Three reasons:
1. Our citizens deserve, and have come to expect, the same
2. Because we want to see things improve. Wouldn’t it be awesome to know everyone got the same services and benefits, irrespective of where they were born or how much money they make
3. Because we have no choice. It is innovate or die.
Their challenge was …….
The project was called CitySDK and its main focus was to fix the workflow issue that most developers had with accessing Census data.
For example, if I want to the transportation time for financial analysts in a specific zip code in Chicago, it required 3 or more queries that were awkward. One retrieving the Census tracts that composed the zip code and then a few others to extract a code for the job type and then the transportation time.
CitySDK flattened all that and reduced the work you had to do by 1 or 2 steps depending on what you are trying to do.
When deploying this, we worked with Census’ Communications department to deploy its data specialists to work with local innovators to leverage Census (and local) data to solve their local problems.
The resulting solutions were varied and impactful.
CitySDK was used to help marginalized communities access a secondary market for organic food (in Chicago)
It was used to map the Innovation Spaces across the USA
It was used to help Food Truck vendors to find out the optimal spot for them to be; where people wanted their food (Twitter analysis) and there was heavy traffic (WMATA usage data)
It was used to identify pathways for people leaving prison.
To ensure All people in Austin had access to public parks
To find accessible routes for handi-capable people in Minnesota
To highlight the school to prison pipeline for young women and men of color.