“A civic hacker is an open source software developer who uses his or her skills to make their community and country a better place. … A civic hacker will just do something, not asking for permission, ignoring government bureaucracy, in order to build tools and technologies with a civic-minded bent.”
– Luigi Montane

 

Civic hacking is one of the most promising frontiers of democratic activism. Hacker culture, grounded in a spirit of creativity and innovation, is equipped to bridge the gap between slow-to-change government institutions and the people they represent. In this session, we will give examples of civic hacking projects at the local and national level and highlight the types of civic data ripe for hackers to repackage and develop.

Jeff Schuler builds websites and mobile apps as Substrate Websoft for orgs addressing environment, empowerment, and education. He advocates open source, open standards, open data, and open-mindedness. He led breakouts on open data at the TAP Summit, manages the Cleveland Civic Hacking Meetup and Drupal User Group, and is organizing this project.

 

Beth Sebian is a native of Northeast Ohio, and attended Oberlin College. By day, she works in management at McMaster-Carr in Aurora. By night, she is an open gov activist and advocate for common sense government that engages citizens as partners in dealing with community issues. Last summer, she organized the Transparency Action Plan (TAP) Summit in Cleveland, attended by over 200 government officials and members of the community. She is excited to participate in her first Notacon event this April.