Smart Chicago

The CUTGroup is a set of regular Chicago residents who get paid to test civic apps. The premise is simple:

- Fill out a CUTGroup profile and sign up to be a tester of civic apps, and we’ll send you a $5 VISA gift card
- If and when you are chosen to test a civic app, you get paid a $20 VISA gift card

We have over 800 Chicago residents signed up for this program, from all over the city– all 50 wards, all 77 community areas. Our tests have been super-rewarding exercises that have given us huge insight on making tools that work for people

The Chicago School of Data— or, simply, “the ecosystem project” was born out of the MacArthur Foundation’s great work in funding and shepherding data intermediaries for Chicago nonprofits over the last few decades.

The discipline of using data to make lives better in Chicago goes back to at least as far as Jane Addams, and her work in mapping tuberculosis outbreaks. More recently, the Metro Chicago Information Center, existence from 1990 to 2012, served as a central place for neighborhood groups, nonprofits, and other institutions to go for classic data intermediary work. These functions—holding and describing data, interpreting data for constituents, performing technical work on datasets—have been split among a number of organizations in the city.

During this same period, there has been an increase in the number and sophistication of players in the space. Lots of this is centered around the University of Chicago, some can be mapped back to the focus on data in the Obama presidential campaign, and the Emanuel administration has pushed forward lots of data generation and analysis efforts. Great work has come out of places like DePaul, Woodstock, and LISC Chicago. Smart Chicago has emerged as an important and learned worker in the space as well.

Then there’s the vast hundreds of organizations that use data to do their jobs in feeding the hungry, providing beds for the homeless, arts & culture for the masses, and so on. With months of outreach, we were able to pull together a unique and deep grouping of great workers.

In short, there has been an abundance of effort, an eruption of growth, an increase in funded projects, but a paucity of alignment in the sphere of using data to serve people in Chicago. This project seeks to change that.

#CivicSummer is an experimental summer jobs program for teens focused on civics, media, and technology. We work with hundreds of Chicago teens to use the latest digital tools to organize themselves, amplify their voice, and take positive civic action.

Our archive of our video coverage of Chicago's OpenGov Hack Night - Chicago's weekly gathering of civic innovators.