Urban activists hack their way toward open government

Urban activists hack their way toward open government:

Blocks away from Oakland's Fox Theater, in City Hall, groups of hackers are trying to help the city, one line of code at a time.

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OAKLAND, CA—Four years ago, Code For America (CFA) was founded with the mission to "help governments work better for everyone with the people and the power of the Web." Within two years, the San Francisco-based nonprofit set up a fellowship program, inviting American cities to receive a team of three young motivated developers, activists, and policy planners. The Washington Post's description captured what everyone was already thinking: CFA is the “technology world’s equivalent of the Peace Corps or Teach for America.”
It's an apt comparison. All three organizations choose a specific municipal problem and recruit volunteers with specific skillsets—in this case, people able to conceptualize and build some sort of tech tool—to tackle it. Accordingly, the past two years of the CFA program have produced a few high profile successes: "BlightStatus" in New Orleans lets people check up on blight in their neighborhoods, while "Honolulu Answers" in Hawaii refined search on the municipality's websites. In Boston, the CFA was responsible for both "Where's My School Bus?", which provides real-time school bus information for parents, and "Adopt-A-Hydrant," which helps the city save money by letting people volunteer to shovel hydrants near their homes out of the snow in the winter.
Any city can apply to host CFA fellows. If successful, the paid fellows spend a month in the chosen cities, then head back to CFA’s headquarters in San Francisco to regroup, code, and work on their projects. The third crop of CFA fellows will disperse all across the country in 2013 to Louisville, Kentucky; Kansas City, Kansas; Kansas City, Missouri; Las Vegas, Nevada; New York City, New York; South Bend, Indiana; San Mateo County, California; San Francisco, California; Summit County, Ohio; and Oakland, California.

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