At 'Hacking the City,' Tech Crowd Welcomes Big Apps, Questions How Far Bloomberg Will Go

openplanningproject.org

Streetsblog's Aaron Naparstek.

At the end of day one of the Personal Democracy Forum Conference, as the majority of attendees mingled with beer and wine in hand during a post-conference cocktail hour, a group of about 20 good-government advocates, Web developers and general techie types gathered for a special session called Hacking the City.

According to the conference materials, the purpose of the event—which was something of a local supplement to the more nationally focused panels that had been taking place all day—was to discuss “how online journalism, advocacy and community-building tools are being used to hack the urban political machine, rewrite city government's operating system and transform city dwellers' relationship to their local politics in New York.”

The conversation was led by members of The Open Planning Project, DIYcity founder John Geraci, and Streetsblog editor-in-chief Aaron Naparstek, who began by opening up the floor to thoughts on Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s announcement earlier in the day of a new contest for Web developers to design online and mobile applications out of city data, which will soon be made available in a programming-friendly format ("opened up").

The contest, called Big Apps, takes a cue from Washington D.C.’s Apps For Democracy challenge, Mr. Naparstek noted. But, he asked, “What can we do” with city data here in New York City?

Some of the responses that followed were less an answer to that question than they were a sign of skepticism over how far Mr. Bloomberg, who is running for a third term as mayor, is willing to go in pushing for open data. (As Azi Paybarah reported, during a Council hearing yesterday afternoon, members of Mr. Bloomberg’s administration came out against Councilwoman Gale Brewer’s proposed open-data legislation.)

One of the discussion participants said Mr. Bloomberg's plan to release data is actually somewhat limited—80 data sets from 32 city agencies and commissions, versus Ms. Brewer's bill, which would make all public city data open to developers.

“It’s not as open as people might like it to be,” Mr. Geraci said in agreement, although he did tell us later that he's appreciative of the efforts City Hall has made, and that there's excitement in the tech community about the Big Apps contest.

Another participant described the mayor’s vision for open data as “benign.” For example, Mr. Bloomberg's suggestion for a mobile application that would rate New York restaurants based on health department grades is not exactly hard-hitting.

“Would Bloomberg be as interested in police brutality data and what you could do with that?” a woman chimed in.

A spokesman for Mr. Bloomberg, Andrew Brent, emailed us to say that the city plans to expand on the 80 initial data sets it will open up this year for the contest, and that it had issued a Request for Expressions of Interest to determine what sort of data the public is most interested in seeing applications built out of. The process for implementing Ms. Brewer's legislation, he noted, would require "significant resources"—$660 million according to an estimate by the Office of Management and Budget. 

As far as specific examples of how data and technology could be useful to New Yorkers, Noel Hidalgo, who works for New York State Senate C.I.O. Andrew Hoppin, cited fixcity.org. Now in a pilot phase, the Web site lets residents of Brooklyn's Community District 1 submit suggestions about where they’d like to see bike racks installed. Volunteers then research and assess the feasibility of the proposed rack locations and deliver a report to the Department of Transportation.

Mr. Hidalgo also talked about the importance of being able to work with all minutiae of city data, from subway safety issues, to crime incidents, to proper street addresses. (Google Maps, for instance, misinterprets numerous street addresses in Queens, he noted.)

“All of that really does impact how our lives are lived globally,” he said.

Mr. Naparstek proposed helping City Council candidates with technology before the elections this fall, in return for the promise of  “online City Council offices where citizens could come together, share resources and get access to the information that they need.” He also suggested working in a similar capacity with community boards.

But in the end, a pressing question remained.

“To what degree do we work with existing institutions?” Mr. Naparstek asked. “And to what degree do we just say, ‘Screw it! We’re building this stuff, putting together an online community and just doing it.'”