http://codeforamerica.org

1. End of Year Report
Code for America, 2012
from
Team Philadelphia

2. OUR APPROACH IN PHILADELPHIA
This year the City of Philadelphia had a broad charter for its partnership with Code
for America: to use technology to facilitate citizen, city, and community resource-
sharing and “citizen-source” problem solving. During our five weeks in Philadelphia in
February, we pursued opportunities to use new technology, increase transparency, and
engage residents.
As we met with officials and residents across the city, two broad themes emerged:
first, Philadelphia is a city of neighborhoods. Historically, the area grew as dozens
of separate townships and settlements before consolidating in 1854; today median
incomes vary from $17,754 in the Fairhill neighborhood to $110,391 in Chestnut Hill. Also
top of mind was the digital divide: 42% of Philadelphia residents lack internet access
at home, compared to 32% nationally. These two themes served as the backdrop to
our work.
Our three main projects impact the city of Philadelphia from three different angles:
citizen to city, citizen to citizen, and city employee to city employee. With these three
projects, we are demonstrating the kind of possibilities that open up through the use
of new technology in innovative ways.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Fifth-largest city in the United States
A city of neighborhoods Heart of the
Delaware Valley Population 1.5 million
Median Household Income is $36,251
Team Members: Elizabeth Hunt, Michelle Lee, and Alex Yule

3. Citizen feedback is essential to the healthy functioning of
any democracy, especially the urban planning process. The
typical forum for public participation — in-person meetings —
provides an opportunity for citizens and planners to dive into
rich, deep, feedback during the several-hour meetings. But
it’s also personnel-intensive, expensive, and usually results in
non-representative feedback due to skewed attendance.
Our partners working on the Philadelphia City Planning
Commission’s Philadelphia2035 strategic plan lamented
how many residents couldn’t make it to the few meetings
the agency could afford to hold. Those who did often
represented vocal minorities, not the public at large.
In partnership with PCPC, we designed and built a system
to collect feedback via SMS, called Textizen. Textizen allows
cites and community groups to create surveys and collect
responses via text message.
In Philadelphia, 41% of residents don’t have access to
broadband internet at home, but over 90% have access to
mobile phones with text messaging. Using this medium,
Textizen allows even the most disenfranchised groups to
be heard by anyone willing to listen. In June, embracing
the Lean Startup methodology of validated learning and
iterative software releases, we launched a 3-survey pilot in
2 of Philadelphia’s 18 planning districts. We saw over 800
responses to these surveys.
Future Textizen surveys will inform Philadelphia2035’s
remaining district-level plans. Moreover, Philadelphia is not
alone in needing a convenient way to get lightweight input
from residents. Over 180 city administrators and community
groups expressed interest in bringing Textizen home, and we
have begun additional pilots in cities such as Salt Lake City,
Monrovia CA, and Denton TX.
TEXTIZEN
textizen.com
city-citizen dialogue, digital divide, application reuse, knowledge sharing
across cities
PROJECTS
Top: Photo of the neighborhood planning meeting format that Textizen aims to supplement
(Flying Kite Media). Middle: Textizen outreach ad. Bottom: Textizen survey response.

4. The interest form on Textizen’s homepage has been the conduit for over 180 city and community group signups.

5. Dashboard of survey responses

6. How does this work?
Text your answer to have your
response recorded. You’ll get a series
of 2 follow-up questions.
Your privacy is important to us. We
won’t use your phone number again.
Why does this matter?
We are soliciting input for the
Philadelphia2035 Central District Plan,
which will guide Philadelphia’s physical
development by making recommendation
for zoning changes, city-owned land and
facilities, and public investments.
215·987·5455
215·987·9451
Text your answers and ideas to:
HEY CENTER CITY FAMILIES:
What would
make Center
City more
kid-friendly?
Outreach advertisement for Textizen

7. During our five weeks in Philadelphia we heard stories of countless creative and
transformative community improvement projects across Philadelphia, from vacant lot
cleanups to block planting days to organizing block parties.
These activities, however, are not widely publicized between neighborhoods. The lack
of documentation means that almost every project starts by performing the same
research and planning steps that many, many others have done in the past.
Neighborhow is a place to gather “how-to guides” that provide step-by-step
instructions for completing projects such as organizing a vacant lot cleanup or block
party. By providing a communal space for this content, we hope to eliminate some
barriers to entry for citizen action.
We’ve started by gathering content from city agencies and community organizations
in Philadelphia. These groups tell us that Neighborhow helps them in two ways: 1)
enables them to broadcast their work to a wider audience, and 2) provides a tool that
is faster and easier to use than their existing tools. For example, working with the city’s
IT department can be time-consuming as updates to a city website page may have
a lower priority than other IT work. So Neighborhow allows these groups to put out
timely content with an easy-to-use platform.
Though the Neighborhow website is open to anyone, we’re focused on Philadelphia
as a pilot project. And we’re now focusing on gathering content from city residents in
Philadelphia.
.
Code Across America Hackathon
NEIGHBORHOW
neighborhow.org
citizen-to-citizen knowledge sharing, process transparency
PROJECTS
The current sources of information are impersonal and complex. Left, rules and application form
for holding a block party in Philadelphia; right, the General Court Ruling detailing procedures for
obtaining converservatorship of abandoned or blighted properties.

8. Home Page

9. How to Install a Bike Rack Outside Your Business - Summary

10. How to Install a Bike Rack Outside Your Business - Step-by-Step

11. Using the same codebase as Neighborhow, CityHow is a place for city employees to
collect and share information that is important to day-to-day work activities in the city,
but may be to “informal” for a city’s existing knowledge sharing platform, for example,
how to reserve a conference room in City Hall.
CityHow is being piloted in Philadelphia, but the platform can be used by any city who
wants to become part of the CityHow network.
We’ve started gathering content for CityHow and this work will continue in the future,
led by the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics in Philadelphia.
CITYHOW
cityhow.org
city-employee-to-city-employee knowledge sharing, process transparency
PROJECTS
Home Page

12. Where’s My SEPTA? Awareness Campaign for Local Transit Apps
Through efforts of 2011 Code for America fellows, the Philadelphia’s developer
community, and open data from SEPTA, over 22 transit apps had been developed by
early 2012 for Philadelphia’s bus, subway, and regional rail.
However, most hackathon apps were only marketed to the technology community
itself. This fall, together with SEPTA and Philadelphia’s SEPTA developer community,
we created a citywide awareness campaign to put these tools into the hands of
transit riders and gather feedback for further improvements. We identified the apps
that were broadly useful, open-source, free to use, and capable of scaling to many
users. The owners of these apps committed to monitoring usage metrics and making
improvements based on user feedback. In doing so, we pioneered a mechanism for
increasing the reach and effectiveness of hackathons.
The “Where’s My Septa” campaign launched at the end of October 2012 with large-
format print and digital public service announcements in the rail system. As of
this writing the campaign has been running for 2 weeks and early usage stats are
encouraging. From week 1 to week 2, Baldwin’s usage grew over 1,000%. The SMS side,
SEPTAlking, has seen more than 2,100 uses in these 2 weeks. Lastly, a first round of
user experience improvements has already been implemented.
After the Fellowship, this initiative will become a project of Code for America’s local
volunteer Brigade.
Impact: Increased usage of these transit apps and tools, and better experiences for
Philadelphia transit riders.
PROJECTS
One hundred Where’s My SEPTA outreach advertisements were placed in Philadelphia region trains.
by SEPTAlking

13. Code Across America Hackathon
We hosted a hackathon in February. Over 80 people attended, including developers,
city employees, and a surprise appearance by Mayor Michael Nutter. Seven applications
were produced and demoed. In July 2012 the hackathon winner, Lobbying.ph,
completed a redesign and became a flagship project of the newly-formed Philadelphia
Public Interest Information Network.
Residency Wrap-up at Next American City’s Storefront for Urban Innovation
Next American City hosted a panel discussion for us at the end of our 5-week
residency. We talked with the audience about what we’d learned in Philadelphia and
shared some of our initial project ideas. Then we opened up for a lively 30-minute
discussion.
Apps and Maps Challenge
This year Temple University began a new program called “Urban Apps and Maps,”
a joint program of the Business School and the Geography and Urban Studies
department. Urban Apps and Maps hosted the university’s 2nd Design Challenge week
while we were in Philadelphia. During the Design Challenge, students observe the area
around the university, develop problem statements, and design potential solutions to
solve those problems. We attended mentored and advised students as they developed
their solutions and app ideas. One of the Design Challenge students attended our
hackathon because he was inspired to keep working on the idea he developed during
the Design Challenge.
Philadelphia Girl Geek Dinners Meetup
Girl Geek Dinners hosted a happy hour meetup for us at coworking space Indy Hall. We
met new people and strengthened existing relationships, particularly with local female
civic developers.
EVENTS
Mayor Michael Nutter observes hackathon teams in action.

14. Everyday is Democracy Day at appRenaissance
We ended our year in Philadelphia by hosting an Election Night event to set the stage
for Philadelphia to continue its innovative work in the civic technology space.
During the day, we visited polling places to invite city residents interested in making
their city a better place to live. About 50 people attended our evening event with a mix
of city residents, city employees, and technology folks.
During the evening we presented the major applications we worked on this year. And
we explained how people in Philadelphia could continue this work by working with the
Code for America Brigade and with the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics.
EVENTS (cont’d)
Invitation

15. MailChimp Workshop for Philadelphia City Planning Commission
The Planning Commission was sending newsletters from individual phila.gov email
addresses. They could only send 500 emails at a time and needed to do this after 6
PM, otherwise the system couldn’t accommodate their request. We asked if they’d ever
tried MailChimp or another email newsletter system. They said no, and that they didn’t
know anything about those sort of systems. We showed them how MailChimp works
and identified that a free account would meet their current needs. And it blew their
minds that a free, easy to use tool exists that could make their work more efficient.
Impact: The Planning Commission will be able to send out communications more
quickly than before. Because it is so easy to use, the MailChimp platform will allow
Planning Commission to communicate more frequently with the public, which is
something they would really like to do.
Publish new GIS Data
We worked with the GIS department in the city’s Office of Innovation and Technology
to get a fresh set of police boundary data published in both API and raw data forms.
The datasets are now available on the city’s GIS server, Open Data Philly, and the
Pennsylvania Spatial Data Clearing House (PASDA).
Impact: Allows CfA and citizens to build apps that target more specific police
geographies.
Google Sites Workshop for Mayor’s Office
The Mayor’s Commission on African-American Males includes more than 20 members
from both inside the City of Philadelphia and out. Thus, they didn’t all have access
to internal file-sharing systems to share their work, documents, and reports. We did
an educational skillshare and provided documentation on using free Google Sites to
create an intranet site for the group.
Impact: Reduce friction for partnerships between the inside and outside of city
government, and enable faster work from the Mayor’s Commission.
STORIES
Screenshots: Hackathon winner Lobbying.ph after a recent redesign, and Police District boundary data on the Open Data Philly catalog

16. BEYOND THE FELLOWSHIP
Textizen
The Philadelphia pilots of Textizen have drawn interest from over 180 city officials and
community-based organizations across the country and around the world. Based on
this interest, we will transition Textizen to a for-profit civic startup and continue to
provide software and services for bringing citizen feedback into the digital age.
Making Neighborhow Sustainable
A team member is planning to continue working on Neighborhow after the fellowship
ends. We want to use Neighborhow to experiment with different business and citizen
engagement models to determine what makes the most sense and has the greatest
impact for this type of content. The major outcome of this work in 2013 will be to
explore, evaluate, and document these models so that other non-profits and civic
startups can take advantage of our learnings.
Where’s My SEPTA
Through the Code for America Brigade (see below), we will evaluate and document
this effort so that other hackathon communities can take advantage of these learnings.
Later in 2013, the Brigade plans to kick off a second outreach campaign aimed at apps
for subway, bus and trolley riders.
Brigade
The Brigade will become Philadelphia’s permanent Code for America presence.
The Code for America Brigade is an organizing force for local and national civic
engagement, a network of Philadelphia-based “civic hackers” who contribute their
skills toward making the web a platform for local government and community service.