2017 Year in Review: City Digital & Smart Chicago become the City Tech Collaborative

Last year was filled with many milestones for urban innovation and public technology work in Chicago. 2017 also marked the merger of City Digital and the Smart Chicago Collaborative and the of the creation of our new team, City Tech Collaborative !

In this post, we take the time to review the highlights from our team’s work. Month to month, we’ll showcase how our complementary strengths and projects thrived, then came together to create a new catalyst for local and national innovation.

Starting off 2017, City Digital completed the installation of sensors, as part of the Smart Green Infrastructure Monitoring (SGIM) pilot, at the Argyle “shared street” in Uptown and Langley Avenue in Roseland. With the addition of these installations, sensors are now placed at four green infrastructure sites across Chicago and are measuring performance of different green infrastructure– permeable pavement, bioswale, infiltration planters, and tree pit filters– to better understand and compare performance of each. The sensors are capturing data points such as soil moisture, air temperature, rainfall, pressure, wind speed, and other weather-related information. Data from the SGIM pilot can be accessed through the Chicago Open Data Portal.

In February, Smart Chicago conducted their 30th Civic User Testing Group (CUTgroup) session on the Chicago Park District website with residents at the Near North Library. The goal of this session was to understand a resident’s experience interacting with Chicago Park District information – specifically how they navigate when completing tasks or search for information.By engaging with 21 park-goers, Smart Chicago helped the Chicago Park District prepare for an upcoming replatforming and redesign of their website. Feedback from the CUTGroup test provided recommendations to improve user experience, making it easier for residents to find all of the activities and services the Chicago Park District provides. The Chicago Park District recently launched a new version of their website that incorporated the feedback we heard from the CUTgroup.

In partnership with the Urban Waterways Forum hosted by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, City Digital and Current convened a Water Innovation Symposium at UI LABS.The Water Innovation Symposium shared new Chicago-based technologies and collaborations that address pressing water needs: analyzing microbes in river water to protect public health, using data analytics to enhance green infrastructure investments, reducing institutional water use, and harvesting valuable commodities such as phosphorus from wastewater while protecting ecosystems.

This was just one example of City Digital’s ability to convene mayors, academic experts, advocates, and industry and facilitate conversations around complex, timely urban problems. Later in December, City Digital would go on to host a one-day Climate Forum in collaboration with the North American Climate Summit.

In partnership with DePaul University and the Greater Southwest Development Corporation (GSDC), Smart Chicago engaged directly with residents through Community Technology Forums. These events, hosted by neighborhood anchor institutions like GSDC and the Windsor Park Lutheran Evangelical Church, were participatory design sessions aimed at understanding hyperlocal digital equity needs, assets, and ideas. These sessions brought conversations about technology out of the Loop and into neighborhoods — they gave residents an outlet to articulate a vision for technology in their community. With assistance from the community journalism start-up City Bureau , Smart Chicago captured ideas and needs identified by participating residents in these sessions and centralized that documentation here.

May 2017 marked my official arrival to the City Digital team as their new Executive Director !

In my previous role as the Chief Information Officer for the City of Chicago, I worked with both City Digital and the Smart Chicago Collaborative. I participated in City Digital’s innovative piloting work from the other side of the table — representing government during ongoing, collaborative piloting efforts like Underground Infrastructure Mapping (UIM) and the Smart Green Infrastructure Mapping (SGIM) initiative. As CIO I also sat on the Advisory Boardd of the Smart Chicago Collaborative and directly collaborated on several of their projects including OpenGrid , CUTGroup , and the Chicago School of Data. I saw the public value of both organizations’ expertise, unique partnerships, and processes.

June started with an announcement that City Digital was named a winner of the Blackstone Inclusive Entrepreneurship Challenge , which aims to advance diverse entrepreneurship and accelerate startups. This $100,000 grant supported a collaboration between City Digital and Colony 5 , a nonprofit organization dedicated to connecting entrepreneurs with needed resources to grow their businesses. Through inclusive entrepreneurship programming at UI LABS, Colony 5 identified and then announced their first cohort of entrepreneurs last December. On February 1, 2018, City Tech will celebrate with Colony 5 the start of the journey for six entrepreneurs who will publicly reveal their tech-enabled businesses.

In July, Smart Chicago announced a new Connect Chicago Meetup , “Serving Seniors.” Census data show that senior citizens are more likely to be on the wrong side of the digital divide, more likely to not have the access, tools, skills, or assistance needed to fully leverage the technology that could improve their quality of life. To help address this gap, the Meetup showcased two critical tech skills curricula designed with seniors in mind: Microsoft’s DigiSeniors & the Chicago Public Library’s Digital Learn Platform.

Late this August, City Digital partnered with the CTA, MasterCard, Syniverse, and ideas42 to launch a pilot testing the ability to change traveler behavior with economic incentives. The mission of the pilot was to reduce congestion and improve a riders’ experience during Chicago Cubs games. Over 2,000 CTA riders signed up to participate in the CTA Night Games Alert Program, which ran from August 28th to October 19th. Four types of messages were sent on days with Cubs home games during the pilot: informational, instructional, fare rebates, and donations. Fare rebates had the most impact with average participant ridership dropping nearly 18 percent among eligible riders.

In September, City Digital announced that it had been awarded a $500,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce to accelerate the development of commercial solutions for Chicago and cities around the world. The grant was awarded through the Economic Development Administration’s Regional Innovation Strategies (RIS) program and City Digital was one of 42 organizations — including nonprofits, higher education institutions, and entrepreneurship-focused organizations – from 28 states to receive funding. Mayor Rahm Emanuel said that the grant would strengthen “Chicago’s position as a global leader in using technology to deliver city services more effectively,” and noted that the city’s continued partnership with City Digital was helping to “drive new technologies that will create jobs and generate economic growth while improving quality of life for people across Chicago.”

Another milestone for the Chicago Health Atlas was celebrated last October, when Smart Chicago launched a redesigned version of the Health Atlas that enhanced the website, included more datasets, and better aligned with the Healthy Chicago 2.0 plan.

“The Chicago Health Atlas is a key component of our citywide Healthy Chicago 2.0 strategy. Not only does it provide a direct portal for partners, funders and policy makers to access data, but it puts in an intuitive interface that allows users to create visualizations in real time. This tool will help groups across the city, from government agencies like ours to neighborhood organizations to make more informed decisions that will lead to better health outcomes for all”.

– Chicago Department of Public Health Commissioner Julie Morita, M.D

The Chicago Health Atlas was first launched in 2013 with support of the Otho S. A. Sprague Memorial Institute to create a robust health data resource for health stakeholders, community organizations, and residents. Over the last year, the Chicago Department of Public Health , Smart Chicago, and our technical partners, Dom & Tom , focused on creating a user-friendly version of the Health Atlas that would serve those groups. Smart Chicago conducted a number of usability tests of the beta version of the redesigned website in the Spring and incorporated feedback from community health stakeholders. The new Health Atlas also prioritized adding over 20,000 community resources through data provided by MAPSCorps , a non-profit organization that delivers hands-on STEM training for youth through neighborhood asset mapping.

In November, the Smart Chicago Collaborative published the Chicago School of Data Book. The book summarized the Chicago School of Data project which sought to define our local data ecosystem and convene its 200+ players around shared challenges and opportunities. In it, you’ll find all the details for how Smart Chicago surveyed institutions about their data use and planned a convening, the Chicago School of Data Days , designed around those institutions’ data challenges and interests. The book itself inventories all the resources, tips, and insights that were shared during the Chicago School of Data Days.

The Chicago School of Data book adds to Smart Chicago’s list of publications aimed at capturing their work, methods, and lessons for all to read, replicate, and remix. It joins the ranks of the CUTGroup book , Experimental Modes of Civic Engagement in Civic Tech , and The Civic Whitaker Anthology — all available on Amazon.

This year of progress across public health, sustainability, technology access, and transportation culminated with the launch of the City Tech Collaborative. On December 14th, we invited partners from industry, government, and our community partners to come celebrate our new team, brand, and mission.

City Tech aims to reinvent cities through collaboration and innovative partnerships. Thank you to all of our collaborators and consultants who have been a crucial part of the beginning of City Tech. This pursuit would not be possible without our City Tech Members , the City of Chicago, and the community partners that anchor our purpose.

This was an exciting year for our new team, but there is more to come in 2018. To follow City Tech’s work, visit our website , follow us on Twitter , or join our new LinkedIN Group.