
The first National Day of Civic Hacking provided
a new, relevant forum for civic engagement with
government, increased transparency, and infu-
sions of innovation into real challenges faced by
today’s government agencies. Forums such as
this are critical given today’s White House

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Similar to the commonly referenced model of public
private partnership, public-private-people partnerships
engage masses of people in directly solving complex
social challenges.
21 federal agencies joined the partnership to form the
largest civic hacking collaboration ever.
Government and private partner contributions, such as
offering data, challenges, and participating in events,
varied based on the capabilities and interests of the
organization.
All partners - government entities, private organiza-
tions, and communities - expanded their reach, gained
societal insights, and were infused with creativity.
National Day of Civic Hacking resulted in social and
intellectual capital gains in addition to economic gains
of more than $11,143,125 from volunteer hours worked.

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Digital Government Strategy that seeks
to “unlock the power of government data
to spur innovation across our Nation and
improve the quality of services for the
American people.”
At a federal level, the National Day of
Civic Hacking was the largest collabora-
tion of agencies ever to have occurred,
with 21 government agencies - from the
state level to The White House, technol-
ogy oriented and not - joining the partner-
ship. They contributed by posing chal-
lenges and opening up APIs. Many had
representatives attend local events.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture
posed a challenge to enhance the farmers
market experience and resulted in seven
creative projects. Some ideas were sim-
ple and some complex. One team, Urban
Fruit.ly expanded on the the challenge
and created a network building applica-
tion to enable peer-to-peer fresh produce
exchange.
The Department of Housing and Urban
Development and the Environmental
Protection Agency both made previously
unavailable data accessible, and the EPA
even made a “Quick Start Guide” to ease
the learning curve on understanding the
data.
The U.S. Census Bureau went beyond just
sponsoring challenges and providing data;
they also sent representatives to multiple
events to support civilian teams. In all,
25 Bureau employees attended individual
events, and some even attended multiple
events over the course of the weekend. As
a result, many projects, census sponsored
and not, effectively utilized census data.
Every contribution resulted in unique
returns for the agencies and departments.
Those organizations now have a direct
connection with newly engaged citizens,
and they’ve seen what citizens can and
will do with their available data. The Na-
tional Day of Civic Hacking demonstrated
the ways in which government can par-
ticipate in mass collaboration events to
achieve purposeful innovation across our
nation.
PRIVATE SECTOR PARTICIPATION
Private entities, unlike government agen-

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to civic hackers across the country in
order to build more meaningful and ef-
fective civic hacks. The results were
profound: over half of the participants
saw value in Intel’s approach and
claimed their projects utilized their
concepts.
Code for America, one organizing part-
ner, uses multiple programs to build
bridges between citizens and govern-
ment enabling active citizen participa-
tion in the govtech marketplace. The
large hacking community established
around Code for America Brigades was
excited to join the movement, and by
supporting as a lead, Code for America
reached new individuals across the na-
tion, establishing new relationships in
the public and private space.
Edelman, a large, client-focused public
relations firm with a global reach,
cies, don’t always have a common goal, but
the National Day of Civic Hacking brought
value to each partner in unique ways. As
with the government participation, pri-
vate organizations joined the movement
in different ways: some galvanized the
national movement, others organized local
events, and some offered challenges and
data. In participating, each private sector
partner had the opportunity to interact
directly with innovators across the nation
and join in the three-way knowledge and
skill sharing initiative.
Intel, the headline sponsor behind the
initiative, realized a unique opportunity
to bring value to innovators across the
country. Intel Labs has been working on a
platform called We the Data which seeks
to realize the potential for personal data
and large open data sets to be combined in
meaningful ways that can benefit society.
A framework they developed was offered

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partnered with SecondMuse to manage
National Day of Civic Hacking commu-
nications to launch the initiative into
broad public view. The initiative allowed
Edelman to foster innovation across of-
fices and practices and, internally, was a
testament to the power of their combined
network through collaboration across of-
fices, practice groups, and digital teams.
The examples above represent of the
variety of companies involved and how
they participated. However, beyond the
national participation, many more private
sector companies made National Day
of Civic Hacking a reality by sponsoring
local events. Despite the wide range of
company interests, National Day of Civic
Hacking needed each of their competen-
cies and served them uniquely in return.
By participating in the multifaceted
event, each company could easily access
individuals across the nation, government
representatives, and government data
that were made available for the initia-
tive.
COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION
The people are a key factor of a success-
ful public-private-people partnership.
Those involved brought their passion for
giving back to their communities, their
knowledge of local challenges and their
varied skills – from software develop-
ment to design - and they made positive
change in their hometowns and across
the nation. Many of the civic hacking
communities were already established
when National Day of Civic Hacking was
conceived, and those communities fueled
the movement early on and will continue
to carry the innovations forward through
the year.
Minneapolis was one of many cities to
develop solutions for public transporta-
tion issues. In Tulsa, Rockaway Beach,
and Boston, disaster response solutions
emerged, and many cities from Miami to
Oakland tackled educating the public on
civic issues. In Austin, Keep Austin Fed,
a grassroots nonprofit that distributes
healthy food to those in need, expanded

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communication skills gained. While
difficult to quantify network connec-
tions, participants did indicate that
they felt their networks had increased,
they had built trust with their new
team-members, and they intended to
continue working with their teams.
The benefits of mass collaboration to
individuals and towns are as varied as
the communities themselves. Overall,
those involved in National Day of Civic
Hacking realized value on the days
of the event, but will continue to see
value as the project teams continue
their work and challenge solutions are
implemented. Public-private-people
partnerships result in unique and
powerful social and intellectual gains.
its online presence and developed plans to
expand to new cities.
Some even felt the positive impact of Na-
tional Day of Civic Hacking at a personal
level. One example, Garrett from Maine,
was asked to join the Board of Direc-
tors for the Eastern Maine Development
Corporation after his local event was so
successful.
The largest hackathon ever hosted, Na-
tional Day of Civic Hacking resulted in
economic, intellectual and social capital
gains for the more than 95 communities
across the nation. The value of volunteer
hours realized was at least $11,143,125
over the course of the two days. In a
follow-up event survey half of responders
indicated that they had made connections
with sponsors. Participants also saw value
in collaboration, project management, and

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The Birth of National
Day of Civic Hacking
The National Day of Civic Hacking was born when some of the nation’s
leaders in civic engagement decided to rally around a common goal on one
weekend.
Inspired by the success of the first International Space Apps Challenge in
2012, the NASA Open Innovation team wanted to see how mass collabora-
tion could go even further than NASA’s challenges. How could it be used to
solve the challenges of the nation – communities and their governments of
all levels? In June of that year we discussed the idea of NDoCH with the Of-
fice of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), the biggest supporter of the
Space Apps Challenge, and they immediately supported the idea. They saw
15
An excerpt from Nicholas Skytland,
NASA Open Innovation Program Manager

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potential for mass collaboration to further implement the President’s Inno-
vation Agenda and promote Open Government, Digital Strategy, and Open
Data Initiatives.
We knew that the civic hacking space was near saturated with strong lead-
ers and organizations and so we chose to leverage those rather than dupli-
cate efforts. It was not long before we had aligned three strong leaders with
National Day of Civic Hacking: Random Hacks of Kindness,Code for Amer-
ica, and Innovation Endeavors. The Hackathon, Brigade, and Super Happy
Block Party models were perfect for the NDoCH vision, and the combina-
tion of the three really ignited a movement for civic hacking at a national
level. A leadership team was convened that included SecondMuse, other
Federal Government Agencies (Census Bureau and FEMA), local leads, and
other interested parties. The event was officially announced at the Champi-
ons of Change event at the White House in September and publicly released
for interested hosts and participants in early 2013. From there the idea
unfolded into the movement that it is today. It has been amazing to see the
vision take root and grow into a national event.

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AT THE
LOCAL LEVEL
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Individuals and teams of local event organizers in
83 communities across the US served as the bed-
rock for National Day of Civic Hacking and civic
hacking more broadly, and the 95 events were
diverse in design, focus and reach. An education
hackathon in Brooklyn aimed at getting parents
more involved, while a write-a-thon in Oakland
focused on completing a wiki page to answer
commonly asked municipal questions. Event or-
ganizers had the option of choosing from existing
models such as the Super Happy Block Party or a
Random Hacks of Kindness event or to propose
an event of their own design.

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Individual organizers and teams of local organizers
in 83 cities across the US hosted more than 95 diverse
events.
National Day of Civic Hacking leveraged the talent and
energy at the grassroots level to source innovative solu-
tions to social challenges posed from the local to the in-
ternational level.
Local organizers were fundamental to the success of Na-
tional Day of Civic Hacking. Communities decided what
event structure best suited local interests and which
challenges to tackle and solve.
Featured challenges from the 21 federal government
agencies were welcomed, and dozens of solutions were
built to address them.

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National Day of Civic Hacking provided
a national platform to support local
innovation. San Francisco organizer,
Mike Zuckerman, hacked National Day
of Civic Hacking with his event called
[freespace]. He leveraged the weekend to
kick-off a month-long cultural hack that
utilized an abandoned warehouse he’d
temporarily procured for only $1. He and
fellow organizers invited the commu-
nity to determine how best to utilize the
space and revitalize the area. Gardens,
bike shares, murals, classes, and com-
munity dialogue are just some examples
of what emerged from [freespace]. The
benefits to communities were very much
dependent on local organizers putting the
sweat equity into creating opportunities
for others to participate.
Leading up to National Day of Civic
Hacking, local organizers spent months
planning, seeking local sponsorship and
spreading the word about their events
and the national efforts. As the lead oper-
ational partner, SecondMuse supported
local organizers with biweekly planning
calls that were a mechanism for local
leads around the country to connect,
share and learn from each other. Addi-
tionally, SecondMuse provided adaptable
PR materials, planning resources and any
other assistance the organizers required.
SecondMuse supported and built on the
commitment, knowledge and energy of
the organizers at the grassroots level to
support the unprecedented mass collabo-
ration success of National Day of Civic
Hacking.
The types, sizes, and goals of the 95
events were organic. Some cities hosted
their first ever civic hacking event, draw-
ing between a handful and a few dozen
novice civic hackers. Some local govern-
ments even declared June 1st an official
day of civic hacking in their city. Still
other cities had embraced civic hacking
early on; one of those cities, Philadel-
phia, teamed up with Baltimore to tackle
shared urban challenges and test the
validity of shared challenge solutions.

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5,000 participants. The event show-
cased an inspiring array of civic in-
novations around science, technology,
engineering, art and math.
All of the event examples in this sec-
tion illustrate how local events re-
flected the individuals that planned
them, the people that participated and
the landscape of the communities in
which they took place. The same can
be said of the challenges posted and
tackled as part of National Day of Civic
Hacking.
SecondMuse worked with each federal
agency to identify and craft its chal-
lenge so that it met their internal goals
while appealing to civic hackers more
broadly. A well-defined challenge
statement is more than just a concept
- it should have all the information a
Locations known for having strong tech
and civic hacking communities also
participated by leveraging the weekend to
build awareness and grow their already
established communities. In Chicago, a
city known for strong government support
of civic hacking, the Smart Chicago Col-
laborative supported three coordinated
events, each targeting a different audi-
ence. Events ranged from a Migrahack
focused on solving challenges facing the
immigrant population to a youth-focused
hackathon at Adler Planetarium that
looked at innovation in science education.
All together, the events in Chicago reached
more than 300 participants and augment-
ed regularly scheduled meetups between
the city and civic hackers. In Palo Alto,
known for it’s tech and startup communi-
ties, the city’s Chief Information Officer
hosted a block party that drew more than

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ground running when the event begins,
from summary and background, to re-
quirements, use cases, restrictions and
well-organized data. The Census Bureau
challenged hackers to leverage statistics
about every neighborhood in the nation
to create useful tools that looked at ev-
erything from commute times to median
income to poverty rates. The EPA posed
a challenge to develop an application
that helps citizens locate their drinking
water system, discover any historical
or pending violations, and understand
any potential health effects associated
with potential violations. Additional
local challenges emerged at events as
well, based on specific interests and the
personal experiences of civic hackers.
The collaboration between Tulsa and
Rockaway Beach around creat ing more
efficient volunteer and relief service
deployment following a natural disaster
emerged out of specific local needs and
knowledge, but it has a universal applica-
bility.

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CIVIC HACKS
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At the core of National Day of Civic Hacking are
the civic hacks that are produced. What is a civic
hack? As it turns out, it can take on many forms.
The most common is a software hack - an appli-
cation for a mobile phone, a desktop, or the web
that solves a civic challenge. But what about other
kinds of civic hacks? A civic hack can also be the
creation of a new community space to address
unmet needs in an urban neighborhood. A civic
hack can be the engagement of youth around
science education in an innovative, community-
driven way. A civic hack can be the emergence of
a community of tech do-gooders who engage with
their city government for the first time.

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Hundreds of projects were created in response to a
range of local, regional and national challenges.
23 of these projects were invited to a an event at the
White House where the some were highlighted as
Champions of Change in Open Government and Civic
Hacking.
National Day of Civic Hacking weekend provided an
opportunity to rapidly prototype solutions to
challenges which can then be developed to a point
of maturity following the events

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Following the National Day of Civic
Hacking, participants all around the
country were asked to keep working on
whatever civic hack they came up with
for an entire month. At the end of that
month, they submitted their work to the
White House who then selected a variety
of projects to feature at an Open Govern-
ment and Civic Hacking Champions of
Change event to highlight “extraordinary
leaders in transformative civic hacking
and civic engagement.” Below are a selec-
tion of these projects that represent the
innovation, passion and diversity of ideas
that emerged from National Day of Civic
Hacking.
CHICAGO COUNCILMATIC
Chicago, IL
City councils shape nearly every aspect
of city life, and yet it is often hard for
citizens to know what their city council
is doing and how their representatives
are voting. The Chicago Councilmatic,
modeled after the Philadelphia Council-
matic developed in 2011, aims to ease the
difficulty of understanding legislation
impacting citizens of Chicago. With the
Chicago Councilmatic, citizens can track
items of personal interest, see how ac-
tive their local leaders are, and in general
browse, search, and subscribe to pieces
of legislation. The team is continuing to
work this summer during Code for Amer-
ica’s Great American Civic Hack to make
the Councilmatic even easier to deploy in
other cities.
KEEP AUSTIN FED
Austin, TX
Keep Austin Fed began as a grassroots
movement to feed those in need through
collection and redistribution of unused,
consumable food. The complex network
of food donors and distribution volun-
teers was managed through phone calls,
but recent growth of the program made
the logistics of those phone calls ineffi-
cient and difficult to manage. At National
Day of Civic Hacking, the Keep Austin
Fed founder worked with a team of de-
velopers to created a suite of online and
SMS products and services to support
the continued growth of the organization.

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through crowdfunding to keep the proj-
ect alive moving forward. [freespace] is
located in San Francisco’s Central Market
District, an area of revitalization focus for
the Mayor’s Office of Economic & Work-
force Development (OEWD) since Janu-
ary 2010. On June 1, 2013, [freespace] was
a blank canvas in every sense; participants
were invited to fill the walls with art, and
fill days inside the building with events,
activities, and programming for long-term
projects. Since [freespace] opened its
doors on June 1, there have been events
scheduled every day (109 events as of
June 30th), ranging from yoga to lectures
on civic engagement to creative reuse
challenges to documentary + discus-
sion nights to potlucks to beta testing for
environmental games. The organizers are
helping projects born inside [freespace]
to exist beyond the walls of the building
and continue beyond the month of June.
The developers will continue to work with the
Keep Austin Fed founders to build their prod-
uct beyond its beta testing version and they
are developing a transition plan so that the
final product can be owned and maintained
internally. Additionally, Keep Austin Fed
is working with the City of Austin’s Health
Department to ensure all food meets code
requirements as the operation grows. They
intend to expand to other cities.
[freespace]
San Francisco, CA
[freespace] is an experiment in cultivating
civic hacks. Inspired by the National Day of
Civic Hacking, and wanting to provide civic
hackers a longer timeframe to seed and grow
projects, organizers initially secured a one-
month lease of a 14,000 square-foot San Fran-
cisco warehouse for just one dollar, in coordi-
nation with the Mayor’s office and a real state
development agency. They went on to secure
an additional $25,000 from the community

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They recently secured funding to keep the
space open through the month of July.
SHELTR++
Baltimore, MD
Sheltr.org is a website and SMS service
that provides people with information on
how to access basic needs such as food,
housing, and healthcare; and up until
National Day of Civic Hacking the ser-
vice was only available in Philadelphia.
The cities of Philadelphia and Baltimore
sponsored an App Sharing Challenge
to test out the other city’s civic hacks in
their own and a team in Baltimore chose
to bring sheltr to their city. In addition to
expanding the service to a new city, the
combined Philadelphia and Baltimore
teams expanded Sheltr’s current func-
tionality. The combined teams achieved
three objectives during National Day of
Civic Hacking: The service was expanded
from Philadelphia to Baltimore through
strong event collaboration, a new SMS
request interface was added, and the web
interface was updated. Currently they are
building out the database of information
for Baltimore and creating the team that
will sustain Sheltr’s service over time.
WHAT’S GOING ON
Philadelphia, PA
As in many other cities across the nation,
the budget in Philadelphia for out-of-
school-time activities is dwindling in the
face of overall fiscal struggles. Despite
these struggles, there is still high demand
for afterschool and summer programs,
but up-to-date information on such pro-
grams is difficult to find. What’s Going On
is a crowdsourced, then verified, one-
stop-shop for all information on these
programs. By collecting all information at
one central hub parents can find informa-
tion on what they’re seeking (arts, STEM,
or athletics) quickly; the team recognized
that the many Philadelphia families
without access to the internet at home are
restricted to time-limits on public com-
puters and cannot waste time filtering
through outdated information. What’s
Going On plans to continue to build out
their site and provide information on safe,

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New Orleans, LA.
In New Orleans, over 50% of the murders
with known causes happen as the result
of conflicts - conflicts that may have been
squashed if someone had known of and
mediated the issue. There is a proven,
existing phone service that matches
respected community individuals (by
slang known as “OGs”) with the people
in conflict to mediate the dispute, and
at National Day of Civic Hacking, one
of the OGs shared his story of stopping
a conflict (known as stopping the beef)
before it resulted in violence. He was a
local restaurant owner/rapper that had
been alerted of a conflict and was able to
mediate before the situation escalated.
This resulted in the National Day of Civic
Hacking challenge to create an online pro-
gram that would supplement the phone
reporting / matching program. During the
hackathon and in the weeks following the
productive activities that will keep kids off of
the streets.
GRUBB.IO
Denver, CO.
The idea for Grubb.io is to assist people to find
locally produced, high quality food. The app
includes: a farmer’s market search, a business
planning tool, a food seasonality database,
and the ability to find healthy recipes for the
local, seasonal foods. Grubb.io creates a direct
connection between growers and consumers,
small producers can expand their reach and
deliver more high quality food to their com-
munities. Since the hackathon, the team has
continued to expand and improve Grubb.io.
Within the next few weeks, they plan to de-
liver a world class product that will change the
communities everywhere by making locally
sourced food accessible, marketable, and easy
to find.
STOP BEEF

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29
e team created a website where “beef” can
be reported, a web location where “OGs”
can register, and they integrated a system
that searches individuals’ social networks
to find the best mediators for the reported
dispute. The team worked with New
Orleans Ceasefire, the phone service/
system, and the Mayor’s Office during the
weekend to build and troubleshoot the
app. They also attended a basketball tour-
nament to get input on customizing the
app for the targeted audience. The team
is now seeking a grant to continue build-
ing and promoting the project.
MSPBUS.ORG
Minneapolis, MN
This website was developed in Minne-
sota because there was a need for people
to better understand bus schedules. The
team lead had lived previously in Seattle
and was eager to bring public transporta-
tion solutions to his new home in Min-
neapolis where public transportation is
not as popular. Due to extreme winter
weather, long waits at the bus stop are
enough to deter public transportation use
and can even be deadly if cold enough.
The team developed a working website
in the course of the weekend and have
since expanded the capabilities. More
than 1,100 unique visitors have visited the
site, and the team is in discussions with
the Minneapolis CIO to integrate the site
with the Metro Transit site.
PARKS, TRAILS, WATERWAYS
MAPPING AREA
Akron, OH
The team members on this project rec-
ognized that in their Ohio County there
were many parks but there was no single
resource for finding local hiking trails.
They discovered that this information
did exist in an electronic format for the
Cleveland MetroParks and so they col-
laborated to make the work open source
and added other Ohio regions. During
the National Day of Civic Hacking the
team established a prototype for Sum-
mit County, Ohio that allows users to find
parks and trails based on a number
of filters including distance, feature,
activity, and featured routes and places.

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ship with government.
OPEN SEARCH AND RESCUE
Tulsa, OK
The Open Search and Rescue app was
built with input from OpenFEMA in the
weeks immediately following the tragic
tornadoes in Moore, Oklahoma. Tulsa
civic hackers shifted the focus of their
event for National Day of Civic Hacking
to use their software talents to benefit
Moore following the deadly tornadoes.
They coordinated with an OpenFEMA
representative, representatives from the
Tulsa Fire Department, the Oklahoma
All Hazard Incident Management Team,
and the leader of Oklahoma Task Force
1 - the first Urban Search & Rescue team
deployed to Moore to build the app. In
the course of the weekend they developed
prototype web applications for automati-
cally notifying and mobilizing task forces,
and electronically mapping searched
Once the user chooses a destination they can
get directions by car, transit, or foot to the
location, and share that map with friends via
email or social media. The team is going to
continue to work with the Cleveland Me-
troParks to keep the databases consistent and
to continue to develop the content and capa-
bility of the site.
REWRITE OAKLAND
Oakland, CA
Oakland Answers is based on a prototype
developed in Honolulu originally, but Oakland
found a need that this app would address. The
task was to build a new website for the city
that gives people a simple way to find answers
to common questions for city government.
Future plans for the site include giving citi-
zens the ability to contribute to the site. 25%
of participants were city employees including
city staff, librarians, tech developers, design-
ers, retirees, and local advocates. It demon-
strates that great civic hacks are in partner-

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31
and electronically mapping searched ar-
eas to avoid duplicating efforts. The proj-
ect evolved after the National Day of Civic
Hacking when OpenFEMA connected
the Tulsa Hackers with the Rockaway
Beach, NY hackers who had developed a
similar tool following Hurricane Sandy.
The teams merged their efforts and are
now using the strongest work from both
locations. Development is ongoing as the
teams are working with weather stations
to incorporate data, and discussions are
happening to potentially incorporate
drones that will provide aerial views of
emergency areas immediately after disas-
ter strikes.
URBAN FRUIT.LY
Los Angeles, CA
Urbanfruit.ly was designed in develop-
ment with the city of Los Angeles. The
website and mobile application will
facilitate neighbors exchanging fruits in
a peer-to-peer network. Linking urban
gardeners in a local exchange network Ur-
banfarm.Ly will reduce the carbon foot-
print of food delivery, and support healthy
food choices for local citizens. The web-
site was scheduled to go live on June 30,
but as of now is not.
In the spirit of open innovation, the civic
hacks that have been submitted were
encouraged to release their work under
an open source license and to be available
online for public access. The projects here
are intended to be iterated upon,
redeployed, and constantly improve as
other civic hackers pick up and adapt
these ideas and tools for their own
communities, but as of now is not yet up
and running

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CIVIC HACKING:
LOOKING FORWARD
33
Solving the myriad of complex civic challenges we
face requires collaboration between governments,
private companies, the nonprofit sector and, most im-
portantly, the communities who ultimately face these
challenges. Civic hacking represents collaboration in
action. We have seen the impact that National Day of
Civic Hacking can have, so what does the future bring
for solving complex challenges with civic hacking?
National Day of Civic Hacking demonstrated that
collaboration on a mass scale can be achieved and to
great effect, engaging thousands of individuals at al-
most one hundred events around the country. Though
this mass scale represents an unprecedented accom-
plishment in the civic hacking space, it is important
to remember that civic hacking can be adapted to a
variety of scales and purposes.

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Collaboration between government, private compa-
nies, and communities is essential in order to solve
the complex social challenges we face.
Civic hacking benefits greatly from coordinated
hacking events and will reach the next level of im-
pact by leveraging opportunities to sustain, mature
and accelerate the high potential projects emerging
from such events.
This model for civic hacking and engagement can be
replicated by organizations and communities both
large and small.

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35
Government agencies have engaged com-
munities of innovators through focused
initiatives relating specifically to their
interest and expertise, such as NASA’s
International Space Apps Challenge.
Companies, such as Intel, have also cre-
ated their own civic hacking programs.
Intel’s CodeForGood initiative engages
employees with nonprofits to solve social
impact challenges pertaining to educa-
tion.
Organizations like Code for America con-
tinue to work with cities to reinvent how
municipal governments can collaborate
with the citizens they serve to solve local
civic issues. These examples and more
demonstrate that this model for civic
hacking is one that can be replicated to
the benefit of a wide range of communi-
ties, organizations and governments.
It is also important to recognize that civic
hacking events in and of themselves don’t
solve these challenges. Civic hacking is a
tool that can be employed in a process of
change and innovation, one that is bol-
stered by effective partnerships, strong
understanding of problems, and meth-
ods to sustain and accelerate ideas that
emerge from civic hacking events.
Looking forward in civic hacking also
means looking at the hackathon as just
one tool for innovation. The majority
of events during National Day of Civic
Hacking were hackathons that produced
exciting prototypes of solutions to im-
portant challenges. To have sustained
impact, these prototypes must grow into
mature projects with established users
and developers, and resource stability.
The projects detailed in this report show
a great deal of promise in these areas.
Taking civic hacking to the next level
of impact, however, means supporting
efforts to sustain, mature and accelerate
these high potential projects that emerge
from civic hacking events and
communities.

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CREDITS
37
This report was written by SecondMuse.
The design and layout was created by the Phuse.
National Day of Civic Hacking was made possible by:
National Sponsors: Intel, Rally Software, Edelman,
Socrata, Elance, and Code For Good.
Strategic and Operational Lead: SecondMuse
Organizing Partners: Code for America, Innovation
Endeavors, Random Hacks of Kindness
We would also like to acknowledge the hundreds of
event organizers, local sponsors, volunteers, local
governments and participants that made this event
possible.

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Bureau of Economic Analysis
Census Bureau
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
Department of Energy
Department of Labor
Department of Transportation
EPA
FEMA
HHS
HUD
IMLS,
National Archives and Records Administration
NASA
National Endowment for the Arts
National Science Foundation
Peace Corps
State of Maryland
State of Nevada
State of New York
State of Washington
United States Patent and Trademark Office
USAID
USDA
Veteran Affairs Center for Innovation
White House Office of Digital Strategy
White House Office of Science and Technology Policy
”
GOVERNMENT
AGENCIES

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hackforchange.org

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National Day of Civic Hacking 2013 Final Report

National Day of Civic Hacking 2013 Final Report

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