Category: Win

Statement from 7 Leading Civic and Journalism Groups on Legislature’s Repeal of Police Secrecy Law 50-a and Modification of FOIL

Statement on Legislature’s Repeal of Police Secrecy Law 50-a and Modification of FOIL Our groups thank Assemblymember Danny O’Donnell and Jamaal Bailey, Speaker Carl Heastie, Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, and the Assembly and State Senate for passing S8496/A10611. Our groups strongly support this bill and ask Governor Cuomo to sign it immediately, without modification or chapter […]

Making History – The First Hackathon Inside the historic New York City Hall 

In partnership with the Department of Education’s Computer Science for All and NYC Council Speaker Corey Johnson, and Technology Committee Chair Council Member Peter Koo, BetaNYC co-hosted 130 students and 30 teachers in the City’s historic Council Chambers for the finale of the second annual Hack League. These Twenty-eight teams, from all five boroughs, used municipal open data and media literacy skills to identify community concerns, and computer science concepts to build prototypes to address the final challenge — identifying internal and external metrics, potential stakeholders, and extending their prototypes.

a HUGE win for NYC’s legislative data.

For the last four years, we have been working with various City Council members to get the City’s “source code” online — we’re talking about the City’s charter, laws, rules, and daily record. The City’s charter is equivalent of the city’s constitution. According to the City’s law department, “the charter is the document that defines […]

NYC Planning Data Jam Recap

Event Summary On May 8th, fifty urban planners, data scientists, and civic hackers came together for the Department of City Planning’s first data jam! For the day, participants improved NYC’s most comprehensive dataset of facilities. This facilities database is produced by the NYC Department of City Planning and is used to shape NYC’s neighborhoods. It […]

Video: Represent NYC: Probing Open Data to Solve NYC’s Problems

For the last two years, BetaNYC has partnered with Manhattan Borough President Gale A. Brewer to create the Civic Innovation Fellowship. This program has created the City’s first open data and civic technology curriculum, performed a gap analysis on Manhattan Community Board’s capacity to use civic technology, and is currently producing three new tools to […]

Give feedback on NYC’s proposed geospatial #opendata standards

Since 2013, members of BetaNYC have advocated for the City’s open data to conform to open standards. Through our work trying to scrape the City Record, we unearthed headaches trying to define what is where. In a city as complex as the one beneath our feet, there are at least three ways to describe that location. Last […]