Our Projects
OpenOakland projects are the core of our organization’s efforts to connect citizens with impactful civic initiatives. We’re always seeking new projects and project leaders to work on housing, transportation, education, health, or any area that can improve the lives of Oakland’s residents. Please feel free to join our Slack and reach out to members, leadership, or any project team for more information. You can contact project teams directly in their individual Slack channels. Join or sign-in to Slack: slack.openoakland.org
Active Projects
Councilmatic
Team Contact: Howard Mattis on Slack channel #councilmatic
We make the Oakland City Council meetings easily accessible to the citizens of Oakland. Using our site citizens can learn when are the upcoming city council meetings, view the agenda, put the meeting on your calendar, and send an electronic comment to the Council. Plus you can see videos of past meetings.
Civic User Testing Group (CUT Group)
Team Contact: Mary Yeh on Slack channel #cut-group
Civic User Testing (CUT) Group's goal is to make sure OpenOakland projects are working towards creating the best possible experience and serve all Oakland residents. If you're interested in user experience, or just like making things better, please reach out! Check out our current projects here.
OakCrime
Team Contact: Rik Belew on Slack channel #crime
OakCrime.org seeks to increase transparency and understanding of data released by the Oakland Police Department (OPD) regarding crime. Our data goes back to 2007, and up to yesterday. We strive to make all public OPD data available to citizens ASAP, provide context for it with analytics and visualization, together with full provenance via open source repositories and solid documentation.
Open Budget
Team Contact: Felicia Betancourt on Slack channel #openbudget
Every 2 years the city of Oakland releases a budget in a spreadsheet that has nearly 20,000 rows, which does not make for ideal reading. The mission of Open Budget Oakland is to transform this mountain of data into an interactive display of charts and diagrams that is easy and even fun to use. Our MVP is live, but could benefit from improvements and new features.
Open Disclosure
Team Contact: Elina Rubuliak, Suzanne Doran, and Tom Dooner on Slack channel #open-disclosure
Open Disclosure helps Oaklanders understand the role of money in their local politics. By analyzing mandatory campaign finance disclosures for candidates seeking public office, Open Disclosure presents a user-friendly overview of who is raising money, from where, and how much. Open Disclosure is developed in partnership with the City of Oakland Public Ethics Commission.
West Oakland Air Quality (WOAQ)
Team Contact: Jess Sand on Slack channel #woaq
We are creating a digital platform for West Oakland residents to collect, visualize, and act on the air quality data which affect them. We are partnered with the West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project, a community group who has collected Air Quality data from their neighborhood.
OUSD Budget
Team Contact: John Baldo on Slack channel #ousd-budget
Explaining to school communities what the Oakland Unified School District's central office does and helping them weigh in on what its function should be in the future. Let’s reimagine what OUSD district office can look like!
Open Oasis
Team Contact: Andrew Tom on Slack channel #openoasis
Phase III (Delivery pending, ~End of Mar 2019): This is mainly focused on developing a survey design, and related questionnaire, to measure OTX impact across their tech literacy programs servicing individuals in public housing. The data team is going to fine-tune our deliveries in Phase II to be "publication-ready". Meanwhile, our volunteers leading the survey design work are partnered with CUT group to assist with the survey design, implementation approach, and language of questions.
LaneLookout
Team Contact: Slack channel #oak-dot-bikes
Our project seeks to improve the safety of bike lanes for cyclists in Oakland. We are developing an app to generate aggregate data regarding infringements in the bike lane (ie. vehicles) via self-reporting cyclists. From this data, we will generate reports to drive improvements in problem areas.
Inactive Projects
These projects are some of OpenOakland’s original projects. They are no longer actively being developed and aren’t accepting volunteers.
Adopt a Drain
Established: 2011
Adopt a Drain is a platform for Oakland residents to volunteer to be responsible for keeping a nearby storm drain clear to decrease flooding from storms, protect water quality, and keep trash from storm drains and connected creeks and water bodies. Vigilant maintenance of the City’s storm drain infrastructure is important for reducing pollution in the Bay. Adopt a Drain was set up in partnership with City of Oakland’s Public Works Agency.
CannaEquity.org
Established: 2017 Team Contact: Angela Gennino and Richard Ng on Slack channel #cannabis_equity
Our Backstory: The City of Oakland is in the process of expanding their medical cannabis licensing to include regulation for cultivation and manufacturing. As part of this activity, the City also codified an Equity Licensing Program to address barriers to participation in the industry for members of disenfranchised communities in Oakland. This program includes a provision for “equity business incubators” to support new businesses in the industry. Equity businesses in the pipeline will be important to regular applicants, because regular licenses will only be issued on a one-to-one basis with equity licenses during the initial phase of the program. The incubator opportunity is intended to help new enterprises overcome the barrier of securing commercial space by incentivizing more established businesses to agree to share their existing space for a minimum of three years. By partnering with an equity business, a regular applicant will be moved to the top of the list for the next available non-equity cannabis business license.
To support the Equity Licensing Program, OpenOakland is providing support to other volunteer technologists and cannabis entrepreneurs who are working with the City of Oakland’s City Administrator’s Office and the Department ofRace and Equity to develop CannaEquity.org, an online“matchmaking” application that would assist interested equity and regularapplicants to locate each other efficiently. Applicants would create onlineaccounts to pre-screen for compatibility and control the pace of informationsharing and relationship building needed for the formation of space-sharingrelationships. Once built, the app will be maintained until the end of phaseone of licensing. This date will be determined by the collection of cannabistax revenue sufficient to launch the next phase of equity applicant supportservices (assumed to be within one year).
To support the Equity Licensing Program, OpenOakland is providing support to other volunteer technologists and cannabis entrepreneurs who are working with the City of Oakland’s City Administrator’s Office and the Department ofRace and Equity to develop CannaEquity.org, an online“matchmaking” application that would assist interested equity and regularapplicants to locate each other efficiently. Applicants would create onlineaccounts to pre-screen for compatibility and control the pace of informationsharing and relationship building needed for the formation of space-sharingrelationships. Once built, the app will be maintained until the end of phaseone of licensing. This date will be determined by the collection of cannabistax revenue sufficient to launch the next phase of equity applicant supportservices (assumed to be within one year).
CityCamp Oakland
Established: 2013
Our Backstory: The fifth annual CityCamp successfully took place on Saturday, March 25, 2017 at Oakland City Hall. CityCamp is an unstructured conference where municipal employees, civic leaders, technology folks, software developers, journalists, and engaged residents can meet and discuss the intersections of technology and local government—how innovative technology and data uses can improve civic engagement, increase efficiency and transparency, connect residents, and incubate the technology community in our city. Unconferences are not structured up-front; the agenda is completed on the day based on topics the attendees themselves suggest. This gives attendees control over the topics and discussion happening at the event, so residents can drive attention towards issues they think are most important.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Group
Established: 2016
Our Backstory: The Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Group was created to codify OpenOakland’s DEI organizational principles and to lead through action, OpenOakland’s commitment to making the technology space representative of Oakland’s diverse and multicultural community.
Early Oakland
Established: 2011
Our Backstory: Built in partnership with the Oak Education Cabinet, Early Oakland provides information on early learning programs that are state subsidized and federally supported Head Start programs in Oakland, including Bananas Child Care Resource and Referral, Oakland Head Start and the Unity Council Preschool, as well as Oakland Unified School District Early Childhood Education Department. This includes part day and full day programs for three and four year olds; a few programs also serve younger children.
Oakland Beats
Established: 2011
Our Backstory: This tool helps visitors determine which Community Police Beat they live in. In Oakland, Neighborhood Councils (formerly known as Neighborhood Crime Prevention Council (NCPC)) operate for each of the 53 Community Police Beats. The Neighborhood Council system provides a way for residents to gather and discuss local crime problems with a city and OPD representative on a monthly basis.
Oakland Open Data Portal
Established: 2011
Our Backstory: This platform is an open data catalog built by the OpenOakland Brigade as a community resource and our first example of what can be achieved using opensource tools in strategic ways for our city. This site uses the opensource CKAN platform—the same free software behind the UK government’s Data.Gov.UK resource. This site has been populated with data found on various Oakland government websites and from the huge data warehouse operated by Urban Strategies Council and its public web mapping platform InfoAlamedaCounty.org.
Oakland Wiki
Established: 2013
Our Backstory: Oakland Wiki is built on the LocalWiki platform, a grassroots effort to collect, share, and open the world’s local knowledge. Anyone can edit this wiki, so contribute what you know about your local community for others to use and enjoy!
Open Government Pledge
Established: 2012
Our Backstory: Beginning for Oakland's 2012 elections, we asked electoral candidates to take the Open Government Pledge to support the following principles of Open Government:
- Transparency: To increase accountability, promote informed public participation, and create economic development opportunities, the city shall expand access to information.
- Participation: To create more informed and effective policies, the city shall enhance and expand opportunities for the public to participate throughout decision-making processes.
- Collaboration: To more effectively fulfill its obligations to citizens, the city will enhance and expand its practices of cooperation among city departments, other governmental agencies, the public, and nonprofit and private organizations.
RecordTrac
Established: 2013
Our Backstory: RecordTrac is a simple way for individuals to submit public record requests to a governmental agency online. The application also allows government employees manage, respond to, and fulfill incoming requests. By displaying all submitted records requests, members of the public may find what they need without having to create a new public record request.
Soft Story
Established: 2013
Our Backstory: Soft Story is a simple interactive map of potential soft-story buildings in Oakland. Soft-story buildings are multi-unit, wood-frame, residential buildings with a first story that lacks adequate strength or stiffness to prevent leaning or collapse in an earthquake. These buildings pose a safety risk to tenants and occupants, a financial risk to owners, and risk the recovery of the city and region. This data shows the results of a screening program for potential soft-story buildings in Oakland. In 2008 Oakland surveyed its multi-family buildings with five or more units, and in 2009 passed an ordinance that required the owners of these buildings to complete a simple evaluation of the ground floor. This data shows the results of these screenings as of early 2013.
Track G – Oakland’s Measure G
Our Backstory: Measure G is a city ballot measure that was passed by the citizens of Oakland in 2008 to improve the quality of education provided by Oakland public schools. Money is collected from Measure G via a special parcel tax, which amounts to about $20 million a year in additional funds for the Oakland Unified School District's budget.Track G – Oakland’s Measure G publishes data on how funds collected from the Measure G parcel tax are spent. Track G allows spending to be seen by location, by program, and by school.
Trash Talk
Established: 2016 Team Contact: Howard Dyckoff and Tim Miller on Slack channel #trash-talk
Our Backstory: While gang signs and other graffiti are common to inner cities, East Oakland is suffering from a plague of illegal dumping—mostly from outside actors. Trash Talk is envisioned as a tool for help neighbors plan and execute cleanups and graffiti removal.The app will help neighbors report issues and work together with the Oakland City Public Works Agency to remove trash, dead animals, and other consequences of illegal dumping in East Oakland neighborhoods. Trash Talk will also eventually connect with the City's existing tracking app, SeeClickFix for tracking volunteer time.