Civic Software
From Civic Commons Wiki
A primary goal of Civic Commons is to make it easy for jurisdictions at all levels to deploy compatible software, using open standards, open protocols, and open source code wherever possible. Pooling resources reduces costs and avoids duplicated effort; equally importantly, it helps make civic IT expertise more cumulative and portable across jurisdictions, for civil servants, for citizens, and for vendors.
Civic Commons is currently identifying and pulling together key pieces of civic software. If you work in civic IT and would like to suggest a technology or category here, please let us know. As we survey what's being used in production, we will adjust this list to emphasize proven technologies that have been deployed in multiple jurisdictions.
| Public Data & Notices | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| (See Open Data Guidelines for standards and example sites.) | |||||
| Item | Description | Requires | Code | License | Notes |
| Federal Register 2.0 (US Government) | The code that runs the Federal Register. | Ruby, Bundle, Rails 2.3.8, the Sphinx search engine, MySQL, ruby MySQL bindings. | github | AGPLv3 | See details page. See readme for overview. Back end customized to the GPO/OFR XML feed. |
| Federal It Dashboard (US Government) | Site that tracks IT spending and effectiveness across projects and departments. | PHP, Drupal | TBD | TBD | See details page. Code is being open sourced (late 2010 or early 2011). |
| Track DC (Washington, DC) | Site to "track the performance of individual agencies, learn more about agencies Key Performance Indicators, Budget, Spending and News, access agency Data and Connect to the agency." | Oracle, .Net, some proprietary Flash components, etc. | TBD | TBD | See details page. |
| Data Platforms list | A listing of open source projects for managing open data repositories, catalogs, and other resources. | See list. | See list. | See list. | See list. |
| Drupal CMS list | A listing of government websites using Drupal for content management and other purpose | See list. | See list. | GPL 2 | See list. There's also a gov-specific Drupal distro called OpenPublic |
| Transit & Transportation | |||||
| (See Public Transit, Cycling, and Traffic for standards and example sites.) | |||||
| Item | Description | Requires | Code | License | Notes |
| Bus Circulator App (Washington, DC) | Schedule/location tracking site for a small municipal bus system. | Google App Engine; NextBus API (may drop this dependency though) | github | TBD | See details page. |
| OpenTripPlanner | An open source multimodal trip planner. See opentripplanner.com for more information. | See developer site | See developer site | LGPL | See details. |
| Geographic Applications | |||||
| (See Geographic Applications for standards and example sites.) | |||||
| Item | Description | Requires | Code | License | Notes |
| Enterprise Addressing System (San Francisco, CA) | Spatial geocoding and management for a database of street addresses. | Python; Javascript. | TBD | TBD, but likely Simplified BSD or something similar. | See details page. Working on code release now. See here for more. |
| Legislation | |||||
| (See also the Legislation page.) | |||||
| Item | Description | Requires | Code | License | Notes |
| Open Legislation (NY State Senate) | Software, including web and mobile apps, for giving citizens real-time access to the legislative process. See it in action. | Java / J2EE Web Application; Maven2; Lucene; Google App Engine / AWS. See details page. | github | GPL/BSD hybrid | See details page. |
| Citizen Services | |||||
| (See Open311, Emergencies.) | |||||
| Item | Description | Requires | Code | License | Notes |
| PDX Reporter formerly "Citizen Reports" (Portland, OR) | iPhone app for reporting and requesting service calls regarding city infrastructure. | Apple iPhone. | Google Code Hosting | GPLv2 | See app page. |
| PDX Reporter (Portland, OR) | Android app for reporting and requesting service calls regarding city infrastructure. | Android Smartphones. | Google Code Hosting | GPLv2 | See app page. |
| Voting Information Project | Data site providing information with which to develop voting information apps. | Hosted Site; runs on Google Apps. | Various. | This site enables third parties to develop apps that supply information to voters ("Where do I vote? What's on the ballot? How can I find out more information?"). It provides voting information in a standardized format (see the 2010 data so far) so people can develop apps (e.g., the Virginia Polling Place gadget), and they'll even help you with the app development. The format is the Election Info Standard, which is different from Election Markup Language (see their FAQ for why). | |
| IT Infrastructure | |||||
| Item | Description | Requires | Code | License | Notes |
| DC Apps - Apps Catalog (Washington, DC) | Online app catalog: people submit or download apps that use government data. E.g., parking meter locations, historic data, emergency info. | Google App Engine. | github | TBD | See details page. |
| OpenStack | A fully open-source cloud computing infrastructure, based on open standards. | TBD | launchpad | Apache 2.0 | Has broad corporate backing, as well as NASA involvement. Very active as of August 2010, but some major components still in development. 1st release scheduled for 21 October 2010. |
| Human Resources / Personnel Profiles / Directories | |||||
| (See also the OpenSocial Web Standards.) | |||||
| Item | Description | Requires | Code | License | Notes |
| Open Directory (NY State Senate) | NYSenate OpenDirectory is intended to be a lightweight web-based service that allows Senate employees to easily create and share personal profile as well as organizational contact/project information with one another, and to allow all New Yorkers to access that information.
By implementing both fine grained privacy controls and a robust data API the OpenDirectory empowers both senate employees as well as civic researchers, reporters, and developers to better serve their constituents. | Java; SOLR; Tomcat; Varnish | github | Dual GPL/BSD | Similar to Drupal4Gov and State Dept efforts; discussing collaboration.
Programmed with the Eclipse IDE using Maven2 project management. A pre-configured virtual box environment is available to help developers get started. For more information please consult the Redmine wiki or drop by #nyss_opendirectory @ FreeNode.net on IRC. |
| Education | |||||
| (See Education.com Schools API.) | |||||
| Crime | |||||
| (See Crime for standards and example sites.) | |||||
| Land Use | |||||
| (See Building Permits and Cosm: real-time community-based planning.) | |||||
| Health and Sanitation | |||||
| (See NYC Restaurant Inspections data (via NYC DataMine).) | |||||
| Operations, Budgeting, Management | |||||
| (See LEDES Electronic Budget XML Format.) | |||||
| Other Category Resource Pages | |||||
| Citizen Resource Management | |||||
| Traffic Accidents | |||||
| Parking | |||||
| Service Delivery | |||||
| Schools | |||||
| Sanitation | |||||
| Health Inspection | |||||
| Building Lots | |||||
| Land Use Zoning | |||||
| Urban Planning | |||||
| Budget | |||||
| Elected Officials | |||||
| Boundaries | |||||
| Voting | |||||
| Public Meetings | |||||