This guest post was authored by Kristi Tate, director of community strategies for the National Conference on Citizenship (NCoC).
Believe that communities can take better advantage of key data in their decision-making? Join the Civic Data Challenge and help turn the raw data of civic health into useful community tools. The deadline for submission is July 29.
The first-ever Civic Data Challenge will bring new eyes, new minds, new findings, and new skill sets to the field of civic health.
It’s a project of the National Conference on Citizenship in partnership with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Code for America, the Case Foundation, and others.
Kaggle, DataWeek, and GOOD are all contributing fantastic prizes. The Salesforce.com Foundation has announced their commitment as a top-line sponsor – contributing $25,000 in cash prizes for the winners. The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, a presenting partner, has also just committed another $25,000 in cash prizes.
Participants in the challenge will turn the raw data of civic health into beautiful, useful applications and visualizations.
NCoC works with communities across the country to use civic health data to measure and understand how communities and democracy are functioning. NCoC explores everything from the rates at which people are voting and volunteering to indicators of social connection to neighbors, family, and institutions. This is a great opportunity to make community insights more valuable and accessible to decision-makers and the public.
NCoC is providing its civic health data, as well as other important data on health, safety, education, and the economy.
Everyone is invited to collaborate with others, analyze the data, and create something amazing to showcase what they find.
Designers, data scientists, researchers, and app developers are especially encouraged to join the challenge. All entries must be received by July 29, so make sure to join the Google Group now.
Participants will be competing for cash and other cool prizes including the opportunity to host their own data competition on the Kaggle platform, to present their winning insights at DataWeek in September, and to feature their submissions through the GOOD platform.
Winners will be selected from each category – health, economy, safety, and education.
Participants will also have the chance to get their work in front of a cutting edge team of judges, including:
Leslie Bradshaw, president, COO and co-founder of JESS3
Beth Kanter, nonprofit technology expert, author, blogger, trainer
Henry E. Brady, dean and professor at the Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley
Matt Mahan, president and acting CEO, Causes
Jake Porway, founder and executive director, DataKind
Darell Hammond, CEO and founder of KaBOOM!
Maria Teresa Kumar, founding executive director of Voto Latino
Ryan Resella, technical lead at Code for America
Sonal Shah, former director of the White House Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation
Michael D. Smith, senior vice president of social innovation at the Case Foundation
Christie George, director of New Media Ventures
Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist and Craigconnects
Vivek Kundra, executive vice president of emerging markets, Salesforce.com
Bob Kocher, partner, Venrock
Virginia Carlson, board member, the Association of Public Data Users
Winners will be announced at the 67th Annual National Conference on Citizenship on September 14 in Philadelphia.
Watch the Civic Data Challenge team launch the challenge at the Data 2.0 Summit in San Francisco.