Press

December 20, 2014 | GovTech Today newsletter, Government Technology Magazine|
Welcome to a special “Great Ideas” edition of our Saturday newsletter. Over the course of 2014, Govtech Today covered hundreds great deployments and cool new ideas. Here are some of our favorites.

Oakland App Sheds Light on Campaign Finance

|August 28, 2014 | Gov Tech |Jason Shueh
…residents got a clearer picture of mayoral candidates’ finances in the November election with an open data-powered transparency tool. The Open Disclosure platform pulled public data from a number of sources to provide a simple and timely analysis of candidates’ financial filings and major donors.

Volunteers hack technology to improve Oakland city government

March 18, 2014 | KALW Radio | Laura Flynn (mp3, 5:39)
Though a lot of jargon is thrown around, some of the people here have no tech backgrounds at all, including Anna Mathai. “I just wanted to know more about Oakland politics and budget,” she says. “Just about government. And I just find this to be a good forum to, I think, help foster transparency and open government. But also get plugged into what’s happening where, and what’s going to happen with the next election, and other initiatives.

Oakland Data Day Jumpstarts Multiple Civic Projects (Community Voices)

February 27, 2014 | Oakland Local | Howard Dyckoff

2013: OpenOakland Expands

Oakland’s Public Participation Route to Open Data Legislation

October 29, 2013 | The Sunlight Foundation | Rebecca Williams
The Oakland public input process serves as an excellent example of the community’s role in generating open data policy, and an exemplar route to incorporating public perspectives into policy.

Civic hacking our way to a stronger democracy

August 4, 2013 | The White House This is the heart of civic hacking for me: building new solutions and processes to replace broken ones, sharing our lessons and our successes and allowing others to benefit from our knowledge, failures, and shared technology.

There’s an app for that

August 16, 2013 | San Francisco Business Times
OpenOakland…brings together coders, designers, city staff and others to improve how Oakland’s government serves its citizens.

Profiles in OakTech: Steve Spiker, Open Data Advocate

August 12, 2013 | Oakland Local | Howard Dyckoff

Most Innovative Activist Group

July 16, 2013 | East Bay Express
Oaklanders have always had a fierce penchant for community organizing. But until very recently, ‘grassroots activism’ didn’t exactly conjure up the image of a bunch of self-described data nerds with their laptops in tow talking about code. But venture out to Oakland City Hall on most Tuesdays nights and you’ll find Open Oakland, a group of self-described ‘civic hackers’ intent on using government data and technology to create better ways of engaging citizens. …

Civic Minded Hacking

June 11, 2013 | IEEE Spectrum | Travis Korte
Oakland, Calif., ever the outlier, hosted the massively collaborative ReWrite Oakland event, in which more than 70 programmers, designers, city officials, writers and local residents came together to create a new community-oriented information website for the city… ReWrite Oakland provided a great model for this kind of collaboration, and other cities would do well to take note…

Re-Write Oakland Hackathon Answers Over 160 Civic Questions

June 6, 2013 | Oakland Local | Howard Dyckoff

Hacking Oakland’s Budget

April 30, 2013 | East Bay Express | Ellen Cushing A new project that aims to use data visualization to give average people the tools they need to understand — and, in turn, get involved with — Oakland’s budgeting process, just went live a few days ago (in beta at least) and it’s pretty sweet.

Oakland Gets a New Data Visualization Site for its Budget

April 30, 2013 | TechPresident | Sarah Stirland The civic hacking group OpenOakland unveiled a new budget visualization Web site called Open Budget Oakland Wednesday. The site enables visitors to visualize total department expenditures, the details of spending within each department, and their sources of funding.

Open Budget Oakland and OpenSpending

April 29, 2013 | Open Knowledge Foundation | Adam Stiles The beta version of Open Budget Oakland went public last week with the release of our mayor’s proposed budget for the next two years. From the Network

Urban activists hack their way toward open government

March 30, 2013 | Ars Technica | Cyrus Farivar City officials see CFA and other parallel hacktivist projects, like OpenOakland, as a welcome (and low-cost) effort to aid a city under strain. They don’t expect technology to solve all of the Oakland’s problems, but they believe it might alleviate a small portion of the city’s challenges.

Our Town, Our Budget: What Does Public Safety Really Look Like?

April 18. 2013 | Oakland Rising Because the quality of life we enjoy in Oakland is directly connected to the public programs and projects we invest in and prioritize, the city budget is an important issue to pay attention to and be involved in…Learn more about what our budget looks like by using these great budget visualization tools created by Open Budget Oakland.

Early Fruits for International Open Data Day 2013

Feb 25, 2013 | Atlantic Cities | Emily Badger
This past Saturday was International Open Data Day, and with it came hackathons hosted in dozens of cities on five continents all simultaneously tinkering with apps, visualizations, data catalogs and new standards built on the world’s growing trove of public data. Of course, put a bunch of mapping geeks and civic hackers in a room – many rooms, all over the world.

OpenOakland to host community hackathon Feb. 23

2/19/2013 | Oakland Local | Samuel Felsing In Oakland, community group OpenOakland, will host its own Open Data Day celebration. The event, dubbed a “hackathon,” will be held at the 81st Avenue Branch of the public library. All Oakland residents are encouraged to attend — with designers, coders, statisticians and city staff members being especially welcome.

Weekly Oakland Wiki Edit-a-thons start at the History Room

Jan 18, 2013 | OaklandNorth | Adam Grossberg
So far, Oakland Wiki’s only stated guidelines are that the wiki is free and anyone can edit it … OpenOakland has already hosted an “unconference” they dubbed CityCamp, which brought city officials and residents together to talk about local issues, and put together an Open Government Pledge that asked Oakland politicians to affirm their commitment to government transparency.

Cracking Oakland’s Code - Can a group of hackers figure out new answers to the city’s old problems?

Jan 2, 2013 | East Bay Express | Azeen Ghorayshi_
I think one of the biggest problems we’ve faced is that whenever government operates in a closed fashion, it just asks for and results in distrust and concern that government isn’t doing what it’s meant to be doing and isn’t willing to be questioned,’ said OpenOakland’s Steve Spiker. ‘But there is a love for this city that’s very strong and very rich, and it’s got a history of social activism that’s carried over in a lot of ways to the tech community.

2012: OpenOakland starts up

City Hall starts its Open Gov, Open Data journey with City Camp Oakland

December 6, 2012 | Oakland Local | Howard Dyckoff Steve Spiker: “CityCamp Oakland was about supporting open government and we all witnessed some genuine interest in seeing this happen from city staff with a real desire to partner with us and others to make this happen. Our team put a ton of effort into creating an event to show appreciation to our city staff and to create a safe, encouraging place for us all to have open, frank conversations about how we can all collaborate to make our city even greater, for all our residents, not just the tech community.”

OpenOakland brigade encourages collaboration between government and community using technology

December 3, 2012 | SFGate.com, Oakland North | Nausheen Husain_ Over 120 people, including programmers, city officials, bloggers and community members, attended Saturday’s CityCamp “unconference,” or interactive forum with topics of discussion that attendees themselves chose

Data community asks Oakland Council candidates to sign ‘open government’ pledge

November 4, 2012 | Oakland Local | Barbara Grady
OpenOakland asked City Council and City Attorney candidates to sign a pledge of open government principles including transparency, participation and collaboration.

Oaklanders push City Council candidates for increased government transparency

11/2/12 | SFGate.com, Oakland North | Nausheen Husain
Born out of Code for America, a non-profit that serves as a kind of digital liaison between governments and residents, OpenOakland is a group of volunteers interested in using technology to make government more accessible.

A Crowdsourced Hyperlocal City Guide, Coming To You Soon

October 24, 2012 | Fast Company: Co.Exist | Emily Badger
Thanks to a grant from the Knight News Challenge, LocalWiki has been further developing the software so that communities anywhere can replicate the idea. The Raleigh-Durham Triangle area launched one earlier this year. Now Oakland and Ann Arbor have wikis, too. As a sign of true global dominance, a LocalWiki project is even coming to Antarctica.

Meet Our Vanguard: Stephen Spiker

October 8, 2012 | Next American City | Kate Holmquist Stephen Spiker is brigade co-captain for the new start-up OpenOakland, a volunteer group of hackers, software engineers and civic advocates who build open source technology to tackle civic issues that government doesn’t have the resources to undertake. Spiker loves data, democracy and design. Oh, and he’s a new dad, too.

OpenOakland Brigade tries to unite techies, community advocates and city hall

September 4, 2012 | Oakland Tribune | Angela Woodall
The Brigade project started as a way to create a national network of cities whose residents were leveraging technology to improve their community. The Gov 2.0 civic tech movement is a growing one but tools developed in one city were being reinvented in others.