Thank you to all participants thus far - there are some really interesting approaches to integrating DC’s Open 311 API and we’re looking forward to announcing the final $10,000 prize winner soon.

Last year’s medal winners can be found here, Apps for Democracy “Community Edition” Round 1 winners are here, and the Round 2 winners are here.

The full prizes structure of Community Edition is as follows:

App for Democracy “Community Edition” Round 2 just wrapped up and we’re excited to share the following results with you (Final Round submissions are due at Midnight on 7/1):

The $3,000 First Place prize goes to Shaun Farrell for vacantDC! which focuses on using DC Open 311 API to map all vacant buildings in Washington, DC. A demo of the app can be found here:

The $2,000 Second Place prize goes to Victor Shilo, Roman Zolin, and Andrey Andreev for their innovative use of an iPhone application that deeply integrates DC’s Open 311 API. This application one first prize in the first round, and has added some interesting Facebook integrations. A demo of the iPhone App can be found here:

Additional applications were submitted are as follows:

Katie Filbert submitted “DC CitiStat”:

Zvi Band and Zach Goodwin Submitted “FixMyDC“:

Guille Carlos, Kris Steigerwald, Christophe Lucas, Luc Castera, Ashish Tonse, Chris Musialek,  and Guille Carlos submitted Easy311:

The SeeClickFix team submitted a DC version of their application:

There’s still a $10,000 Final Round prize for the best application developed. The city will then determine if an additional $14,000 grant should be provided to that winner over the following 9 months. Submit your final round application by midnight on July 1st here.

Good luck and thank you to everyone who’s participated thus far!

-Peter @Corbett3000

The $3,000 First Place prize goes to Victor Shilo, Roman Zolin, and Andrey Andreev for their innovative use of an iPhone application that deeply integrates DC’s Open 311 API. A demo of the iPhone App can be found here:

The $2,000 Second Place prize goes to Katie Filbert for her approach using a wiki based architecture with DC’s Open 311 API integration. Her application “DC CitiStat” can be found here:

The SeeClickFix team has been granted an honorable mention for their Google Maps service request submission approach:

Additional beta applications that have promise include…

Seo Cial’s Pligg based submission system:

Guille Carlos, Kris Steigerwald, Christophe Lucas, Luc Castera, Ashish Tonse, Chris Musialek,  and Guille Carlos made a Ruby based site:

And last but not least, Jerry Brito, Kevin Dwyer and Peter Snyder’s “MetroScout” which has the beginnings of a Facebook Connect approach:

Each team will be getting specific feed back from me and the OCTO team so look for that in your inbox. Also, keep in mind the following:

-You can submit to Round 2 (App prototypes due at midnight on June 21st) even if you didn’t submit for round 1 and there are another $3000 and $2000 in first and second place prizes available. All Round 1 apps are eligible for Round 2 and should be resubmitted with improvements when you’re ready.

-You can also skip Round 2 and submit for only the final round ($10,000 final prize)…but you’ll lose out on getting feedback from the city that will give you a leg up towards creating a better and perhaps winning entry

-If the final prize winner is of sufficient quality, the city will provide a grant administered via iStrategyLabs of $14,000 over 9 months for further iteration an support of the app

So, there’s still $29,000 out there that’s up for grabs.

Good luck and thank you to everyone who’s participated thus far!

-Peter @Corbett3000

1) Use http://apps09.eventbrite.com/ and select the “Submit Application” Ticket. You’ll be asked for an App Name, URL, Description and Feedback on the API. If you are not submitting a live beta of your application - and will be providing screenshots for iphone apps etc. - please send us a link to the document or email it to peter@istrategylabs.com. If you need to talk through a demonstration of your application, please record it and send a link - and as a last resort, use the description section of the ticket to request a 10min. demo call.

2) Two client libraries have been created by @skeevis (a Ruby Gem) and @technosailor (a PHP library) for all to enjoy. Please consider contributing back to the DC Open 311 API during the course of this competition if you feel compelled to.

3) If you have questions/ideas use the google group, and make sure you sign up on the main Apps for Democracy eventbrite (http://apps09.eventbrite.com/) so you’ll get future updates between now and the end of the contest.

You do not have to have attended the code jam in order to submit an application for Round 1 consideration - nor do you have to submit something for Round 1 in order to be considered for Round 2 and/or the Final Round (i.e. if you only submit to the Final Round you’re eligible to win it).

-Peter

On May 17th, citizens from around DC reached out to their neighbors to discuss the problems and ideas they had which could be addressed with technology. We’re happy to announce that our $1000 Social Citizen Award goes to Shireen Mitchell and Jill Foster for their in depth, multi-media presentation which you can see here:

Perhaps we should have had multiple prizes in this category, as we’re appreciative of the effort put forth so many. Here are a few more entries/insights that you might find interesting:

• American Ballad’s “KISS it’s the People” report.
• Tegy Thomas’ “Social Entrepreneur Hub” currently leads all voting in the Insights Section
• Jeremy wants Apps for Democracy to be for the greater capital area, not just dc:
• Elizabeth is concerned about access to 311 outside of the city:
• Andrew wants to get text messages when police helicopters are in the area:

There’s much more (220+ additional insights) here!

Wordle Cloud of Insights Submitted to Apps for Democracy Community Edition

Three short weeks ago, we announced Apps for Democracy “Community Edition” with the intention of using the month of May as an insights collection period that would inform our technology development period in June.  We’ve been using online and offline methods to gather input from as many citizens as possible. Last Sunday was “Social Citizen Sunday” where neighbors were encouraged to talk to one another about the problems and ideas they have that can be addressed through better technology.

Here are some statistics related to the ‘insights portal‘ we setup using Uservoice:

-112 insights submitted in the first 7 days

-232 total insights

-1,086 total voters

-5,308 total votes

These insights will be summarized into a “Citizen Driven Technology Requirements” document that will be shared with developers who’ll be competing to build the best community platform for DC with integration of the city’s Open 311 API - the first of it’s kind in the country. If you’re haven’t signed up yet to compete for the $34,000 in potential prizes, please do so here.

A full summary of these insights is here:
Apps for Democracy Insights Summary

In fact, we’ve been collecting insights online, and in the first 7 days, 140+ insights were submitted - you can read, vote on and submit your own insights here.

To participate in Social Citizen Sunday, just sign up here, and ask some friends to join you (or go it alone). There’s a $1000 prize for the best field report!

Here’s what you’ll need to do on Sunday:

1) Go to a library, church or another busy public area

2) Let people know you’re helping the city by collecting insights from your neighbors

3) Ask if they can answer this one question for you “What problems or ideas do you have for DC that you think better technology can solve?” If you can, please ask “Do you have access to high speed internet and if so, where?”

4) The answers you gather in #3 are what you’ll put into a ‘field report’. That report can take any form - video, audio, powerpoint/PDF etc. The $1000 prize will be judged based on the following:

• Quality of responses gathered
• Diversity of responses (different answers from different people in different neighborhoods)
• Quantity of responses
• Uniqueness of your field report

5) Submit your report to me via email (attachment or link to something)

All field reports are due one week from Social Citizen Sunday on 5/24 by midnight (that’s Memorial Day weekend so you might want to finish the report earlier). Feel free to collect insights during the week following Social Citizen Sunday. Also let us know what neighborhoods your insights came from.

TIPS FOR INSIGHTS COLLECTION:

1) Create a Google Form, so you can use it on your laptop or mobile phone as you talk to people.

2) Use a tool like Utterli or Tumblr to ‘live blog’ the insights you capture for later use in your report.

3) Use Twitter with the #APPS09 hashtag and and your own hashtag so you can go back and reference those tweets (you can use twitter to capture insight from anyone this way too).

4) Use a Mino Flip cam, a laptop with web cam, cell phone video cam or another video device for grabbing quick interviews.

Please leave any questions in the comments on this post so other can benefit from the answers.

“Apps for Democracy produced more savings for the D.C. government than any other initiative.”  − Vivek Kundra, former CTO of Washington, DC and current Federal CIO.

Skip the long post and just sit back and watch the full explanation video:

Cut to the chase and submit your insights here and RSVP for Social Citizen Sunday and/or build Apps for Democracy!

Back Story

On September 11, 2008, Vivek Kundra asked iStrategyLabs how we could make DC.gov’s revolutionary Data Catalog useful for the citizens, visitors, businesses and government agencies of Washington, DC.  The Data Catalog contains all manner of open public data featuring real-time crime feeds, school test scores, and poverty indicators, and is the most comprehensive of its kind in the world.

We knew that the old way of spending millions of taxpayer dollars with big, slow contractors was a broken model in need of fixing. Our answer was to hold an innovation contest where we put the data in the hands of our talented citizens, and gave them cash prizes and recognition for their efforts in developing technology for their neighbors and city government.

We therefore created Apps for Democracy (APPS08 for short) – a contest that cost Washington, DC $50,000 and returned 47 iPhone, Facebook and web applications with an estimated value in excess of $2,300,000 to the city. This figure was provided by DC’s Office of Chief Technology Officer as a sum of the individual costs to develop the apps, plus the internal human resources that it would have cost the city to procure and manage the project. That’s a 4000% ROI. APPS08 reduced the time it would take to create new technology for the DC government from an estimated two-year period to 30 days. We brought the entire contest framework to life and launched it to the world in six days.

APPS08 has gone on to inspire the Apps for America contest by The Sunlight Foundation, INCA 09 in Belgium, and planned initiatives in Toronto, Philadelphia, New York and Finland. APPS08 is also under consideration for a United Nations Public Service Award.

We encourage you to visit the Application Directory to see for yourself how citizen talent combined with transparent government data can produce innovation unlike any other method. In the application directory you’ll find apps that make citizens lives in DC better by making data on crime, carpooling, procurements, parking, biking, partying and a bunch of other things usable, useful and appealing. Many of the apps are open source so you can download the code and install your own versions if you like!

What’s Next

By all measures, APPS08 was a success. However, early on we knew there was no time to pat ourselves on the back because this was just the beginning. Through the course of the contest and after, we solicited insights into how citizen-driven innovation could work even better. Over the past few months, after innumerable conference presentations and focus groups with the brightest minds in technology, we’ve defined a “Cradle-to-Grave Framework for Citizen- Driven Innovation.” We’re about to put it to the test with APPS09. Here’s how it works:

RED = Not included in APPS08 (1, 7, and 8)

That all being said, we’re ready to put this cradle-to-grave method to the test with the next iteration of Apps for Democracy (hereafter APPS09).

APPS09 Execution

DC.gov wants to hear citizens’ ideas about problems that could be solved through technology, as well as their ideas about the perfect system to receive feedback and service requests.

Our mission is to make living in and visiting Washington, DC a better experience for all through the use of citizen-driven technology innovation.

Additionally, we seek to provide model frameworks, methodologies and examples for other governments so they, too, can better serve their citizens. The technologies developed for DC.gov will be open source and creative commons licensed so citizens of federal, state, local and international governments can build from the foundation we have provided.

APPS09 will take part in two distinct phases.

Phase I (May 2009)

iStrategyLabs will seek to engage the populace of Washington, DC to ask for their input into what they’d like to see in the form of a DC Community Platform. We’ll use appsfordemocracy.org blog posts, email surveys, video testimonials, voice call-in captures, twitter update submissions, in-person town halls, physical meetings with community groups, and more. You can submit your insights here or call/txt 202-683-9980 to leave a message.

We’ll create teams of tech community ambassadors and give them the tools to capture insights from their neighbors. These teams will compete to capture the deepest and broadest insights possible. The best team will be rewarded with a $1000 “Social Citizen Award” and public recognition incentives for their participation. Our goal is to receive insight from at least 5000 citizens of Washington, DC in a 30-day period.

Lastly, we plan to hold a “Social Citizen Sunday” citywide event on May 17th, during which people will be encouraged to capture insights from their neighbors about the ideas they have related to making DC a better place through technology.

The result of Phase I will be a comprehensive multimedia guide covering the “Citizen Driven Technology Requirements” that will inform our work in Phase II.

Phase II (June 2009)

Armed with comprehensive information about the needs of DC citizens that can be addressed with technology, we’ll engage talented citizens to build solutions to meet their needs. This phase will be an innovation contest similar to APPS08, but will have a different desired outcome.

The desired outcome of APPS09 Phase II is three-fold:

1.    Receive a multitude of working web application prototypes that conform to the following requirements:
a.    Built on open source technology and released under creative commons public domain license
b.    Accessible and usable by all citizens
c.    Utilizes the city’s 311 API for feedback submission (available mid-May)
d.    Visualizes data contained in http://data.octo.dc.gov and/or ties in applications additionally developed during APPS08, which can be found here: http://www.appsfordemocracy.org/application-directory/
e.    Determine via judging and community voting the best solution that will be promoted city-wide as the city’s official feedback platform
2.    If the winning entrant is of sufficient quality, iStrategyLabs will provide a “Tech Community Grant” for 9 months to the winner for further iteration and support of the application
3.    If the winning entrant’s solution is of sufficient quality, and holds promise for use outside of Washington, DC, iStrategyLabs will provide the winner with angel investor meetings, mentorship and marketing support

Prize Structure:

Phase II of APPS09 is the technology development contest that will be broken out a little differently into multiple award stages to ensure that we have a very viable platform in the end. It is also tied to a BarCamp un-conference that will feature all of the community-sourced research for attendees to digest, with a code jam lasting two days. Round 1 of the awards structure will conclude at the end of BarCamp, where all prototypes are demo’d live to attendees, and awards are presented shortly thereafter.

Round 2 will be two weeks subsequent to Round 1, and could have a different winner depending on teams’ progress. The final prize winner will be determined by OCTO at the end of Phase II and will feature an awards ceremony to celebrate the winner and all participants.

If one team wins all rounds, they could win $16,000. An additional $14,000 in grants for the next 9 months is also possible if OCTO chooses to exercise this option. That’s a total of $30,000 possible for one team.

Timeline

Contact:
Peter Corbett
CEO, iStrategyLabs
Cell: 917-748-3595
peter@istrategylabs.com

Many of you may have already read the CTO of DC’s (Vivek Kundra) essay on The Digital Public Square - it’s a succinct explanation of a philosophy that has guided Apps for Democracy and is inspiring people around the world. You can find the Apps for Democracy case study here as well if you’re interested in how we did it.

Today we’re pleased to announce another step towards the rebirth of direct democracy, which is run for the people and by the people. In this age, this type of democracy requires technology that enables discovery through transparency, citizen participation and constant connection.  Without further ado, please visit Washington DC’s Digital Public Square where you can Discover, Participate and Connect with the DC government:

“The District of Columbia’s Digital Public Square puts you, the citizen, in the driver’s seat to hold your government accountable. Discover information about your government through our data catalog—map where crimes have taken place in your neighborhood, find out what the District is buying, customize downloads about housing permits and city construction projects. Participate in your government’s activities by leveraging hundreds of data feeds—create your own applications and dashboards using District information and share them with the world. Connect with other District residents via social media tools and discuss your ideas about government and technology.”