The census only happens once every 10 years. The accuracy of the count effects newly drawn election maps and the amount of federal funding that Travis County receives. How might we utilize web design and open data to support a Census 2020 "Complete Count" campaign?
Phase 1 - Microsite
Census 2020 is only a couple months away and we don't have much time. We've been recruited to stand up a very basic campaign microsite to educate and coordinate efforts to get everyone in Austin & Travis County counted.
Phase 2 - Data Viz
Through 2020, teams of Census block captains will partner with civic institutions and community organizations to get people counted. Some communities are known to be statistically undercounted. These census campaigners could use data to target their efforts using data made available by the Census. We could design an algorithm that calculates how much a neighborhood or census block is "at risk" of being undercounted based on demographics, displacement trends, and other open data.
Who will benefit (directly and indirectly) from your project?
Travis County Census Coordinator, John Lawler
City of Austin Public Information Office, Tara Olsen
Community orgs supporting the Census 2020 count effort
Residents of Austin & Travis County
What other resources/tools are currently serving the same need? How does your project set itself apart?
What are the next steps (validation, research, coding, design)?
prototype of information hierarchy (content)
content editing UX (tech architecture)
custom theme (web design)
How can we contact you outside of Github(list social media or places you're present)?
Open Austin Slack
slack.open-austin.org
Project management
Checklist for NEW ideas :baby:
Hey, you're official! You're now part of the growing civic hacking community in Austin. Here's a few things to get started (a couple you've probably already done).
[x] Create this idea issue
[x] Flesh out the who, where, and what questions above
[x] Start the conversation about this idea on Slack Replace this link to the #general channel with your project's preferred channel.
Checklist for ACTIVE projects :fire:
Let's get this project started! When this idea starts taking off, the Projects Core Team will start helping this project's lead(s) out with project management and connecting you to resources you may need. To get there, please complete and check off the following:
[x] Post an update at least once a month to this issue. Use BASEDEF for ideas, but it's ok even if your update is just "nothing new happened this month" or "we saw a small increase in traffic to our app this month". If there's no activity for two months, that's no problem, life happens. We'll just label this as backlog so others know you'll get back to it when you have the time. If nobody hears from you at all in more than two months, we may mark it as abandoned so that others can pick up this idea and run with it.
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You can remove and add people to your team as needed.
Note: You can also allow collaborators outside of your team and give them more limited access.
[ ] Create a user group in Slack so you can "@" your core contributors all at once, without bothering other people who use the Slack channel. You'll need permission from a Slack admin, so just mention @leadership on Slack to get this set up.
[ ] Create a Google Drive, Dropbox, or other cloud storage to share larger files. Github and Data.World are good for code and data, respectively, especially when you need version control. But they're not good for very large files, documentation, articles, etc. A cloud storage option will allow you to easily share, create, and collaborate on documents with your team and help organize ideas and thoughts.
Doing this early on can help your team stay organized and to onboard new contributors who wouldn't have access to files you all have shared over email.
Checklist for FEATURED Projects :tada:
To have your project FEATURED on Open-Austin.org, complete the following documentation. In past projects, well-documented featured projects have more contributions than other projects.
[ ] Create an issue on the open-austin.github.io repo with the title Add [my project] to projects page. An Open Austin leader will review this issue and post your project :balloon:
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If you get stuck at any point, feel free to reach out to the leadership team on Slack by adding @leadership to your message. We're here to help you make real changes to our city.
What problem are you trying to solve?
The census only happens once every 10 years. The accuracy of the count effects newly drawn election maps and the amount of federal funding that Travis County receives. How might we utilize web design and open data to support a Census 2020 "Complete Count" campaign?
Phase 1 - Microsite
Census 2020 is only a couple months away and we don't have much time. We've been recruited to stand up a very basic campaign microsite to educate and coordinate efforts to get everyone in Austin & Travis County counted.
Phase 2 - Data Viz
Through 2020, teams of Census block captains will partner with civic institutions and community organizations to get people counted. Some communities are known to be statistically undercounted. These census campaigners could use data to target their efforts using data made available by the Census. We could design an algorithm that calculates how much a neighborhood or census block is "at risk" of being undercounted based on demographics, displacement trends, and other open data.
Who will benefit (directly and indirectly) from your project?
What other resources/tools are currently serving the same need? How does your project set itself apart?
Where can we find any research/data available/articles?
What help do you need now?
What are the next steps (validation, research, coding, design)?
How can we contact you outside of Github(list social media or places you're present)?
Open Austin Slack slack.open-austin.org
Project management
Checklist for NEW ideas :baby:
Hey, you're official! You're now part of the growing civic hacking community in Austin. Here's a few things to get started (a couple you've probably already done).
Checklist for ACTIVE projects :fire:
Let's get this project started! When this idea starts taking off, the Projects Core Team will start helping this project's lead(s) out with project management and connecting you to resources you may need. To get there, please complete and check off the following:
backlogso others know you'll get back to it when you have the time. If nobody hears from you at all in more than two months, we may mark it asabandonedso that others can pick up this idea and run with it.Checklist for FEATURED Projects :tada:
To have your project FEATURED on Open-Austin.org, complete the following documentation. In past projects, well-documented featured projects have more contributions than other projects.
Add [my project] to projects page. An Open Austin leader will review this issue and post your project :balloon:If you get stuck at any point, feel free to reach out to the leadership team on Slack by adding @leadership to your message. We're here to help you make real changes to our city.