Commissioner Zapata Visits and Insights from Google I/O
Every Monday, Code for Miami meets at the Lab Miami at 7pm to talk civic hacking and eat some pizza. However this past week stood out from the ordinary Monday routine. We had a very special guest, Commissioner Juan C Zapata, visit our group. We also got to hear from one of our members, Diana Espino, experience at Google I/O and how Google plans to help with civic engagement and open data.
Diana started off the night sharing some tips and tricks she learned while visiting San Francisco for the Google I/O conference. “The purpose of what we do as hackers for good is to make life safer and make society better though our ideas,” Diana shared. One way we can go about hacking for good is utilizing the APIs Google has made available. The Google Civic Data API allows developers “build applications that display civic information.” This is API is currently use in our repMiami project. Another resource to consider is the Google Crisis Map which “aims to put critical disaster-related geographic data in context”. It’s great to see that large companies are making efforts towards creating and establishing open data trends.
Diana offered 3 great tips we should keep in mind as we work on our community projects.
1. Make Open Data more Accessible
Let’s work towards making community data high quality and easier to read and maintain. It is not uncommon to receive important data through PDFs or even faxes! Best practice is to share and create this data as JSON objects.
2. Make Data Interoperable
While our focus is on Miami and South Florida, we want to make this data open so anyone can have access to analyze and interpret! Focus on using standards when obtaining and creating data.
3. Think of these Projects as a Start Up
We have lots of great ideas that flow through our weekly meetings. It’s very possible that there are venture capitalists willing to invest on good ideas and applications that help the community. Keep that in mind as you collaborate with others and develop new projects.
We then had the pleasure of hearing from Commissioner Juan C Zapata in regards to the current issues facing the taxi system and transit in general. He stated his frustration with the county’s current way of dealing with issues through technology. “The current mentality is to protect the status quo,” he shared. We need to spend less time on non-adaptive procedures and focus on incorporating new technologies.
As the commissioner stated, taxis are “the first thing people are exposed to after the airport”. However, the current system in place in regards to taxis has become something of a monopoly. In order to become a taxi service, you need to obtain a medallion which can cost $500,000. Because of the extremely high cost, it becomes difficult for small competitors to obtain these medallions. There are new car-sharing services, such as Uber and Lyft; but Miami-Dade has actually putting legislation into place to stop these companies from being viable transportation options.
With this information given to us, Commissioner Zapata challenged the Code for Miami volunteers to find ways to disrupt the current system and gain feedback from the community on the transportation options currently provided. “We should be a community that is open to adopting new technologies.”
This visit is particularly important as it shows that politicians are beginning to understand the benefit technology can bring to the community. After many ideas floated around Monday night for better taxi and transit systems, along with the information of available APIs, we can work towards building applications and analyzing data. Let’s see what we can get accomplished this Summer!
