Anatomy of a Service Request Type: Tree Trimming

Posted on January 12, 2012 by DXO

The City of Chicago does not yet publish 311 service request data for tree trim requests, although I do expect that to be published soon

Meantime, I took some photos of the process here.

This tree trim operation is in the 2000 block of North Damen.

This guy has the tools of the trade: rake, shovel, ladder, tree pruner, hand pruning saw, clippers, tool belt, safety harness, nylon rope, orange traffic cones, yellow spray can (not sure what that is for)

Tree Trim Chipper Truck from Bartlett

The end result: nice crisp cuts and clear rights of way. All hail the trimmers of trees!

Toward Better Tools For Context in Civic Data Using Private Data Sources

Posted on January 9, 2012 by DXO

Now that civic data is a normal part of the atmosphere in Chicago, it’s time to start mining private data sources to make automated context a natural part of our Web infolives. By that, I mean the addition of information about a subject that is generated without human intervention. My experience as the person responsible for obtaining civic data at EveryBlock has made me deeply aware of the power and limits of data lookup tools. Now that we have much more lookup tools and data to fill them, especially here in the City of Chicago, it’s time to turn our attention to the Web and the tools we use to extract data from it.

The recent dogged work of the Chicago News Cooperative, with help from Medill Watchdog, dovetails well with automated context. They’ve been publishing a great series of articles this week about lobbying in Illinois:

There’s great reporting in here based, in part, on a review of data. Here’s are some snips:

The investigation showed that the filings frequently are inaccurate. Both lobbyists and their clients are required to disclose their lobbyist-client relationships. In 242 instances, records show, lobbyists reported working for a client but there was no corresponding registration by the client.

*

Medill Watchdog examined statements of economic interests of public officials, lobbying registrations filed with the City of Chicago, Cook County and the state, and records of state bills and local ordinances. The investigation found 14 elected officials from Cook County alone who, while not lobbyists themselves, are related to or in business with lobbyists.

It’s time to automate some of that review.

Why civic data is not enough

Lobbyist data in Chicago has a great start on automated context. Lobby data was released earlier this year, and then improved when developers asked for better data and the City provided it. Those developers launched an awesome Web site– Chicago Lobbyists– that tracks lobbyists, clients, and projects. Here’s more info on how the Web site works.

This is a great round-trip story: municipality releases data, developers analyze data (for free) and make suggestions, City heeding suggestions and releasing more data, and developers making a great app (again, for free) to view the data.

The next step seems simple– use the site to figure out all the big money relationships inside and outside government. But that didn’t happen. According to the data, $11,422,846 was paid to lobbyists working to influence the City in 2010. While that’s a lot of money, I do not believe that is the sum total of money involved in influencing the actions of a $6 billion operation. That doesn’t pass the sniff test, and the CNC articles this week show the nature of that failed sniff. There’s much, much more to be had.

Reverse-engineered bios

My assumption is that there are dozens of other positions, arrangements, and relationships that are factored into the true picture of lobbying. I am not in any way suggesting that these are nefarious, illegal, or improper. In fact, I find them to be absolutely normal. I just also find them to be hard to find. The CNC/ Medill stories of this week illustrate this very well– they did a ton of shoe-leather reporting to get insights. The thing is that we should be able to piggyback on that work with better tools.

For example this snip from a CNC story:, “the investigation found 14 elected officials from Cook County alone who, while not lobbyists themselves, are related to or in business with lobbyists.”

How did they find that out? Probably by painstakingly reviewing the economic interest disclosure forms and googling the shit out of the businesses listed. In most cases, online biographies of lobbyists played little to no role in pulling these pieces together.

As is typical in an industry where relationships matter, the people who do (and make) the most have to day the least about their work. The firm with the highest billings in 2010, Illinois Governmental Consulting Group LLC., has a one-page Web site with no feature/ benefit text and just emails to the principals. Why? if you don’t know who these people are already, they probably don’t really want to hear from you. To mailto me is to love me.

In situations like this, it’s not impossible to pull together a reverese-engineered bio for the principals, and picking up some noun clauses in the process. For instance, he was appointed to the Western Illinois University Board of Trustees. While we’re at it, here’s a mother-lode of George Ryan appointments to various state boards from 2001, including the Western Illinois appointment for Brunsvold. Someone needs to slurp that up and put it to use.

Automatically-generated entity associations

On the other end of the biographical info spectrum, I found that large law firms— with their sophisticated in-house marketing and PR teams— are much more forthcoming about what noun clauses matter in the world of Chicago lobbying. By doing entity extraction on the biographies of lobbyists, we can be armed with fodder for understanding and connections. With information from these tent-pole sources like law firm Web sites, we can apply that info to the other people in the industry.

Open Calais is one of many tools and companies that are focused on entity extraction and compiling knowledge on a topic.

Here’s an example from the bio of Edward J. Kus, one of the lobbyists found in the data (with some initial research)

Executive Director of the Mayor’s Zoning Reform Commission
Zoning Administrator of the City of Chicago
First Deputy Commissioner of the Department of Planning and Development
McCormick Place Expansion: the Chicago Tribune has a hundred or so stories about this from the 1980s and early 90s in their archive
Navy Pier Redevelopment
Central Station
Lakefront Millennium Park
Chicago Plan Commission: homepage of the Commission has a list of all current members as well as searchable PDFs of all meetings (with members, matters, and outcomes) going back to December 2009. Plethora of info. Includes vote counts, recusals, etc.
City of Chicago Zoning Board of Appeals
City Council Committee on Zoning
City of Chicago Department of Planning and Development
City of Chicago Department of Zoning.
Group Home Task Force
Open Space Committee
Landscape Advisory Executive Committee
Greater North Michigan Avenue Association
Leading Lawyer in Illinois

So even though Kus only received $19,000 in 2010 from lobbying (the top person, Brunsvold, pulled in $978,000), the 17 initial-caps entities can be whacked against all other names in the data to tease out connections. The best thing is that all of this could be automated. I would like to see a computer program that does entity extraction of each of these noun clauses and drill automatically into each of them, slurping up all of the people and putting it into an understandable chart. Again, all of this is fine– it’s nice to make money, it’s nice to have responsible civic voices helping us make decisions, and it’s nice to know everything one needs to know in order to understand.

This info can also be pulled into the Chicago Lobbyists Web site as context in and of itself. These two pages on the Internet: the ChicagoLobbyists page for a registered lobbyist and the Mayer Brown bio for the same person don’t even know about each other. No link, no unique user ID, no way to know that they are the same person, even though the content is in many ways complementary. Here’s an example:

The law firm Web site says this partner “Represented various banks related to municipal and state regulations”
The lobbyists Web site indicates she billed $10,000 in 2010 to the Northern Trust Corporation

Connections in plain sight, rendered in plain text on the Internet, there for the making.

Marrying databases and the importance of standards

The public data environment is maturing quickly; moving from one in which very little data is available to one in which different units of government publish different datasets about essentially the same thing. For example, the Cook County Clerk has their Lobbyists Online lookup tool which contains lots of information about many of the same people who are in the City data. The Cook County system publishes the contact information (including email and cell phone number) as well as what looks like a copy of the building access ID photo for every registered lobbyist. The City data does not include this info, but since they publish the name and firm, it is possible to marry this info into one record.

We’ve been successful in changing policy when it comes to the publication of data, but there has not been much corresponding thought on standards. Much of this has to do with the vagaries of existing software and the idiosyncrasies of intake forms. Meantime, there is lots of opportunity for private developers to pull together all of this info into a useful (and valuable) repository.

Compiling language about the thing itself

One cool thing about marketing and public relations text is that it allows one to leverage the curation of others. Here’s a snip from a lobbyist bio on the DLA Piper Web site:

In 2011, the Chicago Sun-Times reported that a zoning deal concerning plans to develop the old Lincoln Park Hospital site in Chicago had won initial approval from the Chicago Plan Commission despite aldermanic opposition. Reporter Dave Roeder noted, “As a historical note, this project is the third example of a zoning deal winning initial approval despite aldermanic opposition. The only other recent case was the proposal, yet unrealized, for a Chicago Children’s Museum in Grant Park. The zoning lawyer for that deal and the Lincoln Park Hospital site is Ted Novak of the firm DLA Piper. Other zoning lawyers probably wish he would bottle his secrets and sell them.”

Telling language. How people describe their actions is almost always telling. That’s probably why the ones with the most work say the fewest things.

Another example is Shoefsky & Froelich’s pretty enlightening definition of lobbyng:

Our firm represents private-sector entities seeking rights, licenses and privileges from government boards, commissions, and legislatures. We develop government relations strategies, draft and engage in hearings on petitions for relief from government regulations, and negotiate public sector/private sector partnerships. In addition, a substantial element of this practice area includes pursuing zoning changes and other relief required for development

Here’s Mayer Brown’s mega-page explaining, in detail, the actions they take on behalf of their government relations clients.

Meanwhile, watching entities from the DLA Piper bio reffed above, I saw “Lambda Alpha International, Ely Chapter (an honorary Land Economics Society)”. Their Web site has a basic info on the field of land economics. They’ve also got 10 years of their newsletter archived. My guess is that contains some good info about tactics and methods for lobbying, written in the congratulatory prose of a trade publication. Good stuff.

If one wants to understand lobbying, one has to have this stuff in front of them. Making tools that finds and monitors these sources would be valuable.

There’s money in this

It’s not hard to think about commercial uses for such a tool. Opposition research for political candidates and competitive intelligence for the lobbyists themselves are just some of the uses that come to mind. There’s lots of great work going on in civic data, especially in Chicago. I’d love to see venture capital follow some of this important work. I think we’d all benefit.

New Walgreens in the Old Noel State Bank Building at 1601 N. Milwaukee (corner of North, Milwaukee, and Damen in Bucktown/ Wicker Park)

Posted on December 30, 2011 by DXO

Photo courtesy of the Cook County Assessor's Office.

NOTE: This post is an aggregation of information on 1601 North Milwaukee Avenue in Chicago, which is currently being made into a Walgreens. This info was compiled mainly via Web searches and deep dives into public databases. It serves as a specific manifestation of a broader idea– that the City of Chicago contains a mountain of info about the space around us, it’s just unevenly distributed. Making tools to automate the process of turning this raw information into actual knowledge that helps shape our civic actions should be a priority for Chicago developers in the coming year.

A New Store in an Old Building

I’ve watched the work at the new Walgreens at 1601 N. Milwaukee, at the corner of North, Milwaukee, and Damen for a few months now, and I’m really excited about this place. The bank building is wonderful, and it looks like the build-out is going to be respectful of the original architecture. This has always been a dead corner on an integral six-corner piece of the city (I moved into the neighborhood in 1985 and can’t remember anything of interest being there, ever), so I really want to see this new store be an anchor.

The work done to date has been some tuckpointing and painting of the exterior and a general fix-up of the inside (described in full below).All of this work seems to be very preparatory and there’s nothing about the inside that indicates that a Walgreens will be in there any time soon.

I hope that the build-out mirrors the CVS in the old Home Bank and Trust Company building at the corner of Ashland and Division, with some improvements. I love that store, and I appreciate the care they took in maintaining the architectural features of the place.

Having said that, the (original?) doors are very heavy/ hard to open and the store has a “dead air” feel to it. That might have something to do with the soaring height and relatively small footprint of the place. Also, the layout/ flow of the store is even less friendly than most CVS stores. No matter what you buy, you have to double back to the cash register. I’ve never seen the registers in the back of the store open, either–that might help to establish a better feel.

I wanted to create this post just to aggregate as much info I could about the building and track the progress of the store. I’m interested in the history of the place (hence the Sanborn research– thanks, Jen!), civic process (zoning, permits, licenses), architectural detail (especially the glass ceiling), store format type, and the impact that such a project has on a neighborhood.

History

The building started life in 1920 as the Noel State Bank Building at the corner of Robey (now Damen) and Milwaukee. Taking a look at the 1914 Sanborn map for the area, the block had a wagon shop, a wholesale liquor establishment, a post office substation, a paints & oils place, two mattress factories (one with an electric motor), and a tailor shop with wood posts and electric power. As an aside, the tailor shop building now houses a place where they seem to have a never-ending string of weekend customers who want their eyebrows tailored. There were six separate buildings (1601, 1607, 1609, 1611, 1613, and 1615 N. Milwaukee– none of which were labeled with any particularity– where the bank would be built. Here’s the full Sanborn sheet (best viewed large) and a snip below (lower right):

This is a snip of the 1914 Sanborn Map of 1600 Block of North Milwaukee. The six properties that will make up the Noel State Bank are in the lower right triangle.

The next Sanborn map I have for the area is 1950, has the place all decked out. Here’s the full Sanborn sheet (best viewed large) and a snip below:

This is a snip of the 1950 Sanborn Map of 1601 North Damen Noel State Bank. As usual, there is great detail on many of the properties shown.

Note that this schematic refs a mezzanine in the front and back of the bank. You can see the front mezzanine in this recent pic. I wonder what they’ll put up there. Would be a nice breakroom. Or maybe their copious user-driven photo processing equipment. The Cook County Assessor’s Office PIN number for the property is 14313320180000.

Once you’ve got the PIN, you can go to the Cook County Recorder of Deeds to look up info about ownership of the property. Lots of action on the property, all of which map nicely to the news coverage:

Civic Process

Going from a long-empty building in a neighborhood that has experienced lots of change and growth to a new business can be a long, arduous process. Here’s what I’ve gleaned from a search of the topic from a number of sources :

CBS2, April 26, 2011 (quoting Crain’s, whose story is unavailable w/o login) has the deal on the zoning change necessary to make it viable retail: Committee OKs Zoning Change For Old Wicker Park Bank

Crain’s Chicago Business reported Tuesday that the owners of the Midwest Bank building at 1601 N. Milwaukee Ave., are seeking the zoning change. The owners took over the two-story, 15,500 square foot building through a deed-in-lieu of foreclosure, and are now seeking retail tenants, Crain’s reported. Currently, according to the Zoning Committee, the building is zoned for both retail and manufacturing. The proposed change would change the zoning just to retail. The terra cotta building was completed in 1919 as the Noel State Bank building, according to the City of Chicago. It was later a Fairfield Savings Bank and most recently, Midwest Bank.

Racked, May 13, 2011 had the goods on the Walgreens moving in: Breaking: Walgreens to Take Over North / Milwaukee / Damen

Some new information just came our way that leads us to believe that this landmarked building at the six corner intersection of North Avenue, Milwaukee Avenue and Damen will soon become the latest location for the Midwest’s pride and joy: Walgreens drugstore.

The Building is fifteen thousand square feet split between two stories and will become similarly occupied as many of the other projects we’ve been seeing develop around Wicker Park and Bucktown. The facade will be power washed, the windows will become clear and appear to be larger by eliminating window frames allowing for more light into the space. Finally, a large non-lighted “W” sign is to be installed on the corner but plans shall be further studied in case there is a possibility the sign obscures the building’s character-defining features.

RedEye Chicago, June 8, 2011 has info on architectural detail: What’s the deal with Walgreens?

UPDATE (1:50 p.m.): Walgreens spokesman Robert Elfinger has confirmed that Walgreens has signed a lease in 1601 N. Milwaukee Ave., with a tentative opening of winter 2012. Burck didn’t know much about the project, except what was discussed in an April Commission on Chicago Landmarks meeting, which included a vote to keep the 14 ground-floor windows the same size (there was a proposal to enlarge the window openings) and an agreement to continue to study the location, size and design of a large “W” sign so that no building details are obscured.

I looked up the meeting minutes on that meeting on the Commission on Chicago Landmarks page on the City Web site. It was actually the March meeting. Here are the details:

1601 N. Milwaukee (Milwaukee Avenue District – 32nd Ward)

Proposal: Proposed rehabilitation and conversion to a retail use of a 3-story limestone bank building, including masonry repair and repainting, enlargement of ground-floor window openings, window replacement, and new retail tenant signs.

Action: Approved unanimously with the following conditions:

1. The fourteen ground-floor window openings, proposed to be enlarged, are original character-defining features on primary (street) elevations of the building, and the size of the openings shall not be changed. However, given that the existing windows are not historic, and in furtherance of the intended retail use of the building, the replacement ground-floor windows need not match the original configuration but may be undivided picture windows with minimal framing designed to maximize the amount of glazing areas

2. As proposed, all new replacement glass shall be clear glass. Existing and proposed dimensioned window and door details, and their proposed finishes, shall be included in the permit plans;

3. The fixture plan shall be further studied. Areas behind the windows should be kept open and unobstructed to allow transparency and views into the building. Additional information about the build-out behind the windows, any proposed window signage, and merchandising installations shall be provided for Historic Preservation staff review and approval as part of the permit application;

4. Masonry cleaning, repair, and replacement details shall be included in the permit application plans. Samples of any replacement stone, patching, and mortar shall be reviewed and approved by Historic Preservation staff prior to order and installation. Any new limestone shall match the unpainted limestone in color, texture, and finish; and any new mortar shall match the historic unpainted condition in color, profile, and composition;

5. A conditions analysis of the paint and stone shall be performed by a qualified materials engineer/conservator to determine the appropriate paint product type, color, and finish for the existing painted limestone. The analysis and paint specification shall be submitted for review and approval by Historic Preservation staff prior to order and application;

6. As proposed, no exterior light fixtures shall be mounted to the stone facades;

7. The location, size, design, and attachment details for the large “W” sign shall be further studied so as not to obscure character-defining features such as windows and to ensure that it will not adversely affect the building or the district. [A possible location is the wall area below the proposed window location.] The four signs proposed above the doors should be relocated to the flat stone jambs above the door and below the beaded stone molding, or could be relocated to the flat stone pilasters next to the doors and designed to appear like plaques. The other proposed sign areas, the two locations along the stone sign bands at the parapet and the proposed projecting banners mounted at the stone pilasters are approved in concept only. A rendering showing all proposed signage shall be submitted to Historic Preservation staff as part of the continued review. All future signage including material, color, attachment details, sizes, lighting and other information shall be reviewed and approved by Historic Preservation staff prior to order and installation. The signs shall be designed with as few attachments to the masonry as possible, and with attachments preferably located at the mortar joints; and,

8. The proposed use of the building requires a zoning change for the portion of the lot which is currently zoned M1-2. The Commission takes no position regarding the merits of any requested zoning change.

The reason this building is subject to the Landmarks Commission is because it is included in the City’s 1995 Historic Resources Survey. Here’s the record for this building in that database. I track buildings of this type in a side project called Demolition Hold List: A place for info about architecturally significant buildings in danger of being demolished (or are already gone).

Architectural Detail

I don’t have much on this at this time, since I haven’t been inside the building. I do have this set of pics I’ve taken of the place recently, including some good detail of the existing features in the entry:

Building Permits

Google Advanced Search is handy when you're looking for info on a particular address in EveryBlock.

Here’s the building permits I could find for this building on EveryBlock:

June 7, 2011: $500,000 Permit issued for renovation / alteration

SCOPE OF WORK TO INCLUDE RESTORATION OF EXISTING MASONRY, WINDOW AND DOOR REPLACEMENT, AND DEMOLITION OF EXISTING NON STRUCTURAL INTERIOR PARTITION WALLS

August 24, 2011 Permit issued for renovation/alteration

INTERIOR AND EXTERIOR ALTERATIONS PER PLANS FOR PROPOSED RETAIL WITH PHARMACY( WALGREENS) PER PLANS. CONDITIONAL PERMIT SUBJECT TO FIELD INSPECTION.

December 7, 2011: $255,700 Permit issued for elevator equipment

Install two (2) escalators and one (1) 3000#, 125 fpm, 3 stop hydraulic passengers elevator pursuant to plans submitted and subject to City of Chicago DOB Elevator Bureau inspection.

Business Licenses

I turned to the City of Chicago Data Portal for business license info.

There’s nothing yet from Walgreens, so there is no opening planned at this time. The only thing I found was a 3-day “Itinerant Merchant, Class II” license for a “James Perse Sample Sale” from May 20 – May 23, 2010. Otherwise known as a pop-up store. Here’s a vague invite for the event (no address). I wish I would have seen this– would have been good to get inside. Here’s Racked’s coverage of a similar sample sale on Walton in December 2011.

That’s all I’ve got for now. Check back for updates and please provide any info in the comments.

UPDATE, December 31, 2011:

According to ChicagoLobbyists, which uses City data, the owner of 1601 N. Milwaukee Properties, LLC hired a lobbyist. They do not, however, appear to have paid them yet. Nice deal. The attorney hired was Edward J. Kus, who has an “extensive background in Chicago municipal land use law, zoning, and real estate development”, which makes sense for this work
The original Noel State Bank closed on June 18, 1931 due to a run on the bank (NYT article). Their cash position was depleted from $7.35M in March to $4M right-quick

___

Here are links to a few other deep-dive civic posts that I’ve made over the years:

Needed in the Civic Apps World: Less Data, More Love

Posted on October 12, 2011 by DXO

Last week I helped announce the finalists for the Community Round of the Apps For Metro Chicago contest. Before reading the list of the 10 worthy apps that have moved on to the finals, I shared some thoughts (video here) about the current state of the movement around civic apps. Here they are, written down:

All of us who are involved in Apps For Metro Chicago is a part of something. At a minimum, we are part of a broad movement of developers who have participated in one of the many contests of this kind that have sprung up in the last few years.

But we can decide that we want look back some time in the future and see that we were a part of something bigger— part of a set of companies and projects that helped fundamentally change the way people interact with their cities and each other.

We have focused quite a bit on data in this world of ours, and with good reason. Civic data is at the center of the systems that we create.

But I have seen many glimmers of love in the applications submitted for this contest. And I believe we need a lot less data and a lot more love. Data and the technology that drives it are just delivery mechanisms for human love.

When the City puts asphalt in a hole on the street where my children play, that is love.

When the police help calm a family after a domestic dispute, that is love.

When the park district rolls out the basketballs on a Saturday morning, that is an act of love.

Let’s decide that we want to be a part of this— a sustained, historic drive to build new businesses around data using technology that changes the ways cities work. And let’s make sure we place love at the center.

Incomplete Take on the History of Open Data in Chicago

Posted on September 21, 2011 by DXO

In light of today’s official open data launch by Cook County, I wanted to do a top-of-the-head post about what I know– and what I’ve heard from people who know more– about the history of open data in Chicago.

Data journalism has long been a main driver of the open data movement. The current (and most sophisticated) incarnation is the excellent News Apps Team at the Chicago Tribune. Stories like those in the Tribune’s 1986 series American Millstone: An Examination of the Nation’s Permanent Underclass used data to back up the narrative. The Sun-Times’ Pulitzer-winning stories about the impact of shootings is partly a result of their dogged efforts to get data.

Government technology workers themselves have been at the center of every open data project I can think of. Complete GIS (geographic information systems) data, including all street segments, applicable address ranges, and shape files for the city limits and other relevant boundaries, have been available for download on the City’s Web site for years. One-off databases like the long-running license lookup tool maintained by the State of Illinois Department of Financial & Professional Regulation is another example of existing data that has whetted appetites.

Chicago has been a leader in the publication and display of crime data going back 15 years. The Chicago Police Department launched their Citizen ICAM (Information Collection for Automated Mapping) database– a mapping program inside police stations to run on PCs running Windows 95 based on MapInfo 2.0 software. Later renamed CLEARMap (CLEAR stands for Citizen Law Enforcement Analysis and Reporting– my goodness, governments love acronyms that make words and near-words), this is the data that fed the groundbreaking ChicagoCrime.org. Here’s a fascinating 1996 report by the National Institute of Justice lauding the program:

The Chicago Police Department’s Information Collection for Automated Mapping (ICAM) Program

View more documents from Daniel X. O’Neil.

Without the painstaking work of the GIS professionals at the City’s technology department, and the 1993 creation of CAPS (Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy), there would have been no data with which to create any Chicago crime-oriented projects. Which is not to say that CLEARMap was an “open data” project– it just so happened that the data was open.

Open data in Chicago was also driven by nonprofits like the Metro Chicago Information Center (MCIC). Here’s them:

Founded in 1990, Metro Chicago Information Center (MCIC) was created by members of the Commercial Club of Chicago to collect demographic and baseline data on social policy and human needs on a regular basis in order to create a more complete picture of the 7-county metropolitan Chicago region, thereby empowering the nonprofit sector with critical information to make better strategic development decisions.

Another key group is the Illinois Data Exchange Affiliates, a group consisting of nonprofits and local governments (Center For Neighborhood Technology, Chicago Metropolis 2020, City of Chicago, Cook County Assessor, MCIC, and Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning) devoted to some core principles:

Society works best when information is generally available

Government works best when information is shared across divisions

Web technology gives unprecedented opportunities for making data available

Ensuring access to public data requires clear guidelines on how, when and with whom data is to be shared

THEREFORE, we seek to advance the coordination of and access to public information.

The County deserves a lot of credit for getting a mitt and getting in the game on open data. Their work is creative and thoughtful. The simple “Make the Tough Choices” tool indicates to me that open data is just one part of an overall commitment to engage with residents on how to solve our problems. Because they have to. Look at Cook– the budget exploration tool from Commissioner John Fritchey– is another example of something created to inform and engage. Now all we need to do is get informed and get engaged. Because we have to.

Slightly stretching the Chicago connection, the Open Data movement got succor when some dude from Chicago was elected President of the United States. On his first full day in office, he published Executive Orders with regard to transparency and open government. This substantive work continues, including this week’s launch of the Open Government Partnership as a major part of our country’s foreign policy.

This is where it’s at– open data as a key component of other, essential policies and modes of interaction among governments and the people they serve. That’s why these efforts by Cook County– all done in the context of other data released by the City of Chicago and the State of Illinois– represent a great step forward. There is a nascent cohesiveness to open data in Chicago. Government policy, markets, consumer needs, and developers need to be in synch for us to go beyond mere data. Groups like OpenGovChicago– started and nurtured by many of the groups and people represented in this history– is one place where we gather to trade ideas. Join us!

Also: what did I miss? Let me know below.

UPDATE, 9/24/11:
Another data-informed series was the Tribune’s “Chicago schools: ‘worst in America’: an examination of the public schools that fail Chicago” from 1988 (h/t@richgor).

UPDATE, 9/25/11:
Data intermediaries like those who are part of the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership have also been there from the beginning. One example from 1987 is a consortium called the Illinois Economic DataBase (reffed here). It included the University of Illinois Chicago Center for Urban Economic Development and corporate partners like the Federal Reserve Bank, People’s Gas, and First National Bank of Chicago. They tried to get data out of the Illinois Department of Employment Security and data on economic activity, that would help local governments understand their economy better. MCIC President Virginia Carlson was a part of the consortium while at UIC, and she reports that the IED published hardcopy data for a year or two in the late 80′s early 90′s, but stopped thereafter.

– via VL_Carlson via her excellent post “Getting the Digital Goods“, wherein she writes of this time period, makes a good case for nonprofit primacy in this sphere, and reminds us that the publication of “statistical data — data that surveyors and researchers collect through observation and experimentation”– lags.

Leaving EveryBlock to Lead the Smart Chicago Collaborative

Posted on July 28, 2011 by DXO

I’m excited to announce that this week I have started as the first Executive Director of the Smart Chicago Collaborative. Here’s more:

Smart Chicago Collaborative is a new entity that will spearhead information technology-based neighborhood development projects by investing in infrastructure, programs and applications that will make the resources of high-speed Internet more accessible, useful and beneficial to low-income people and neighborhoods. As a significant new center of gravity for civic leadership and investments, Smart Chicago will build long-term capacity to help Chicago and its neighborhoods realize the transformative potential of information technology. Structured as a donor advised fund, Smart Chicago will cultivate broad civic support and raise and invest funds to support innovative programs and policy change efforts. Smart Chicago is governed by an Executive Committee composed of its founders—the City of Chicago, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and The Chicago Community Trust—with guidance from an Advisory Committee of local and national civic leaders and technology experts.

I am incredibly proud to have been part of the team that started EveryBlock. In January 2008, on the day we launched our first three sites, I published a blog post, “What EveryBlock Means To Me“. In it, I recount how my work as a technology contractor for City government lead me to my first civic technology work and ChicagoWorksForYou, the City-sponsored project I created that would allow people to map what’s happening in their neighborhood and connect with their community (user: chicago99 pass: chicago99). I was so grateful for the opportunity to be able to finish that thought, and it feels really good to look back from here and see a straight line to the work of the Smart Chicago Collaborative.

I’ll never forget the magical first six months I spent with Adrian, Paul, and Wilson as we got those first sites ready. It really was something special. I am especially proud of the role we played in the open data/ open government movement. I think we made a difference. I’m also grateful to msnbc.com, who purchased the company in 2009 and helped it grow to where it is now— an essential way to follow neighborhood news and connect with your neighbors. The EveryBlock goal is to help you make your block a better place, and they are succeeding. I can’t wait to see what’s next for them. And remember: I’m not only an EveryBlock co-founder, but I’m also a neighbor.

There is much work ahead on the Smart Chicago Collaborative. I go to work every day at The Chicago Community Trust, where the collaborative is housed. I get to work with some of the sharpest and most energetic people focused on improving the quality of life in Chicago. My most immediate tasks are to build a strong advisory committee, work with donors, fund projects, and hire an Associate Program Officer. If you see yourself in these tasks, please contact me at doneil@cct.org. Let’s get to work.

Open Data Product Idea: Severe Weather Community Center

Posted on July 15, 2011 by DXO

Monday’s short but devastating storm in Chicago reminded me again of a product based on open data that I wish someone would make: a Severe Weather Community Center. I think there would be two parts to this: historical knowledge/ learnings/ upshots and a ready-to-go infrastructure when things go south.

I picture the historical info to be incident-based (“Monday Morning Rush Hour, July 11, 2011″). This info would be pulled from a number of sources:

National Weather Service, showing the paths of the storm down to the lowest levels, showing how they swooped through the city
City of Chicago Emergency Tree Service Requests: showing the areas where the storm knocked down trees. This data is not yet available, so I made a suggestion via this form
Department of Streets and Sanitation data: they love to talk about how many trucks have been running for how many hours, when they’re ready to get to the side streets, etc. This could be in the form of data, or just via reporting. Next time Tom Byrne is at the podium being all command center-y, it would be cool if someone added his truck force data into this system
Flickr and other services: showing pictures of storm damage. I’ve got a goodly collection of this stuff myself.
Chicago Transit Authority: showing number and length of service outages
Utility data: showing number and length of service outages. This one is a toughie— very difficult to get this information out of them, but it is clearly available. Also, they keep talking about the Smart Grid, and how it is going to make things better. Let’s go ahead and get smart. UPDATE, October 10, 2011: Here’s a starter ComEd dataset published and analyzed by the Chicago Tribune
Traffic data: showing deviation of traffic times from the norm
Moar, moar, moar. There’s lots of data that would be useful to a system like this. Let me know your ideas in the comments

After a while, I’m guessing some patterns would emerge. We would see that a late Spring storm with winds of 50 miles an hour striking in mid-afternoon knocks down 700 trees, affects the trains for about 45 minutes, and makes suburbanites about an hour and a half late getting home. A winter storm coming from the northwest in early February lays 15 inches of snow and it takes 14 hours after the snow stopped before trucks can get to the side streets. We could use this more granular shorthand when we’re preparing for a storm.

Which brings me to the ready-to-go infrastructure. After a storm strikes, there’s a lot of confusion, lack of essential services, and plethora of people looking to contribute. The way Craigslist was adopted after Hurricane Katrina is the classic example of people using existing technology to meet their needs in an emergency. The problem is that, 6 years after the storm, it doesn’t seem like there is a unified solution to the recurring problem of natural disasters and weather emergencies. (I might be wrong— I haven’t done an exhaustive search. Let me know what’s out there).

The thing that comes closest is Ushahidi, the excellent platform for information collection, visualization and interactive mapping. I got some experience with this system when I helped the Chicago Tribune News Apps Team manage snow reports during the blizzard of February 2011 in Chicago in their Ask for help, lend a hand: Blizzard 2011 project. That system was a pretty good for receiving inbound requests (though the geocoding was fragile), but there was no top-down aspect to the communication (“check when ComEd says the power on your house will be turned back on”). We need both in order to have an effective system.

With the data feeds listed above, especially the power outage info and the times that city service, the system could be a good clearinghouse. This is great for people who have electricity and are able to access the Internet. But we know that the communications infrastructure can perform poorly when it is taxed in an emergency. I saw from my own experience with Twitter on Monday, trying to update CTATweet, that the service was unavailable right when I needed it most.

What I’d love to see is a system of real-world places where this information could be added to and disseminated, regardless of the status of the electrical grid. This could work like the old newspaper offices. Seeing this post about the Boston Globe’s intown system, where they posted updates about current events that were being published in the paper right on their HQ window, made me smile. Papers really are essential, especially in times of need.

Update: Shortly after I posted this, I got this notice in my mailbox:

Definitely would be nice to whack tree trimming schedules against tree down reports to see if there is a correlation between tree maintenance and tree limb falls.

Open Data Product Idea: “City Worker Worth Modules”

Posted on July 13, 2011 by DXO

One of the staples of municipal data is the Payroll Database. Long before the Emanuel administration released salary, position, and title information for every worker on the City’s data portal, organizations like the Chicago Sun-Times and the Better Government Association had done the work of requesting and publishing salary information.

These databases are usually pretty popular content for these organizations. Everyone likes to be in the know, and personal finance is still one of the great taboos of a market culture, full of rank and worth and emotion. I’ve never been a government employee, but I can imagine it odd to have something so personal available to everyone.

In association with raw data, news stories pop up now and again pulling out details from and adding context to this information. We got one yesterday morning from Sun-Times salary maven Fran Spielman: “Hundreds of city workers earned over $10,000 in OT in four months“. It’s good reporting— she did the work of combing through the year-to-date overtime report published by the City and pulling out items of interest. This is important context to the dollars we spend.

There are a few of things wrong with this current state of affairs that could be fixed by some enterprising developer who wanted to build a product using municipal data.

First off, there are disparate sources and work products. Currently, we’ve got salary database over here, the overtime PDFs over here, and a bunch of news stories, budget analyses, and loosely connected content about workers all over the place. Part of this could be solved by a more unified data approach by the City (they could pop OT info into the salary data), but if you’re a developer, this difficulty is a business opportunity. The City certainly has a world of data deeds they need to do; if you can take care of this minute wrinkle, that might be a good thing for everyone.

Once you’ve got a repository that includes the employee name, position, salary, and overtime, you’ve basically got a set of profile information for each City worker. Once you’ve got that, you can get to work on building an engine for associating other content with those records. Fran mentioned some raw numbers, but no names. I assume that’s an editorial decision (none of these people are accused of wrongdoing, after all). I’d like to see every story covering the act of a City worker– snow removal, cops on the beat, attorneys in court— everyone— be somehow associated with their salary profile.

This way, every City employee could show how they earned the money they made. It’s one thing for us to tsk-tsk at the overtime for a hoisting engineer, but it’s another thing altogether if that worker explains how the department they work for has been unable to hire another worker to replace one who left.

I could also imagine an open system where people could tag people to a story. Have you ever read a news story and said, “I know that guy! My friend is the EMT in that picture!”. How about a civic engineer adding a technical case study about tricky vehicle load optimization to her profile? A research assistant for an Alderman adding a post about how hard it was to get a piece of legislation passed? A Commissioner who is proud of an obscure contract he just negotiated and saved us a million dollars? All of this information floats around in an unstructured jumble, just waiting to be recognized for what it is— a piece of someone’s work/ life puzzle.

Here’s another example. It’s remarkable to see how much of our budget is spent on fire and police:

…and it’s another thing altogether to know that a particular police officer with a particular salary won the Lambert Tree Award for saving someone’s life. Perhaps some people are worth every penny. This system would give them a structure for making that case.

It can go the other way, of course. I’m guessing that there are a vast number of documents in Cook County Divorce Court telling tales of workers not working while whiling away wistful afternoons with paramours, Illinois Tollway transponder payments that have people where they shouldn’t be, and credit card payments that reveal fraud. Let’s have it.

But accountability cuts both ways. It’s time we get more sophisticated with raw data, and a City Worker Worth Module is just one way we can start pulling these threads together into cohesive narratives we can own.

Notes from the Champions of Change — Open Innovators Event at the White House

Posted on June 15, 2011 by Daniel X. ONeil

Last week I took part in a great event at the White House. About 3 minutes into the program, I set aside my own personal joy and realized that there were a whole slew of awesome thoughts, projects, and policies coming from dozens of people, so I started taking notes. On paper. With a pen. Here they are, transcribed in annotated fashion. This is by no means comprehensive– I just tried to get down one interesting thing I heard from each person.

Macon Phillips, White House Director of New Media, kicked off the morning by talking about some of the people who are driving change– Cass Sunnstein, Todd Park, and Alex Koss.

Aneesh Chopra got the event fired up with a rousing vision of the future with the federal government acting as an "impatient convener", supporting "the right policy that leads to market conditions for growth." I love this language for the open data movement– moving past policy and into markets.

He also presented a few case studies in this regard. One was the Experimental Crowd-Derived Combat-Support Vehicle Competition from Local Motors. The winning entry– FLYPMODE– was created by a Mexican immigrant Victoria Garcia, who is just some dude who lives in Texas and now has developed a fighting vehicle that is on the DARPA production line.

He talked about the Blue Button Initiative from Peter Levin, chief technology officer at the Department of Veterans Affairs. The Blue Button is an easy and secure way for veterans to download and view some of their medical information online. Chopra talked about how Walgreens and Aetna have plans to adopt the Blue Button specification for secure download of personal medical records. This is an example of a technology standard coming from the government without legislation or tight regulation– just good, concrete ideas flowing out of government and into the private sector.

On the fun side of the scale, he talked about how recently released geodata from NASA is used in the SSX snowboarding video game, making the in-game experience more accurate and compelling. Real data making a real difference in real products.

Next up was Michael Strautmanis– Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Advisor for Strategic Engagement. He is a Chicago guy who has known the Obamas for 20 years. His basic message was "tell people about this"– don't wait for others to put it in the paper or send out a press release. So he's why I'm writing this blog post, basically.

Cathilea Robinett, Executive Vice President of the Center for Digital Government then led a session where some of the day's Champions of Change talked about their projects.

Jill Seman talked about Mom Maps, an application for finding kid-friendly parks, restaurants, museums, and indoor play areas in 28 metro areas. She talked about the power of an open platform, where user contributions lead to high quality info and great community surrounding it. She also talked about round-trip experiences, where comments on Mom Maps indicate the decline of a particular park, then SF311 stepping in to improve it.

Leigh Budlong of Zonability talked about how her work as a commercial real estate appraiser— and frustration in getting teensy bits of critical information out of dense PDFs— lead her to become the "accidental software designer". She is working on ways to extract data and structure it so it could be used to make decisions in all areas of real estate, planning, and development.

Conor White-Sullivan of Localocracy talked about his moment of inspiration. Going door to door in Cambridge, Massachusetts in support of environmental legislation, he encountered leading climate scientists who knew more about the subject than him the people he was working for. It seemed odd to ask these people for $20 in order to hire a lobbyist. He looked for ways to more deeply engage the people whose doors he knocked on, so they could bring their expertise and energy to a subject.

Philip Weiser, Senior Advisor to the National Economic Council, led a panel called "Lessons from the Private Sector". He kicked off the thoughts of collaboration by paraphrasing a maxim attributed to Sun Microsystems engineer Bill Joy: that the smartest person on any given problem probably doesn't work for you.

James Manyika of McKinsey & Company spoke of the enormous economic opportunity in open innovation. Just in the healthcare industry the opportunity can be up to $300 billion. Brightscope is an example of a company using data to make markets more efficient, in their case, the 401(k) market. He spoke of productivity gains that add new capacity and products rather than just improving efficiencies— working on the "numerator rather than the denominator".

Proctor and Gamble CTO Bruce Brown told how the company moved from an extremely closed model of innovation (proctoids need only apply) to one where more than half of their new initiatives have some sort of external component. He gave lots of examples– from Swiffer to Reliability Engineering software.

Eric Ries, author of The Lean Startup, talked about the power of networks vs. hierarchies. "The common denominator in innovation is capitalizing on the unexpected". That is very hard to do in a world of milestones and rigid plans. I especially liked his idea of the "business scientist"— looking for new ways to get things done.

Next, Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra reviewed “Data.gov 2.0”, which is built to be easier for citizens (so they can browse, visualize, and talk about data rather than just download it), easier for developers (with better APIs and a greater focus on platforms like mobile and SMS), and easier for agencies (so they can upload data more easily and stream their own subsets in situ on their own Department Web sites).

He also talked about the “enthusiasm on the front lines”, where there are now 396 “open data leads”— agency employees directly responsible for delivering and maintaining open data to the public. He spoke of the goal where “apps contests will be common as procurements and grants. He references the work of Professor Jim Handler of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

He then gave out a series of awards for government employees who are democratizing data.

Todd Park of Health and Human Services for his work in creating community around health data. There seems to be a lot of energy around this stuff and Park is an important node.

Steve Young of the Environmental Protection Agency for Making A Difference in the First Responder Aware for RADNet and other data sets.

John Ohab of the Defense Department / DMA for Most Applications Published.

Timothy Antisdal of the Environmental Protection Agency got the Big Data Award for the most datasets published.

Adrian Linz of the Office of Personnel Management for the Highest Rated Dataset or Application— the 2008 CFC Detailed Results by Local Campaign.

What we see here is a desire on the part of the Federal government to create and reward impact— not just dropping datasets, but having a tangible impact based on real measures.

Next, Chopra introduced Cass Sunstein, “our intellectual godfather”. He spoke of both the intellectual space that we’re occupying, as well as ther physical one— very close to the Oval Office and not far from the site of the Constitutional Convention.

He told a story of the founders coming out of their meeting— a closed meeting. Someone came up to Ben Franklin and asked him, “what did you give us?” Franklin responded, “a Republic, if you can keep it”.

He spoke of choosemyplate.gov as a transparent initiative— transparent in the sense that the goals are easy to see, and the tactics that people can use to achieve them are clear and not obfuscated. There’s no regulation associated with it, but he believes it is going to make a difference in the marketplace.

He reminds us that the battle to found the Republic was harder than the battle for Open Data, and ends with the request: “let’s not just keep the Republic. Let’s shape it".

Protected: Notes from the Champions of Change — Open Innovators Round Table

Posted on June 12, 2011 by Daniel X. ONeil

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