By Lori McNeill, Carlos Moreno
Overview
Open, collaborative solutions can help public agencies address civic demands in ways that are inclusive, transparent, and quickly respond to changes. Governments can empower communities and create better digital services by engaging skilled volunteers, embracing experimentation, and leveraging local technologists — or civic hackers.
Problem
Local governments face a growing demand for digital service delivery to diverse constituencies while struggling to keep up with emerging technologies. For many agencies, funding limitations present a barrier to creating and improving digital services. Governments may also have difficulty competing for qualified technical talent.
Solution
Municipalities have an untapped capacity of volunteers willing and able to help serve their local community. Engaging with civic hackers who have both technical know-how and the desire to help solve community problems creates connection, subsidizes innovation, and gives volunteers a sense of public service.
Governments that build a framework for continuously working with civic hackers can build sustainable, scalable digital services while creating a pipeline of technologists to fill government service roles.
Context
Civic hackers are creative problem solvers who enjoy exploring and understanding complex systems and frameworks. They are normal people — designers, technologists, policy wonks — that tinker alone at home or local library or coffee shop, or together at unconferences or through formal organizations.
They apply their skills — software development, user experience design, product, data management — to explore problems and create innovative solutions.
Often associated with cybercrime, in tech culture “hacking” means repurposing something (code, hardware, etc.) to creatively solve problems. Hacks emerged from an internet culture of building in the spirit of playfulness, resourcefulness, and collaboration.
Embrace the culture
You don’t need to know code or be a technology expert to engage with civic hackers.
Understanding and embracing hacking culture — curiosity and a willingness to share context and data — is an important first step in building a productive civic hacking ecosystem with your community. Ask questions and listen to feedback.
Find the hackers
Hackers can be found in a number of places:
- High school computer clubs
- University computer science labs
- Makerspaces
- Local/national organizations
Explore civic hacking
Civic hacking projects have inspired and directly impacted many digital government efforts.
Examples:
- Improving housing assistance online applications
- Automating court notification text messaging services
- Mapping community needs such as transit and supportive services
- Leading citizen science projects using sensors to monitor water quality and other local environmental factors
- Building dashboards to visualize public safety and policing open data
Some civic hacking projects, such as Chicago’s Million Dollar Blocks, Open311, and the state of California’s application for food benefits, GetCalFresh, have evolved from ideas to robust digital government services.
These examples share a common element in their origin stories: the willingness of government leaders to engage beyond bureaucracy in hands-on problem solving.
Hack around, find out
Successful civic technology efforts take a holistic, sustainable approach, where government fosters a framework for continuous collaboration and problem solving.
Civic hacking projects start with public conversations:
- Policy presentations by elected officials
- A public board where residents can list needs on a map
- A “reverse town hall,” where residents speak on a specific neighborhood issue and public officials listen
- A “show and tell” of data visualizations
After community discussions about what challenges to tackle with a team of civic hackers, implement a plan for delivery. This includes:
- Extracting, sanitizing, publishing government data
- Using digital tools to collect community feedback
- Sponsoring an open innovation challenge
- Hosting regular meetups and hackathons
It may be tempting to scope a fully-fledged project from the outset, but collaboration takes time. Set expectations, acknowledge limitations, and break large projects into milestones. Think small and iterate.
Celebrate hackers
Recognize hacker contributions as you would other volunteers in your community:
- Issue proclamations.
- Give out awards (like the Key to the City).
- Have them present projects at council meetings.
- Share stories on social media or newsletters.
- Create a monthly or quarterly showcase of ideas and solutions.
Governments that embrace civic hacking find it has a multiplier effect on engagement, community-driven solutions, and digital transformation.
Mantras
- Open mind, open door, open tech
- Hack with the people
Checklist
- Learn about civic hacking and hacker culture.
- Identify problems that make sense for hackers to help with.
- Set and manage expectations.
- Create space for civic hackers to support openness and innovation.
- Provide context and data.
- Celebrate successful collaborations.
Questions to ask
- How can we prepare to answer questions and engage around changing demands?
- What constituencies, demographic groups, or neighborhoods are we not hearing from?
- What gaps in our digital capacity or skills could be bridged with community volunteers?
- What tech meetups, data researchers, or community organizers in our community can we leverage?
- How can we better prepare to work with volunteers?
Learn more
- Catherine Bracy: Why good hackers make good citizens, Ted Talks100
- Building a Civic Hacking Community, Civic Hacker Network101
- Hackers: heroes of the computer revolution, Steven Levy102
- Civic Tech: Making Technology Work for People, Andrew Schrock103
- A Young Civic Hacker Could Be the Next Generation of Gov Tech, Paul W. Taylor104
- Alliance for Civic Technologists105
