DMap

• 30mins - hide search box on login
• 2hrs - complete Solano County
  • include all Solano Cities as Cities
  • include Solano County as a County
  • include Assembly Districts for Solano as State Lower Bounds
  • include Congressional Districts for Solano as Federal Bounds
  • include Federal Districts for Solano as Bounds
  • include Solano County Agencies (at least a working list)
  • include all Public Bodies and their Members
• 30mins - use auto_screenshot to screenshot the site.
  • include URL list in source.
• 4hrs - enhance test coverage
  • create Model specs
  • create Request specs
  • create Controller specs
  • verify with RCov
• 40hrs - complete all of California
• visualize and publish the data model. consider comparing it to the OpenStates project
• 2hrs - add Neighborhood Shapefiles from Zillow
• 1hr - identify which Agencies have budgets available online:
  • #TODO write up how this can be done
  • indicate if there is: 1) and interface, 2) bulk download, 3) other?
• 1hr - add Agency Links to Jursidctions

Unestimated

• geolocate budgets & interfaces
• write an Organizational Scraper Helper for DMap
• graphviz government hierarchy
• research how Graphviz can be used to generate hierarchical images
• write code to generate the image using the Jurisdiction.parent_id field
• include CivicIdeas widget if an Agency has one
• include Granicus View page if an Agency has one
• create a Link for anAgency
• digest RSS if possible
• add Open311 ID
• Make Model Hierarchy (Railroad(y))
• include instructions on how to generate and view a diagram in the README*
• Scraper Wiki + DMap*
• associate an external Url with a DMap data source, for import
• http://scraperwiki.com/afomi/test-members-export.json to Body imports members from*
• add SeeClickFix API
• include SeeClickFix watch areas in given locations
• include SeeClickFix Issues and Activities in given locations
• fetch Person images - gather public official information and images using a DMap Person Scraper Helper
  • use a pixelized k10k/stamen like treatment for images, link to originals
• Track Election Data allow User to create a Campaign tie Campaign to a Voting ID (Google Civic API) allow user to find Who is Running in a location show voting records for each member
• build value around the comment portion - issues, petitions, projects, etc.
• enable Users to create an Issue and link it to the Comment
• enable User to create Petition and linked it to the Comment
• enable User to create Project and link it to the Comment

DMap Canvas

yelp for GOVERNMENT! slide 1 Democracy Map slide 2 An open database of public jurisdictions, agencies, and officials slide 3 GovTrack DataCommons Sunlight Conress Android App slide 3a About Me I'm Ryan Wold Currently working with Sunlight Foundation. I left an Administrative position at a Charter School in mid June. Oversee 700 computers for 700 students, network, 25 educational applications, a $5 million + annual budget, and 10+ office, technical, business, and maintenance staff. Came with 4.5 IT staff. 250 PC's were down. Installations were 1 by 1. Network was a mess. Came with $500,000 in debt. Came in with 0 documentation. Left with 1.5 staff. Less than 10 were down. Installations were pushed. Phased out 4 servers (email, web, print, and a test server not in use) Upgraded Left with $2 mil in the bank. Left with a 110 page electronic document outlining the workflows over just about everything the school did, by sitting with staff and learning what they did and why. (Lots of improvements). Pushed email to the Cloud, from Lotus Notes. Up on Google Docs, Google Calendar and Google sites for teachers. Published board agendas, meetings. Coordinated a volunteer program to realize over 10,000 hours of volunteer time. So, I'm technical, but pretty high-level. slide 3b 0) government is complex 1) most people don't know 2) most agencies (and their employees) don't really know 3) people and agencies need help 5) there are solutions MoreQuality partnering with e-Democracy.org working at Sunlight for the Summer. slide 4 same concept, but everywhere you may have heard of Bell, CA. City Manager, of 38,000 was paid over $700,000 per year. Board members were making $100,000 for part-time work. Police Chief, making $500,000+. And 12% raises were written into their contracts. This is particulary outrageous, but this is not isolated. Things need to change. slide 4 so lets take a look at the whole United States. oh wait, there is nothing. you think there would be. cities don't track upward. counties don't track upward. most states don't track upward, and not closely downward. federal tracks states, not so closely, and typically, not further down. this is by design. but where does this leave citizens? civic hackers? slide 5 basics: States, Counties, Cities Organizations, Governing Bodies, Positions slide 6 not so basic: DC, Puerto Rico, etc. Counties/Boroughs/Parishes Cities/Towns/Census Designated Places Slide 7 not so basics State Districts County & Lower-level districts Wards All tied to shape files (which change) Slide 8 Need There are more than 38,000 public jurisdictions. In this crowd, in a place like DC, people care. Even if you 'know', its hard to know. Government is complex. Slide 10 Challenges The breadth of government is vast. More than 38,000 public agencies, not including specials districts, public charter schools. Cycle elections. Different agencies hold elections at different times and on different cycles. This makes keeping the data up to date a challenge. Slide 9 Opportunities Awareness on a widespread level. Having a skeleton structure from which to build on creates a bunch of opportunities for hyper-local transparency and civic engagement. Ability to crowd source information. "Adopt a county". 3,000 counties. Get this into schools.
Ability to have public meetings. Slide 11 Current Work http://wepublic.org Slide 12 Much more work to be done Improving the technical core. Crowd-sourcing. Outreach to county and state level election agencies to provide structure data (most of it is in PDF's) or not online at all. Slide 13 So, get involved. Assist by contributing time, code, conversation, expertise, local knowledge. Joine LocalLabs This project - DemocracyMap Neighbor.be, which is neighborhood connection building Public Meetings.info