NDoCH - Statewide Civic Hacking Challenge
Calling all designers, developers, and data mashers!
The National Day of Civic Hacking is rapidly approaching! If you haven’t heard of #NDoCH, it’s a yearly hackathon taking place in cities across the United States using technology for good. This year’s day of action will take place on June 6th, and today we’re excited to announce the first statewide challenge in Florida’s history and invite you to help us #hackforchange.
In an effort to make the state’s vendor payment data more easily digestible and meaningful to taxpayers and citizens, in collaboration with our CFO Jeff Atwater, six years (2009-2014) of vendor payment data will now be made available for download. With this data, we’re asking technologists, designers, data visualizers, and anyone interested in exploring for potential insights to go forth and query. Play with the data and make something interesting or informative, creativity is encouraged.
What can you do with this data?
Use tools like fusion tables, D3.js, tableau, plotly, or another open source tool to create an interactive visualization of payments over time. Build an app to help show which vendors contract with state agencies, what type of work is being done, or which areas where state business concentrates. Make an API so other dev can quickly and easily use this data in future projects. Check out guides and tutorials online, and challenge yourself to create something in 24 hours.
This is a pivotal step in our continued effort in promoting transparency in government through opening data for public use. This statewide challenge is sure to spur further dialogue and intrigue into the benefits of opening data throughout our state.
If you can’t find a National Day of Civic Hacking event happening near you, we invite you to host your own event and hack for change to a city near you. Review the available organizing resources to guide you along and reach out if you have any questions or concerns.
Let us know if you’re in to help us #hackforchange, and we’ll see you on June 6th!
Thanks-
Rebekah Monson and your friends at Code for Miami
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About the Florida Vendor Payments data challenge
Proposed Statewide FLDFS Challenge: Statewide Challenge to make the state’s vendor payment data more easily digestible and meaningful to taxpayers and citizens of Florida by creating an interactive and/or visual tool of this data.
About the data:
Provides information about state disbursements to vendors/payees
Data is posted as part of Transparency Florida: http://www.myfloridacfo.com/Transparency/
(data can be found under “State Payments” button on Transparency Florida main page)
Main webpage for Vendor Payment data: http://flair.myfloridacfo.com/dispub2/cvphsrch.htm
Searchable Database of these data available at: http://flair.dbf.state.fl.us/dispub2/newvpymt4.shtml
BULK DOWNLOAD:
Bulk downloads of State Vendor Payments data available online for 6 state Fiscal Years (Fiscal Years 2009 – 2014): http://www.myfloridacfo.com/transparency/vendorpayments.aspx
What can be illustrated with this data?
Who we (the State of Florida) pay, for what, and how much
You can Search vendor payments data by:
- Warrant #/ Invoice #
- Date Range/ Fiscal Year
- Object Code Classification(s)
- Vendor Name/ Number/ Type
- Minority Classification(s)
- Paying State Agency(s)
- Amount
- Location (address/ phone area code)