Great American Civic Hack: Code for America chooses Councilmatic, OpenTreeMap as national projects

Two Philly projects are about to get the national civic hacking treatment.

Code for America chose Councilmatic, the City Council legislation tracking tool led by Mjumbe Poe, and OpenTreeMap, Azavea‘s tree mapping tool, to be part of its Great American Civic Hack effort, a national summer-long hackathon.

Each of the seven featured projects have identified goals — new features, for example, or a new landing site — and will win “Silver Fork Awards” for completing them.

Get involved here.

It’s another effort to make civic hacking projects sustainable. It’s also a way for civic hackers to share resources, work together and get inspired about launching the tools in their own cities. We saw this most recently at Random Hacks of Kindness 5, where organizers encouraged Philly and Baltimore participants to work together during the hackathon in honor of the first ever National Day of Civic Hacking.

The Great American Civic Hack calls to mind what civic hacking-focused entrepreneur Tom Steinberg said after he visited Philadelphia.

“I really doubt any one city can afford to have a scene that will solve all its tech problems alone,” he said. “I think that sharing the burden with jointly-developed tools […] has to be part of the future, whoever starts them.”