The Chicago Open Government Movement

• 2005

  ChicagoCrime.org

  Adrian Holovaty kicked off the Chicago open government movement with ChicagoCrime.org (nowEveryblock.com).

• 2009

  Hacking the CTA API

  Harper Reed built the“Unofficial” CTA API by scraping the CTA bus tracker website.

• 2011

  Mayor Emanuel

  Rahm Emanuel was elected mayor of the City of Chicago. Emanuel hires Chicago’s first CTO and CDO to release new city datasets.

• 2012

  ChicagoLobbyists.org

  Open City developers builtChicagoLobbyists.org, which improves transparency around Chicago lobbying activities.

• 2012

  ClearStreets.org

  Developers built a scraper on top of the city’s Plow Tracker app that displays which city streets have been plowed.

• 2012

  SecondCityZoning.org

  The Open City team built an interactive map of Chicago’s zones.

• 2013

  SchoolCuts.org

  SchoolCuts.org combines data from CPS, the Illinois State Board of Education, and the University of Chicago Urban Institute to help stakeholders understand data about Chicago school closings.

• 2014

  Crime and Punishment in Chicago

  Crime and Punishment in Chicago provides an index of crime and prison data sources.

If you’re interested in hacking on open data—whether you’re a developer, designer, statistician, journalist, or public servant—you can go to the Open Gov Hack Night. The group meets every Tuesday at 6pm in the IMSA room of 1871 in Merchandise Mart.

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http://www.lauradhamilton.com/chicago-open-government-movement