Chicago's Digital Government Initiatives

Digital Government has been promoted aggressively in Illinois; as reported in the December 17th issue of News Week Magazine: 

Digital Government: Chicago

Mayor Rahm Emanuel has tackled the Windy City with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer during his 18 months in office. In an effort to jump-start Chicago’s digital-government initiative after the more bricks-and-mortar administration of Mayor Richard Daley, Emanuel lost no time in hiring three senior data officers to oversee different divisions of government. Together they have already put more than 200 data sets online, creating useful applications like WasMyCarTowed .com, ChicagoBudget.org, and an open-source city-information platform. The result is a more transparent government that encourages citizen participation while promising to reduce the costs of bureaucracy. Chicago is also pioneering the next frontier of digital government: “predictive analytics,” used to analyze public and private data to anticipate citizens’ needs and address them proactively. This will ultimately impact areas ranging from fighting crime to city planning. Chicago’s goal is to develop “an open-source analytics platform ... [that] will allow leaders to make smarter decisions faster, resulting in dramatic improvements in city services and neighborhood quality of life.”

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The Launch of Open311 in Chicago

BY PHILIP ASHLOCK

The following re-post was written by Daniel X. O’Neil of The Smart Chicago Collaborative. It captured all the awesomeness of the Open311 launch in Chicago so well that it deserved to be re-posted here. The original post can be found at http://www.smartchicagocollaborative.org/the-launch-of-open311-in-chicago/

OPEN311 CITIES

The following are some of the cities which have implemented the GeoReport v2 standard:

• Chicago, Illinois
• Toronto, Ontario
• San Francisco, California
• Washington D.C.
• Boston, Massachusetts
• Baltimore, Maryland
• Bloomington, Indiana
• New Haven, Connecticut
• Tuscon, Arizona
• Darwin, Australia
• Manor, Texas

Joel Schectman

Reporter

Chicago Designing Predictive Software Platform to Identify Crime Patterns »

Chicago is designing a software system to help agencies analyze disparate pieces of information from across agencies and departments to improve public safety and quality of life.

Dataset Heaven »

Close to 5,000 datasets on economics, public health, and the environment have been made publicly available as part of Illinois' Open Data Initiative. Governor Quinn hopes the new database gives our innovators and entrepreneurs even more information and tools to promote innovation throughout Illinois.” 

The data website is data.illinois.gov