Civic Hacking Poised to Answer Oregon Transparency Problem

Friday, April 03, 2015

GoLocalPDX News Team

Civic hackers—citizens who create better ways of utilizing open data—are changing the way the public accesses information, and creating transparency in ways the government is still catching up to.

“[Civic hacking] brings data in a form where the public can understand, but it is also impactful. Then leadership can respond, making it real,” said Catherine Nikolovski, founder of the nonprofit group HackOregon. “We will not stop until all public data is machine readable.”

In Oregon and across the United States, people have been pushing for more access to data and information.

“People are actually hungry for making the data viable, and translatable to the public,” said Andrew DeVigal, Endowed Chair in Journalism Innovation and Civic Engagement with the University of Oregon.

The Oregon legislative is discussing bills this session that would make more data available to the public. Yet coders, designers, and community members have been making strides to present it in a way that is easy to navigate and understand.

“There’s absolutely a need for this service,” said Southeast Uplift Neighborhood Association President Robert McCullough, whose organization paid roughly $2,500 to the City of Portland for data related to the Street Fee calculation. The non-profit neighborhood association is now suing the city to get that money back.

“The city’s web presence is improbably difficult, it makes the IRS look easy,” McCullough said.

When Southeast Uplift was analyzing street fee data, McCullough said over 100,000 entries in the city’s business license database were scraped for information. McCullough, who heads up McCullough Research, a Portland-based research consulting firm, said this is not a task the average citizen could navigate.

“You have to be a technologically advanced consulting firm, or a hacker,” he said.

Understanding Data

Nate Goldman is an open web software developer and founder of Code for Portland, the local Code for America brigade.

The organization works to build open source technology, and organize people who are dedicated to making government data simple and easy to use.

“There are a lot of different people in different cities getting together to make government services more accessible,” Goldman said.

The challenge is that although much information -- such as business licensing, campaign contributions, and property records -- is available online, it’s not always particularly accessible. This reality makes data accessibility a transparency issue.

Some formats, such as OreStar, ORPIN and other public databases, are not easy to use, Goldman said.

“You have to know what you’re doing,” he said.

The city is enlisting the help of civic hackers. Code for Portland has been invited to provide input on the Civic Apps projec, an open portal for the city that began during Sam Adams’ mayorship. The brigade is using the opportunity to evaluate what an ideal city open data site would entail.

“You can make information available, but if you need a FOIA request to get it, or need to know who to talk to and deal with bureaucracy, it’s not terribly open,” Goldman said. “It’s the idea of open data, available on open formats, without any hurdles."

For example, HackOregon pulled data from OreStar, a database compiled by the Secretary of State’s office, and designed a data visualization to show how campaign contributions influenced ballot measures.

Local government in Oregon welcomes the participation and effort from civic hacking groups.

“Government websites and the city’s website could be a whole lot better about communicating information in the way the public needs to access it,” said City of Portland Auditor Mary Hull Cabellero.

Nikolovski said they have partnered with the Department of Planning and Sustainability on projects.

Another issue is data stewards not collaborating. Open data is spread across a handful of stakeholders, including Metro, the City of Portland, and various departments throughout the city, but the departments don’t work together to share it in an accessible way.

Metro, for example, has a user-pay database, which functions as a revenue stream.

When public records requests are answered with a hefty administrative fee, it deters most average citizens. However, if that data is already organized, the administrative fee is irrelevant.

It’s not just open data for the sake of opening it, but making it more obvious what’s going on and being done with public money by elected officials, Goldman said.

Perfect for Portland

Portland has become the hub for the state's civic hacking, in part to its tech-heavy business scene and community participation.

“In some ways, it’s a culture of extermination and web development—it’s the two together and a collaborative sprit,” Nikolovski said.

Goldman hosts events every Sunday in Portland for people to collaborate.

Last weekend, HackOregon teamed with the University of Oregon and several media partners for a build-a-thon to create data driven projects that could be used to tell as story. DeVigal said it was different than simply hacking--they wanted to walk away with an actual, useful product—not just ideas.

“Unless there’s a champion to push, promote, and visualize it, the ideas and data tends to collect cobwebs,” DeVigal said. “We need to dust off data, make use of information and dig deeper.”