![]() Since then, more and more municipalities have been working with civic-minded hackers to help cities make websites and apps that matter. That’s when President Barack Obama issued the Open Government Directive, a memorandum that called for increased transparency in government by freeing up data for everyone to use. In 2009, so-called civic hackers like Migurski were given the equivalent of a divine ordinance. But the city’s shift in attitude reflects a sea change in government that’s taking place across the country - not just in Oakland. ![]() “We were basically asking something of them that they’d never considered giving out before,” he said. The city’s initial misgivings weren’t entirely surprising, Migurski noted. And in the five years since, the city has never failed to deliver. Instead of just letting Migurski continue as before, officials promised they’d start providing him with the information on a daily basis. It wasn’t anything new.” However, a few months later, the city had a change of heart. I don’t think that was the case because at this point we’d been running the site for months. “They felt that we were misusing the service and putting undue stress on their servers. “They weren’t too happy about it,” Migurski recalled. Nine months after the site went online, however, the city blocked Migurski from retrieving any more of its data. Matt Senate is one of the founders of Sudo Room, a new hackerspace in downtown Oakland that caters to all kinds of hacks.Transparency can change the relationship between people and government. Code for America founder Jen Pahlka believes.Nicole Neditch is trying to bring Oakland out of the Dark Ages of the Internet.Oakland Crimespotting allows people to easily see crime happening in their neighborhood.Now he’s one of many hackers trying to help Oakland. As a Code for America fellow in 2011, Max Ogden created apps for the City of Boston.And, as the saying goes, information is power. Oakland Crimespotting was, essentially, a timesaver for everyone involved. The website became an instant success: Neighborhood crime prevention councils, which previously had to hunt down data from the Oakland Police Department, now had better information with just a few clicks. With the help of his colleagues, he created Oakland Crimespotting, a website that allows people to track crimes by date, neighborhood, and crime type, all laid out on a relatively intuitive interactive map. But for Migurski, who works at an online design and mapping firm in San Francisco, it provided the perfect challenge.įor weeks, Migurski worked late at night hacking the city’s data, trying to find a way to take the daily crime stats and create code that would present the information in a new, user-friendly format. ![]() The site contained useful information, but because of its clunky interface, it wasn’t really helpful. Back in 2007, Michal Migurski noticed that the City of Oakland’s crime-mapping site, Crimewatch, was nearly impossible to navigate - not to mention stuck in the late Nineties, design-wise.
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