Code for America aims to inspire people to act by connecting them to their government and political process through free apps developed on open government data.

In 2016, I volunteered for Code for America's San Diego Brigade. I was the project lead for two projects; one on campaign funding disclosure and one on city-wide notifications from Development Services.

Open Disclosure

Campaign funding is a mess. There are some nice laws forcing finances related to candidates and referendums to be reported publicly... but no automated ways to connect the groups accepting contributions directly with candidates. So, lots of money remains disconnected.

I worked with the San Diego, San Francisco and Oakland Code for America brigades to make these connections for city (and hopefully county) elections in our cities. Our "Open Disclosure" project is open source and extensible to any city in California.

Open DSD

Wouldn't it be great if you could sign up for email or text alerts for whenever something big is happening in your area? There's an app for that--Citygram allows you to sign up for city-related notifications for any location in your city.

I (and others at OpenSanDiego) are working with San Diego's Development Services office to connect their alerts on code violations and permit approvals to Citygram.