codeforamerica / dev

Discuss general civic development topics here. Watch this repo to follow the conversation.

CfA Dev

Welcome to the Dev Discussion for Code for America. This is great place to discuss general civic development topics.

Watch this repo to follow the conversation.

Start a new Issue for each new topic

dev's Issues

Food_inspection_api

Hi,

I was looking through the code base, and one of the projects/ideas that I found interesting was the food inspection api. Would this be a project you guys would be interested in having work done on over summer?

-Ramon Rovirosa

GSoC Proposal: Civic APIs

Hello,
I am Sandeep Kaur, currently pursuing B.Tech Information
Technology from Guru Nanak Dev Engineering College, India. I am very
much interested in the project, collecting the civic data and making libraries and API's that is listed in your list of ideas on Github.

I like programming and developing new codes. I have worked on Python,
PHP, HTML, CSS, Javascript, Shell Scripting, MySQL, GIMP, Inkscape and
frameworks, like Django and Wordpress.

My works are :

I have made an Automation Software in Django for Consultancy
Department of our College. You can see it running here :

http://devplace.in/automation

The code for this is maintained on Github, here:
https://github.com/sandeepmadaan/Automation
The installation Script for this is here:
https://github.com/sandeepmadaan/test

I have also made some scripts for installation of softwares and making
a basic polls application in Django, these are here:
https://github.com/sandeepmadaan/Polls-App
https://github.com/sandeepmadaan/Install-Lamp
https://github.com/sandeepmadaan/Install-Django

I made an admission merit generator in PHP with MySQL. In this I used
DOMPDF too. Its code is here :
https://github.com/sandeepmadaan/merit_generator

My interests also include designing. I made a banner and landing page
for this website :
http://ukiericoncretecongress.com/

Now coming to this project, I wanted to have civic API as my project because with this I will enjoy my work building new modules. It would be great if I get to know the details about the project and the technologies to be used in the development. You are doing a good deed by helping the Government and common people and I want to help you in this cause. May be with you as mentor we can have code for India too.
Looking out for your positive feedback and guidance.

Thank you,
Sandeep Kaur
http://sandymadaan.wordpress.com [Blog]

Open311 dashboard enchancement proposal

Hi,I am Sankalp Jain from Indraprastha University,Delhi and I have been going through the ideas mentioned on the page and and I am interested in improving upon open311.

1-Data visualization enhancements

While exploring open311dashboard I felt it needs enhancements so that it can present a clearer picture of outstanding requests,area wise,city wise which can also be presented in a graphical manner using google-chart (https://google-developers.appspot.com/chart/) or django charts. We can also add functionality of getting a frequency wise distribution like the most frequent service request-overall,in an area,city,street and so on something like youtube stats.

This can also be further enhanced to generate pdf reports dynamically like say,NYPD ( http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/html/crime_prevention/crime_statistics.shtml) site has crime statistics.(http://www.reportlab.com/software/opensource/rl-toolkit/download/).

Then we can further enhance it to present data changes over a period that can be determined by the user.This I think will require some modifications in the API as sending the whole data is neither needed nor efficient and the data can be loaded asynchronously as needed.

2- Android app

I have observed that there is no android app while there is an iphone app for the same. Can this not be a part of ideas list?

Do the clients have to register for an account before sending requests to the server. Because if it is not so there might be spam users who are not using the system in the way it is supposed to. So we can flag such users. Genuine users can track the status of their requests in the app and get updated when it is closed.

I developed a similar app (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2g-Debc8HIo) which shares some of the concepts. It has a basic dashboard and can use the GPS or QRCodes to make requests and it is updated at the admin end. What if multiple user make the same requests? Does the system mark it as more important than the rest.?

3- "Work on better tools for cities to manage their 311 requests both in the office and in the field."

What does 'in the field' means? Is it some kind of updating mechanism when the caretaker takes care of the request?

4- I also read the Civic API idea but it does not cite any resources and examples.Can you give me some idea how that is going to work,data sets etc.

Thanks
Sankalp Jain

GSoc 2013 Proposal

Hi,

My name is Tauseef and I was interested in working on an API for crime data. However, I was a little confused about what to look at as a reference for making this into a more concrete proposal

GSOC 2013 Proposal - Automated Data Matching

Hello

I am Nikit Saraf, sophomore Computer Science undergraduate at Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology, India.

I was going through the Ideas and found "Automated Data Matching" to be particularly interesting.
I have downloaded and Installed dedupe and worked on a couple of examples.

But I don't have clear idea about the project and consequently have some doubts regarding it.

1. For what kind of data are we looking to resolve duplication ? Is it the same kind, which dedupe uses to explain in the examples? Is it possible I could get some sample data to play with ?
2. I believe more than the data, the Data Source is important. So what kind of data sources we would be dealing with.
3. Do we just need to extend the dedupe project, build an interface over it and make it as a standalone library to be used by everyone ?

Pardon me, if the above questions seem to be too obvious.

[GSOC 2013] Open311 Visualization Tools and 311 API Tools

Hey Mick @dthompson and the rest of @codeforamerica!

Long time no see, I hope all is well! I'm just finishing up my last Statistics/CS classes down at UC Santa Barbara and am constantly reminiscing about the best summer of my life at CfA.

I really liked the GSoC 13 idea of Open311 visualizations, and more specifically visualization tools for developers. I sifted through the Chicago and San Francisco open data sites and there are plenty of data sets readily available, but it's hard to make anyone sense of 10k rows of public information.

Instead, there should be some sort of client side developer toolset (i.e. a js library) or a REST API for generating various common functions and graphs. This would enable developers to better create visualizations and spread more open data based apps for the general public. I have focused this past academic year on data mining and statistical computing; most of my schoolwork has involved Ruby and R.

I have created a demo using data from data.sfgov.org that might serve as a possibility of some of the visualizations possible. I used the crime statistics over the last 30 days from here: https://data.sfgov.org/Public-Safety/SFPD-Incidents-Previous-Three-Months/tmnf-yvry

The R code and corresponding js output is here:
http://htmlpreview.github.io/?https://gist.github.com/JCody/5499442/raw/e584d4fbc3811643c4250f818ee64548152e2f9f/sfcrimeoutput.html
https://gist.github.com/JCody/5499442

(Interesting to note that something looks significantly incorrect about Monday. With 26k rows of crimes, either SF doesn't report Monday crimes or data.sf is failing to include Mondays).

Ideally these could be wrapped into either an easy to use library or integrated and well documented in the Open311 API spec for other developers' reference. Some of my favorite CfA apps have been mapping visualizations of opencity data, but it hasn't always been as easy as it could be to create these.

I'd love to get the chance to come back to the CfA headquarters this summer now that I'm (almost) done with school and commit to helping the fellows change the face of cities in the US. My ping pong isn't nearly as good as it was, but I feel like I'm a much better developer and I'm only looking immerse myself in code and continue to learn.

Thanks for all your help last summer Mick! I miss all the fellows, but I'm glad to see things are still running strong at CfA.

If you have any questions or if there's any specific way I can better guide this project, let me know.

Thanks!

• Joey Cody

[GSoC 2013] Interested in extending dedupe and working on Automated Data Matching

Hi Mick @dthompson ,

I am a 3rd year undergraduate student of computer science, pursuing my B.Tech degree at RCC Institute of Information Technology. I am proficient in Java, PHP and C#. I am familiar with Python and I'm brushing it up for this project.

Among the project ideas on the GSoC 2013 ideas page, the one particular idea that seemed really interesting to me is "Automated Data Matching". I want to work on it. I also cloned the dedupe repo and played around with the examples and the API - it seems really interesting, and the wiki documentation is excellent. I'm planning on extending it with more string metrics and matching algorithms too.

I am passionate about data mining, big data and recommendation engines, therefore this idea naturally appeals to me a lot. I have experience with building music and people recommendation systems, and have worked with Myrrix and Apache Mahout. I recently designed and implemented such a recommendation system and deployed it on a live production site, where I'm interning at, to recommend/match Facebook users to each other depending upon their interests and statuses - it uses semantic matching by mining wikipedia data dumps.

I think it's a good idea to build the automated matcher using dedupe (and any other open source libraries if needed) followed by simple REST-based and command-line APIs for it. The basic functionality for the matcher should be pretty easy to set up considering the already existing code in dedupe. I would like to ask a few questions - these clarifications will help me a lot to prepare for what needs to be done.

1. Apart from building the automated data matcher, I also intend to work on Dedupe Issue #16 and implement new string similarity metrics like Levenshtein distance, Damerau-Levenshtein distance, Cosine Similarity, soundex etc. Do you think it is inside the scope of a GSoC project this summer? I think it'll make the matcher more intelligent with a wide array of options.
2. As far as I understand, currently dedupe has no parallel processing capabilities. There is even an issue for that at Dedupe Issue #111. I think I can try adding some parallel processing, maybe integrate the code with hadoop and map-reduce. What are your thoughts on this?
3. Given my interest for multiple closely related ideas, aiming to complete everything within the time constraints of the summer for GSoC might not be feasible. Should I include all my plans in the proposal (if I continue my contributions beyond the summer) or should I confine my proposal to only the ones I intend to deliver for the summer?

Please share your views and ask me if you have any questions. Looking forward to hearing from you very soon. :-)

Cheers,
Nilesh

GSoC Proposal: Adopt-a

Hey,
Firstly, I would like to congratulate Code for America for getting selected in GSoC as a mentoring organization again.
I, PRANJAL DAGA, currently B.Tech Computer Science and Engineering student, am very inspirited to take up the project ”Adopt-a”, listed in your list of ideas on github. My interest lies in software and programming. I have worked on HTML, CSS, Ruby on Rails, PHP, MySQL, Javascript and also have a good amount of experience with frontend frameworks like JQuery, Twitter Bootstrap etc.
As the famous notion goes, "Take care of the small things, and big things automatically fall in place."- the same idea which is driven in the Project Adopt-a is one thing which can lead to the betterment of the world, without straining any one person or organisation, every member taking part can just be a superhero. Also, the application of the project in Boston, i.e. Adopt-a -Hydrant captivated my attention and I strongly feel that the following key points must to be taken into consideration to improve the project:

1. The government cannot provide its resources to anyone who applies to adopt it. So, there must be three stages involved here:
   a. Resource available to be claimed (can be shown on the map with a RED pin)
   b. Resource claimed by a person (can be shown on the map with a YELLOW pin)
   c. Resource allocated by the Government (can be shown on the map with a GREEN pin)
2. For every person adopting a particular resource, one other person must be assigned who makes sure that in case of any emergency if the first person is not available then he may take the charge to complete the work. So, each resource must be adopted by 2 individuals.
   (This has to implemented in cities or towns with high population only)
3. http://adoptahydrant.org/ and http://sirens.honolulu.gov/ show only the map and pin the resources which are adopted or unclaimed. Menus regarding area and number of resources adopted as well as unclaimed resources can be included so that citizens have a clear list of resources left for them to adopt.
4. The work can be monitored and a statistical analysis can be carried out which will include graphs for the work done against certain constraints or parameters. Also better statistics regarding public usage of Adopt-a can be implemented.
5. Other activities like maintenance of garbage bins or planting and maintaining trees in a locality can be included to extend Adopt-a by a single but a very significant step.

The major thing that attracts me to take this project in GSoC is that the application of this project in real life will help the world in moving an inch forward towards the mission of making our planet a better place to live in.

I appreciate any suggestions on how to proceed with this application idea for GSoC 2013.

Best Regards,
PRANJAL DAGA

Google Summer of Code 2013

Happy to say that we have been accepted as a GSoC organization again!

This year we are doing this a bit differently. In the past it was a bit of challenge for GSoC students to get closely integrated with our current projects in development for cities. This year we are looking proposals that involve refactoring past projects to make them easier to reuse, new tools that can be used by several of our projects, or visualizations that can used by several cities.

Take a look at our ideas list: http://codeforamerica.org/gsoc2013/ You dont have to use those ideas, feel free to suggest new ideas outside of those.

Its best to be very specific in the project proposals. Summer is short. Its better to get something smaller and useful completed then to leave a big project only partially worked on. Please provided a timeline of milestones with your proposal, to help us gauge the feasibility.

If you have an idea you want to run past us to see if it would be viable before the application process opens on the 22nd April, then post here as a new issue with the label "GSoC 2013" Myself or another Code for America member who's helping with GSoC will pitch in and discuss the idea with you.

Civic APIs

Hi :)

I am Sophomore student at Dhirubhai ambani institute of information and communication technology. I was Google summer of code 2012 student in KDE. I implemented Multimodal Accessibility: Using Computer Vision to improve Speech Recognition in Simon.

I really love the work of Code for America and would love to contribute in such a great community and bring some change. I have cloned https://github.com/newsapps/chicagocrime and going through it.

After a quick search, I found this interesting for our base for Intereactive APIs explorer: http://products.wolframalpha.com/api/explorer.html

I have few doubts regarding this project :

1. Do we have to build a User Interface where Users can provide the data or it will be just through APIs? If yes, what is the platform on which we will be developing our application?
2. By new APIs, Do you mean to develop APIs for crime data, business license info, food inspection, building info, right?
3. What kind of applications are we supposed to develop using new APIs?

I am really looking forward to get a clear picture about this project.

Thank you,
Yash Shah
www.yashshah.com

[GSOC 2013] Adopt-a

Hello,

I am a 3rd year student in computer science at the Polytechnic University Of Bucharest, Faculty of Computer Science and Automatic Control. I have experience with C/C++, RoR, Javascript, HTML, Java, Python. I was really excited to find out that Adopt-a is written in RoR because last summer I have worked as a Ruby on Rails software developer and it was a great experience.

I really want to work on Adopt-a and that is mainly because I always felt that we do not need a lot of money to make a better world and the positive impact that this application might have on a larger scale is an add to that.

So far, it seems to me that Adopt-a is rather simplistic and very limited, and even with the main points for developing, given in the idea, I have some questions:

1. The extend point, what does really mean? I think that a user have the option to log in, choose the city he lives in(not just for Boston), and then make an adoption. And of course you might adopt a tree or a portion of street or park to keep it clean. I might think of a lot of other things to adopt, but that is from my country point of view, and sadly we need a lot of work to be done here.

2. Have you ever considered to extend the "adoption" to a dog or to older people who need help? Of course, in this case, someone has to post the announce, in fact to pin the problem on the map and someone kind enough to help with it, to adopt it.

For the moment these are my questions and I am looking forward to hearing the answers.

Thank you,
Andreea

[GSoC 13] OpenCounter and Business Data API

I'm Stephen Finney, and I was a 2012 GSoC CfA intern. During that time, I learned a lot about Code for America and was given the awesome opportunity to help Team Santa Cruz in building OpenCounter, the app that walks a user through starting a business in the city.

I fell in love with this app when I saw the potential for streamlining the business-creation process for business owners and city government planning departments across the country. It's another example of bringing a city and its citizens together more closely. Today, the app is live and I've enjoyed every second of it.

Now, I want to make it more accessible for other cities to use. Most everyone that I've mentioned the app to have voiced interest in it, but as of right now it's difficult to reuse the app because of the differences in each city and county's regulations about starting a business. I want to rectify this problem and make the app reusable without lots of torturous data-collecting and re-purposing.

To this end, my proposal is to develop an API for a city's business data (and as much as possible, all relevant counties within the city). This includes information for business licenses, zoning requirements, parking regulations, permits, etc. This is no simple task, as the regulations and even format of this data changes for each city.

In helping to build OpenCounter, I've been acquainted with all the information necessary to start a business in that city. This gives me a good expectation of what is necessary to complete this project. In addition, I've done a series of Python web scrapers for city government RFPs and other bids (part of a project with Code for America and Social Coding 4 Good), found here: http://scraperwiki.com/profiles/stephenfinney/.

My plan for this project is as follows:

1. Determine the underlying strategies for collecting and parsing the data (i.e. how to get the data and what methods will be used to parse it.
2. Determine the platform for the API.
3. Separate the data into categories, with subcategories as necessary, for the different data types.
4. Finalize collection methods and begin coding
5. Finish the base code
6. Analyze and polish the results
7. Project future improvements

Schedule for each step (rough estimates):

1. 3-5 days
2. 3-5 days
3. 1-2 weeks
4. 3-5 weeks
5. 5 weeks
6. All remaining time
7. All remaining time

Open311, Developing (& Migrating) to a better GeoReport API Application Server implemented using elasticsearch and flask / django.

Hi, I am Pranjal Mittal, 3rd year undergrad at Indian Institute of Technology, BHU, Varanasi.

(Not sure if I should post questions here, but I had some queries while exploring..)

(1)
I was going through a client application along the lines of Open311 - http://www.fixmystreet.com
The workflow is simple and awesome.
Enter Postal Code -> Select Location on Map. -> Describe the issue (Picture optional) -> Submit.

So if I am not wrong is this an example of a client application that is based on the Open311 GeoReport Spec?

(2)
I also went through the list of Application Server Software written for Open311 API implementation. http://wiki.open311.org/GeoReport_v2/Servers

• Does each city jurisdiction (or corporation) in the US run a GeoReport API application server separately?
• There was no Python, based Application Server or API implementation. @dthompson: Is this what we had discussed about? (Implementing one using Python , Elasticsearch, Python / Django),
• Can you tell me about the limitations of the previous server applications (with links to source) code because of which, you think we should migrate to a better API?

Thanks,
Pranjal

[GSoC 2013] Civic APIs

Hi.
I am very very interested in Civic APIs project. My exams are going on, so did not get much time to submit proper proposal but i would like to discuss more about this project. I would love to contribute to Code for America nevertheless i get selected for GSoC 2013 :)

So please guide me on how can i proceed ahead?

Thanks a lot !!

Yours Sincerely,
Karishma Dalal

[GSOC 2013] Java wrapper of the GeoReportv2 API

Hello,

I'm Santiago Munín from Spain. I study Computer Science and have 5 years of Java development experience. Among other things, I like to make the work easier to other developers and that's why I had this idea. I've already spoken to Mick by email but I post it here anyway because it could be interesting for other people of the staff (and because I should have done this before, I'm sorry).

I thought about a java wrapper of the GeoReportv2 API, which would allow developers to forget about network operations, urls and data parsing (XML, JSON...) in order to get focus on their task.

Up to now, I did some things in order to prove that I can make it:

· A simple overview of the project: https://gist.github.com/SantiMunin/5484519
· A simple implementation of a tiny part of the project: https://github.com/SantiMunin/open311simplewrapper
· A (VERY) simple application using the library: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=KrWbiIZSx-I

Yes, I know the UI is very simple and ugly :(, but I just wanted to use the library in a Java project.

This library is very interesting because it could be used with Android, Desktop, Web...

Thank you for your attention and sorry for doing this that later. I've been very busy with my university assignments and exams.

Make Data Matching Easy! - GSoC

Hi Code For America!

I am immediately drawn to your organization and the work that you all are doing. My interest in moving up to work with you this summer stems mainly from my relevant experiences in the past few years:

• I worked at UCSB's Economic Forecast Project for nearly two years
  • We dealt with mass amounts of business, environmental, and educational data
• I currently work on a large engineering team dealing primary with big data
• Most of my formal education has been in the area of Economics
  • With relevant studies in GIS and Technology Management
• I am passionate about and well versed in many of the technologies Code For America already uses

The ideal project for me to work on would be to extend your efforts of Automated Data Matching, as I have personally experienced the frustration of trying to work with inconsistent and fragmented data sets. My joint knowledge of both engineering - and the organizations which would benefit most from an accessible data matching toolset - puts me in a perfect position to work towards one simple goal make data matching easy

The Plan

1. Drive up to San Francisco and make camp for three months
2. Begin work on developing ingeniously easy to use interfaces powered by technologies like Dedupe
3. Strive to solve all the problems we faced at UCSB's Economic Forecast Project - problems which I believe to be universally encountered throughout the nation
4. Further explore the technologies I am familiar with (especially Rails, JS, Mongo), while learning from fellow interns and advisers
5. Make data matching easy for thousands of people

Beta Idea

There are hundreds (thousands?) of small organizations who constantly pull and analyze data from primary watering holes - FRED, BLS, etc. - and then attempt to add in their own bits, and massage it all into something valuable. Organizations like these are hungry for accessible tools but usually too small or underfunded to take serious stabs at developing them.

My proposal is to start small and simple, to try and come up with a few tools which are truly useful and accessible (and sport a short learning curve). With your assistance, I truly believe we could have a few usable products by the end of the summer.

Please feel free to contact me with any questions!
Mike Holubowski