National Day of Civic Hacking

The National Day of Civic Hacking is a day where thousands of people across the country join together to use their coding skills for social good. Developers, government employees, designers, journalists, data scientists, non-profit employees, UX designers, and more collaborate on projects that benefit their communities.

In 2014, REDI partnered with CodeMontage in New York City to create an environment of learning and engagement for REDI employees and the developer community in support of The National Day of Civic Hacking. During the National Day of Civic Hacking, teams formed around Social Impact themes and projects. Leaders from Social Impact projects worked directly with developers. A Help Desk was formed making sure each participant found a project they were passionate about.

 

By the Numbers:

• 38 people attended REDI in NYC
• 40% of participants were women coders
• 5 social good organizations received contributions and visibility for their open source projects

 

Causes Represented:

• Civic Engagement
• Education
• Economic Empowerment
• Open Data
• Poverty Alleviation
• Accessibility for the disabled community

 

Social Impact Project Highlights:

• Quill is a web-based tool that provides personalized, interactive grammar lessons for middle school students. Coders helped improve the experience of students and teachers through several new features and bug fixes. Read the full story of the 18 coders who helped Quill here.
• Kinvolved improves K-12 student attendance and graduation rates by engaging families. During Coder Day of Service, coders built a prototype to help teachers share their best practices about family engagement.
• NYC Economic Empowerment works to empower, protect, and educate New Yorkers with low-incomes so that they can build assets and make the most of their financial resources. At the National Day of Civic Hacking, coders spent the day building a financial counseling services tool.
• 411 Housing Info of NYC helps make it easier to live in New York City by creating a one-stop shop for housing information, from legal resources to affordability programs to violations searches. Teams spent the day building a prototype.
• Ability Anyware’s vision is to disseminate assistive technology (AT) news that facilitates the accessibility, inclusion, safety, employment, self-determination, creativity, and dignified recognition of persons with disabilities. Coders at the National Day of Civic Hacking designed a survey to assess assistive technology needs in the disability community. The survey was live by the end of the event and Ability Anyware already sent it out to receive feedback from constituents for additional audio and alternative formats.