If you are passionate about using technology to make a positive impact on your community, civic tech is a great field to explore!
What is Civic Tech? Civic Tech enhances the relationship between the people and government with software for communications, decision-making, service delivery, and political process.
Here's the full Notion List ❀
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Links are taken from sifting through: Code for All & Code for America
Find your local Code for America Brigade here
A ground-breaking project in California could see 250,000 people freed from their criminal record this year.
It’s estimated there are a million people in California with a cannabis-related charge in their past, an invisible shackle that blocks opportunities to get housing, jobs and thousands of other things most of us would regard as necessities.
Yet, fewer than 3% of people thought to qualify have sought to have their records cleared since the passing of the new law.
It’s thought many are overwhelmed or intimidated by the complex expungement process. The clinic may only come to town once every few months, if at all. Others simply don’t know expungement is possible.
But now, work to automate this entire ordeal has begun - with remarkable results.
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Code For America, a non-profit organisation that works on creating Silicon Valley-esque solutions to problems within the many antiquated systems powering the US government, had made Clear My Record, a tool that can analyse text in court files, using character recognition to decipher scanned documents.
It discards any record involving a violent crime, as such records do not qualify. For those that remain, the tool automatically fills out the necessary paperwork. In other words, the algorithm replaced the process being done manually at the expungement clinics.
Working with San Francisco’s raw data, Code For America was able to identify 8,132 eligible criminal records in a matter of minutes - in addition to the 1,230 found manually already. They dated as far back as 1975, the year in which the city started digitising its files.
And so it was, on 3 April, that San Francisco judge Samuel K Feng signed them all off - reopening life opportunities for thousands of people.
“The minute someone loses their job, they get awesomeness amnesia. They immediately forget everything that is good about themselves. It’s my job to remind them.”
- A career agent talking about the difficulties her clients face and how she keeps them motivated.
HackCT: A Mission to Revolutionize Rural Mobility in Connecticut's "Quiet Corner"
Introduction: An Invitation for Innovation and Community
Hey there, digital pioneers, artists, and game-changers! Imagine a place where public transportation isn’t just a point A to point B service but a transformative community asset. Enter HackCT, a hackathon designed to ignite a revolution in rural transportation. This is not just a call to coders, but a rallying cry to everyone—from digital…
Contra Costa DA Announces 3,264 Marijuana Convictions Will Be Cleared
CONTRA COSTA – Contra Costa County District Attorney Diana Becton and Code for America today announced that 3,264 marijuana convictions eligible for relief under Proposition 64 will be dismissed and sealed as part of their cutting-edge partnership.
“I am grateful the partnership with Code for America has given us the ability to deliver tangible results for members of our community by dismissing…
SF district attorney to wipe out 9,000-plus pot cases going back to 1975 San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón announced Monday that his office will wipe out more than 9,000 marijuana-related convictions in an unprecedented step following California’s cannabis legalization more than two years ago.
