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Strategic Plan 2015

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Anita Cafiero edited this page Aug 7, 2015 · 2 revisions

Strategic Plan 2015

1.0 Who We Are

Code for Greensboro is a diverse group of citizens dedicated to making government data open and available to anyone. We offer a space to repurpose and improve existing Greensboro city data and to conceive novel ways to present that data to the people for use in a variety of ways. In short, we aim to use technology and data to improve daily life in our fair city.

Please take a moment to read our City Profile in addition to this plan.

2.0 Core Leadership Team

Captain(s):

Leader Team:

Municipal Partner: Jane Nickles, City of Greensboro CIO

3.0 What We Want to Do This Year

We have undertaken several projects this year that underscore specific aspects of the larger Code for America mission. Much of our strategy was evident in our first major event, a hackathon to coincide with the National Day of Civic Hacking, held on June 6 of this year.

3.1 Make it easy for everyone to participate

We threw open our doors not only to Greensboro but to the surrounding communities and Guilford County. We worked hard be inclusive during this event, offering activities not only for developers but for designers and the community at large.

3.2 Design for people’s needs

As a county with a staggeringly large number of food deserts, we made a decision early on to try and use our skills to craft some solution or response. Before writing a line of code, we’ve endeavored to reach out to subject matter experts from local universities and civic groups. These engagements allow us to create a potential solution that actually works for those affected. We’ve repeated this pattern, reaching out to the city government and to the citizens for input on how we can best help.

3.3 Use data to make and improve decisions

Since identifying our first civic partner, we’ve been excited to meet with Greensboro’s government on a number of occasions. Recently we proposed standing up an instance of CityVoice, creating a gauge of interest and sentiment on a number of upcoming land and planning projects. Through projects like these, we enable the city to access fast, inexpensive tools for data collection and decision information. CityVoice should launch to actual participants later this summer. And through our program of roundtable discussions with department heads within the city, we hope to use a reverse pitch model to identify more ways in which we can help to clarify decision making via technology.

3.4 Focus on what government can do

We recently cloned and stood up an instance of Finda (https://github.com/codeforboston/finda) for the City of Greensboro, leveraging existing data. We’re working towards an open data plan with the city. That plan should enable more rapid acquisition of data, and much shorter time to launch for apps and other solutions. We see our role in this as one of facilitator, letting the city gather the data and using our time to develop new methods for its use. We free the city up to do the work of being a city, leveraging an engaged community and our brigade to build services on top of the data layer provided by the city.

Greensboro Finda: http://codeforgso.github.io/finda

4.0 Strategy & Tactics

4.1 Meetings and hack nights

We see our meetings and hack nights as a key strategy to engage the city, and to reinforce our presence. Civic groups come and go, their membership wanes; we want to show the city and its citizens that we’re in it for the long haul. Consistent meetings help make the point.

4.2 Hackathons

We’ve learned what a powerful tool hackathons are for galvanizing the community and energizing hackers to work with us. We are planning for our second hackathon to take place in November of this year. Our plan is to offer several tracks of talks and labs—including tracks for school-age kids and non-technical individuals.

4.3 Be available to the city and county

In addition to the valuable relationships we’ve forged with the city, we’re making inroads with county leadership as well. Guilford County warehouses records of every imaginable type, and has expressed great interest in working with our brigade on projects around some of those datasets. As a strategy, forging these relationships and keeping a dialogue running simply can’t be understated.

5.0 Outcomes

Our brigade tends to maintain a “long view” of our place in the city; for us, successful outcomes in any of the above areas—launching new applications or assisting in opening data up for use—are a means to keep going and to do good work.

Successful app launches empower our constituents and enrich their daily lives. They give us the opportunity to test our assumptions about the things we build, to iterate on them and make them better. A successful launch also gives us the confidence to build/clone and launch more.

A strong relationship with our local government gives us the opportunity to help shape policy with regard to data and its use. Our brigade is excited about the possibility of assisting our city in being more diverse, more technologically savvy, and more open. An outcome of a fruitful city relationship is the open data policy we hope to craft; this would mean simple access to tremendous volumes of data for our brigade and for the city.

Document prepared by the Captains and Leaders of Code for Greensboro

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