Kate Eyler-Werve - The Civic Apps Competition Handbook

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Data, data, data! I cannot make bricks without clay!

Sherlock Holmes

Government agencies are increasingly being called upon to publish data as a means to increase transparency, deliver government services more efficiently, and innovate business. Civic Apps Competitions (CACs) further these goals by providing incentives and a platform for software programmers to build innovative applications (apps) using open government data. Departments at all levels are proactively using technology to share their data with the public, through the low tech release of spreadsheet or database files to the high tech release of data through Application Programming Interfaces (API) and associated apps competitions.

While the technological problems of these competitions are (largely) solveda plethora of content management systems and turn-key web software-as-service platforms can easily handle the requirements of submitting projects, collecting public votes, etc.what has become important is ensuring that the outcomes of these competitions return value. Governments, civic activists, and software developers who have invested or are thinking of investing in open government data want answers to long-term questions. How, and under what conditions, do open data result in high-quality platforms relevant to problems at hand? Are the resulting applications sustainable in a way that will continue to deliver solutions over time? Do the competitions themselves foster transparency and engagement for a wide audience?

When Chicagos Mayor Rahm Emanuel took office on May 16, 2010, he put launching a civic apps competition on his first 100 days checklist. Five weeks later, the Apps for Metro Chicago (A4MC) competition launched. When we started planning A4MC in late May, there were no formal agreements between any of the partners; by June, Mayor Emanuel was on the cover of the local daily paper, challenging civic coders to compete for $50,000 in prizes. We learned a lot. Wed like to share it.

This book is a practical guide to planning a civic apps competition (CAC). We arent just relying on our own experience with A4MC though; we surveyed 15 CACs hosted in the United States and Canada over the last three years. As a result, weve uncovered some surprising insights into what makes competitions successful. And, of course, weve got anecdotes of budget overruns and political infighting (and some fun success stories) to keep it interesting.

This Guide identifies a number of ways to ensure an apps competition delivers on the goals of accountability, government efficiency and economic innovation.

A note on the open government movement and the use of terms. Open government is a movement that demands transparency from governments regarding actions and decisions, increasing the governments accountability. Open government data refers to the specific practice of publishing data collected by governments in order to facilitate transparency, create efficiencies and prime economic innovation. CACs are designed to kickstart the use of open government data. Throughout this guide, well use the shorter-termed open data or open civic data when talking about open government data.