search

open-austin / project-ideas

:bulb: A place to collect ideas for Open Austin projects
183 stars 25 forks source link

Building a True Community Registry for Austin #78

Open COA-Matthews opened 8 years ago

COA-Matthews commented 8 years ago

What problem are we trying to solve?

The city's Community Registry is a cumbersome and outdated tool that makes meaningful community engagement efforts difficult, if not impossible. We are trying to find a way to create a modern, flexible and relevant community registry that serves all people and communities in Austin and inspires broader civic engagement while supporting current requirements related to development notifications.

Reinventing the registry was a priority project of the resident-led Task Force on Community Engagement (TFCE), which completed its work in May of 2016. In subsequent activity, we found that Google Fiber would be an interested partner and a separate, related project was submitted by staff to the Innovation Office's Idea Accelerator. We'd like to leverage our momentum to create a community-based resource that both meets our needs and is scalable to other cities dealing with the same challenge.

Who will benefit (directly and indirectly) from this project?

The community at-large will benefit: community organizations, civic organizations, neighborhood organizations, homeowner associations and individuals. At this time, the registry is used to notify the leaders of interested organizations about development issues that may impact their community. The vision is to develop a true "community" registry that can be used as a comprehensive, self-service civic engagement resource that connects the city to organizations, and organizations to one another.

Links to any research/data available/articles

Community Registry Home Page - http://www.austintexas.gov/cr Community Registry Search Page - http://austintexas.gov/page/community-registry Community Registry Open Data Page - https://catalog.data.gov/dataset/community-registry TFCE Report and Recommendations - http://www.austintexas.gov/edims/document.cfm?id=255683

What are the next steps (validation, research, coding, design)?

There are three critical next steps: 1) Defining the possible & intended use(s) for a new system. 2) Evaluating the current data/field structure and aligning with the intended use(s). 3) Mapping, evaluating and retooling the current process/user experience to inform development.

What help is needed at this time?

We'll be at the September 19 meeting to discuss the project and get feedback on the best path forward. That includes feedback from the Open Austin community regarding the most appropriate and beneficial role the civic coding community might have in development.

Questions? Drop me a line at douglas.matthews@austintexas.gov or @Dougray_Earl.

mscarey commented 5 years ago

Sorry there was never much response to this, @COA-Matthews. Could you give us an update anyway? Did the city get a new community registry system?