MiamiData

City of Miami Open Data

I made this IPython Notebook as a demonstation of what one can do with the City of Miami Open Data Portal. This work was done at the Code for Miami Weekly Civic Hack Night on Monday June 29, 2015. Thanks to The LAB Miami for hosting the event.

There are many caveats and provisos to the result of the analysis. Notably, I censored some of the data that had missing values when calculating the fraction of the time 311 meets their goals, so take the analysis with a grain of salt. This analysis is mostly intended as a demonstration of Open Data.

Miami Answers is a Miami based implementation of the Oakland Answers

The goal of Miami Answers is to be a place for citizens to search for answers to common community questions. We will be creating content based on the most frequently asked questions to Miami Open311.

"It’s a citizen-centric website that is question driven with clean, easy-to-navigate design. This simple site functions similar to Google — it centers around a search box where a resident can ask a question or type in keywords using standard language and receive friendly and comprehensible responses."

You can view a live implementation at http://answers.oaklandnet.com/

We have two places where we post ideas for new members from Code for Miami to work on:

• https://codeformiami.hackpad.com/Civic-Apps-and-Prototypes-for-folks-who-dont-have-ideas-CCZY5AdEB7f
• This issues page on a task repo: https://github.com/Code-for-Miami/tasks/issues

Talking with Cristina we should move content from the Hackpad - which no one can remember anyway - to the repo. This requires some effort, and doesn't necessarily need tech knowledge; someone can be trained on adding issues to a repo easily.

We're working with Switchboard of Miami and the Open Referral Initiative to create Miami Open211: a platform for directory information about all of the health, human, and social services in our community.

Switchboard of Miami operates Miami-Dade's 2-1-1 call center, through which people in need can call to get referrals to services that can help them.

Switchboard has agreed (as an experiment) to deploy their data in an open platform that can be accessed by external tools and applications. (They'll be one of the first 2-1-1s in the country to do so!)

Read more about the Miami Open211 project here in this blog post. To read much more, check out this memo.

In the first phase of this project, we are going to experiment with the Ohana API.

Already done:

1. Transformed a demo package of Switchboard's 2-1-1 data into the Open Referral format. Github repo here

2. Deployed Ohana API (Ruby on Rails)

3. Loaded transformed 2-1-1 data into Ohana (as per these instructions)

4. Deployed the Ohana Web Search front-end as a demo.

5. Got funding to ramp up these experiments!

6. Deployed a developers' portal for the API

Next steps:

• See Ohana Web Search (front-end website) issues queue.

• See Ohana API (back-end platform) issues queue

• Work on either of the above OR:

• Scope out new 'use cases' with a particular user 'persona' and 'journey.' Email bloom@openreferral.org if you'd like to try a new approach.

We are in the Code for Miami Slack Team under #open211.

This project is part of the Open Referral Initiative, which convenes in this Google Group. Email bloom@openreferral.org to request an invite to the Open Referral slack team.

Background on Open Referral: The Open Referral Initiative is working to make it easier to share and find information about health, human, and social services. We are supporting local pilot projects in which diverse stakeholders are establishing interoperability between human service information systems (i.e., enabling different systems to "talk" to each other). Our objective is to demonstrate the value of making resource data openly available in a standard format.

Twitter Aggregator for Animal Services

Currently, Animal Services gets lots of mentions about pets that may be up for adoption or may need to be picked up. Their process is to login to HootSuite on a regular basis and check the mentions. Let's help them streamline this process and be able to categorize the tweets and possibly be able to respond faster.

Goals

1. Repurpose the TwitterBot code to scrape the Animal Services Twitter account and analyze the content for better categorization of each tweet
2. Send aggregated, categorized notifications of tweets to Animal Services representatives via email

Repurpose CutePets for use by Animal Services

Repurpose the CutePets project from Code for America to be used by Animal Services to advertise animals available for adoption

Mobile app that alerts you when your car is being towed and website to search the online towing database by license plate.

The project itself, simply put, is to build a database of literature that Cubans on the island could access via e-mail by sending a request via email that triggers an automatic reply with the literature/an intermediary menu that the requester can reply to (cf. Apretaste—if you are unfamiliar, I'd be glad to elaborate).

The step-by-step is something like this:

1. Setting up a database. Wikispaces seems good, but if there is a more affordable/free alternative, we would like to look into that. If you have any suggestions regarding what sort of database would work best for a project like this one, please let us know.
2. Filling the database with literature. Anyone can do this. We prefer text as opposed to scanned images, as bandwidth in Cuba is abysmally slow.
3. Writing the code to have this distributed. This is where the technical expertise is crucial. The language is up to the programmer (Apretaste was written in php). We would need assistance in getting a team together that will collaborate on getting the interactive element up and running. It would be great if you could help us with that.
4. Making this available in Cuba, marketing-wise. This would be more of a strategy thing, and doesn't require much CS expertise.

Really trying to get this off the ground (I lack technical expertise), so if anyone can assist, please let us know.

Help us test our Election Day form. Students from FIU, Temple University and elsewhere around the US will be using this mobile-friendly form to document activities related to election Day on November 4, 2014. Your comments are welcome. The URL is here: http://www.eyesontherise.org/election/

The goal of the Miami-Dade GIS geoJSON project is to help local developers new to building web based maps for Miami-Dade to easily get local shapefiles and use them in their projects. The GIS files available on the county websites have been converted to a geoJSON format which can be used in other modern web developer tools such as CartoDB and others. (To see GeoJSON at work, look at this example of all county libraries, in a geoJSON format directly inside Github.)

The Miami version of this project is inspired from a similar project from Portland: https://github.com/Caged/portland-atlas.

1. Download shapefiles archives from the Miami-Dade Self-Service GIS
2. Convert shapefiles to geoJSON at http://shpescape.com/mix/ (upload the .zip)
3. Click download. When geoJSON file opens in browser, copy its content to a .geojson file
4. Once geoJSON file is pushed to Github, you can see it as a map by clicking on the file and then selecting the paper icon if it is not already selected.

If you have issues displaying map, use the geoJSON Linter to test your data.

Our recent hackpad notes: (Hackpad)[http://projects.codeformiami.org/projects/miami_dade_gis_geojson]

VolunteerCleanup.org's mission is to connect volunteers together to clean up trash from waterways and shorelines. I am currently using NationBuilder as a platform, but it lacks some of the functionality I am looking for. The site should provide 4 basic capabilities. 1) Host/Create a Cleanup (leader) 2) Search for a cleanup by zip code (volunteer) 3) Register/sign up to attend an existing clean up and 4.) notifications/alerts: ability to get emails when a new event is posted within a ___ radius of my zipcode. I am open to working within the existing platform, or starting over and creating a new site. I have been cleaning trash from the bay and canals for 3 years and currently run 2-3 cleanups every weekend in small groups. I am trying to organize multiple groups together, recruit/engage more volunteers so we can make significant impact and ultimately change behavior/govt policy. As an eco-activist, I just want to go out and clean up plastics from the ocean. I have no coding skills and don't want to maintain a website full time. I can provide direction but am looking for help with the front end and backend coding/development. Visit the existing site at volunteercleanup.org to get a sense of what I am trying to accomplish.

Help build this directory of tools & resources!

This project is new! Help build this directory of tools & resources!

Storm Ready

This is a web application for Hurricane Preparedness. It will start off with information for the Miami-Dade area, however we plan on perhaps expanding to the entire state of Florida.

Directory of Miami Blogs

A project about this very website you're looking at, run on the Laddr framework provided by the folks at Code for Philly. It's very meta.

"The first step in making data actionable is to make sure the data is easily accessible. Many cities, whether they have an open data policy in place or not, have work to do in terms of making datasets open and available online. Do an evaluation of where Miami stands on releasing our landscape of datasets openly and work with your municipal partners to come up with a plan for making all of them open and available in 2014."

Operation PAW is an all volunteer, non-profit, animal welfare organization in Miami. How can technology be leveraged to further their cause in an effective manner?

THE PROBLEM: For our city or county to create an Open Data Policy, it will help to get as much grassroots support possible from its citizens as possible.

WHAT WE'RE PROPOSING: Let's create an information/brochure website that can help folks understand 1) what open data is (why isn't it the same as the county releasing a bunch of PDFs?) and 2) how open data will benefit us in the day to day lives (because yes, it totally will.) There should also be a call to action for folks to enter their name, e-mail and zip code so they can get information down the line [for voting petitions and what not]

Right now we need:

• An project manager (who can make sure we can get this delivered on time)
• A content owner (someone who can manage what content we need, can be same as Project Manager)
• A designer
• A developer
• A translator (who can take the content, translating into Spanish and/or Kreyol)

A person can, of course, own multiple roles if necessary.

Miami-Dade County mayor, Carlos Gimenez, will be making a Twitter appearance Wednesday to answer questions about his new budget proposal. These proposals will be voted on later in the year. Unfortunately, his proposals are bound (figuratively) in very large PDF files, which are intimidating to the average — and busy — Miami citizen.

This project aims to portray this data in an easily readable format. Whether or not we succeed, it will all be over by Wednesday. No pressure.

See if we can reverse engineer the real-time GPS data used for Miami-Dade Transit trolleys and leverage that into its own application.

Repository of Crime Reports generated by Miami Dade police, by location/Month

Since we were given a subset of raw permitting data from Miami-Dade County, build a RESTful API interface out of this. The Permits API is an open source module written with Apigility and Zend Framework 2. The API output is formatted in JSON.

Eyes on the Rise aims to raise awareness and to educate South Florida communities about the impact, challenges and threats of sea level rise to create possible solutions for a sustainable future.

Socrata is a company that provides social data discovery services for opening government data. They have graciously provided us with an instance of an open data portal.

A RESTful API containing a subset of data taken from the Miami Dade Local Business tax data.

After a visit from Commissioner Zapata: A project to build a twitter bot to address engagement of Miami's tax and cab services, and possibly sent twitter posters to a landing page addressing their options (complaint form? what else?)

A web application designed to allow Miami-Dade county users to find information on their elected officials.

This is the Spanish version of the Code for Miami Website.

This is the Code for Miami Website.

"Text My Bus MIA" is an SMS system that enables the user to text the ID number of his or her bus stop and receive a message with upcoming bus times for that stop. The goal is to provide easy access to updated bus schedules for low-income individuals and other Miami-Dade County residents and visitors who rely on public transportation for commuting and getting around the county.

An application to keep track of what is going on in a state legislature. Using editorial expertise and the Sunlight Lab's Open States API, this application creates a curated view of what is going on in a state's legislature session.

It combines data from Open States and editorial data collected with Google Docs. You can see some examples at minnpost.github.io/legislature-tracker and see it in production on MinnPost.

A local, editable resource - by Miamians, for Miamians.

Spinning off the StatesDecoded project (see baltimorecode.org) for Miami-Dade County. Project is in conjunction with The OpenGov Foundation.