Since I first met Jessica Otey, almost one year ago, she has been interested in voter education in Charlottesville. Even then, her primary desire was to create an InfoBallot for the city to better prepare voters. She believed in going beyond a simple voter guide to the issues. She wanted to use technology to overlay[…]
PRESS RELEASE: Charlottesville City Council Passes Open Data Resolution Forthcoming policy set to support civic innovation Charlottesville, VA, September 20, 2016 Last night the Charlottesville City Council unanimously adopted a resolution in support of open data. The resolution calls on the city manager to develop an open data policy for Charlottesville. With this step, the[…]
The city council meets tonight with two big things on its agenda. 1) Toward the end of the meeting, an open data resolution will be put before the council. This resolution, sparse in detail, explicitly calls on the city manager to create an open data policy for the city. It’s a big first step for[…]
In the past two years, the open data conversation in Charlottesville has come a long way. Next week, the City Council will take a first important step toward enacting an open data policy for the city. Key questions and hurdles remain, but if the proposed resolution (below) passes, it will be a critical first step. […]
Today we’ve launched a procurement alert system for the City of Charlottesville. This system will alert subscribers to any new projects posted on the city procurement website. Additionally, it will send alerts regarding procurement project updates, including project awards. Previously, interested parties would need to review manually the city webpage and search for new awards[…]
April 12, 2016 Dear Council Members, Thank you for your service to the City of Charlottesville. In a letter to the editor the majority of the Council described a recent change in meeting procedures as “intended to create more transparency, broader engagement and a more efficient Council; less talk and more action means more tangible[…]
It’s unclear how closely the 2016 Democratic Presidential Primary will parallel 2008. Certainly the candidacies of Barack Obama and Bernie Sanders are very different in nature. Their trajectory and momentum, however, must feel eerily familiar to Hillary Clinton. In the 2008 Virginia Democratic Primary, Obama overran Clinton winning by 28.2%. That margin was even more[…]
In one of the more interesting races last night, Robert Tracci defeated incumbent Denise Lunsford for the Commonweath’s Attorney position in Albemarle County. Below is a more detailed visualization at that race on how Tracci was able to win. This work was made possible because of open data provided by the Virginia Department of Elections[…]
The US Census Bureau has published some interesting visualizations of where Charlottesville works (geographically) as of 2013. The source for the data and images is the U.S.Census Bureau, Center for Economic Studies. The tool can be found here. Using the Charlottesville Core-Based Statistical Area (CBSA), we can see where Charlottesville works. The image below gives[…]
It is with great pleasure that Smart Cville is publishing its Charlottesville Budget Visualization project. We believe that this project takes valuable, yet complicated, data and makes it easier to comprehend. There is nothing easy about the budget process and our city does a great job to make the budget process work. Our visualization utilizes[…]