Civic Hacking

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Nowadays when we hear the word “hacking”, the first thing that the general public will think about is a computer programmer that is gaining unauthorized access to a system for malicious purposes such as stealing personal information or sending out viruses to infect other computers. Not all hackers are people who want to steal your identity or give your computer a virus. There are those who hacked into a system with the intention of improving one’s security system. They would leave notes to administrators about the security hole that they need to fix. Another definition of hacking would be simply put, the process of fixing a problem. When hacking comes up on the media, we generally hear bad news, but what about if hacking were to be seen in a positive way?

            I am talking about the “Civic Hacking Movement,” where defined on the Code for America blog states that civic hacking is “people working together quickly and creatively to make their cities better for everyone.” The great part of this movement is that you don’t necessarily need to have any technical expertise or be a computer programmer. Civic hacking is a collective effort of ordinary citizens and/or programmers who want to make things better for them and their community. There have been civic hackathons held in Chicago, Philadelphia, and San Francisco, which helped bring together developers, designers, artists, urban planners, and interested citizens. These specific hackathons allow the participants to use open data sets made available by their governments to design useful web or mobile applications that can be used to improve businesses, local government agencies, and other citizens.

            A great example would be Philadelphia’s Philly311 app , the mobile 311 service that was a result from a civic hacking movement. The Philly311 app helped improve the efficiency of their existing 311 call center and provide a channel to easily communicate with City Hall. The app includes options such as submitting a service request, search for nearby requests by other citizens, contact city administration, and receive updates on city news and announcements. The app has so far been successful with over 12,000 requests submitted and it was the 33^rd most downloaded app in the country during Superstorm Sandy back in November 2012.

            The idea of having ordinary citizens collaborate with coders and software engineers to help the community is an interesting idea and can possibly offer many solutions to improve the community. With the civic hacking movement spreading through other cities, it seems like it is here to stay and can possibly be the solution that connects the people and government in an efficient way through technology.