Year-End ReportHonolulu

Code for America 2012

Honolulu, Hawaii

The Approach

Code for America’s partnership with the City & County of Honolulu was a unique experience for both parties. The City & County of Honolulu’s area of responsibility includes all of the island of Oahu which houses 75% of Hawaii’s population. Honolulu’s culture is also deeply rooted in native Hawaiian history and traditions. This really sets it apart from any city on the mainland.

Although Honolulu is known to be a popular tourist attraction and one of the most beautiful places in the world, Honolulu is still a city with city problems. When the fellows arrived, there was no specific project in mind. During the 5 week residency, the fellows worked out of city hall, conducted over 100 interviews, and hosted as well as attended many events.

City & County of Honolulu’s Population: 953,207

10th largest municipality in the U.S.

On the island of Oahu

Honolulu’s 2012 Fellows: Mick Thompson, Diana Tran, Sheba Najmi

The Projects

Honolulu Answershttp://answers.honolulu.gov

Sometimes it’s really hard to find an answer to a question on a city website. And even once someone finds the content, it might be difficult to understand, incomplete, or not linked to the relevant resources to complete the task. Honolulu Answers puts a simple search interface front and center for the user, allowing them to ask a question about city government much like they would ask a neighbor. The answers are rewritten from the cities website to ensure they are both complete, concise and straightforward. If there are steps needed to take the action, it lists them. If there are online services that can help, it links to them.

Adopt-a-Sirenhttp://sirens.honolulu.gov

There are many things that residents can do to help their city. But sometimes is easy to assume that someone will do it or that someone else will report a problem. The warning sirens across Oahu are very important in the event of a disaster. They are the first line of defense. So it is important that they work properly, and that issues are reported promptly. Because Adopt-a-Airen reused the Adopt-a-Hydrant application from last year’s Boston team, Adopt-a-Siren was able to be launched quickly. This simple application prompts residents for feedback about their nearby sirens on the day of the test.

Art Finderhttp://art.honolulu.gov

The city has a wealth of art in public places. Most people dont where they can go to view these pieces of public art. Most definitely dont know the history behind many of the pieces of art. In Honolulu, which has a very distinct history, this can be very interesting and important. The public art finder was a reuse of an application from last year that allows residents and visitors to find out more about the public art in Honolulu.

Adopt-a-Streamhttp://streams.honolulu.gov

After launching adopt-a-siren and seeing the successful adoption of so many sirens, other departments in the city got excited about extending their adopting programs online. The department of environmental services, identified stream adoption sites and the adopt-a website was updated to support both sirens and streams.

RouteViewhttp://routeview.honolulu.gov

Combining some the existing camera image data from the city with Google maps and traffic data produced a valuable tool for finding a clear route across town. Honolulu can have some of the worst traffic in the country, and routeview can help give driver a better idea of where they should avoid.

Social Media Handbookhttp://social.honolulu.gov Social media can be an effective tool when used well. Nowadays cities are expected to know how to communicate with their citizens and visitors using social media. In some cases this is a new thing for cities to take on and their can benefit from some shared best practices. As the city of Honolulu ramped up their efforts to do training internally this guide was produced to capture some of the highlights for others to use.

data.honolulu.govhttp://data.honolulu.gov

Many of the projects involved getting new dataset released to the public. As more datasets came together there was a need to provided a resource for the community. This new data portal has become the canonical place for the city to post new datasets and provides developers with an API to build applications that use city data.

The Events

Unconferenz — This event in February was a great chance for the fellows and community to mix, talk about new ideas, and find opportunities to work together for the coming year.

Geeks on DaBus — The city did a great job developing the very handy DaBus application, this event focused on getting the message out to the community that this awesome application exists.

Write-a-thon — The Write-a-thon brought the community and the staff of city hall together to make easy to understand answers to questions that citizens commonly ask. By collaborating both the city and the residents gained new perspectives. Their combined efforts are what go into the Honolulu answers website, as simple concise answers to everyday questions.

Data.honolulu.gov — There were several of these events around the launch of the new data portal in order to get the developer community up to speed on the newly released API and get the community to collaborate on new ideas based on public data.

Conclusion

In many ways the contributions of Code for America will live on most in Honolulu through the changes inside and outside of city hall. Although we launched several successful projects, and worked with the city and the community to make sure those can be sustained, the larger changes are in how the city and citizens now have increased avenues of working together. We have made the city data more accessible to the public. This has resulted in an move civically inclined and motivated developer community.

As citizens stand up and take a more active role in working with their city government, there is more understanding on both sides. By connecting with the citizens that are users of the website city staff has been able to add easy to understand explanations of how to interact with city services. As citizens see the vast amount of services the city provides to so many people, they not only appreciate the scale of city government but have been looking to see how they can be a part of the solution. Using applications like adopt-a-siren the city can organize efforts of the community to work together to report issues, and make sure critical infrastructure is in place when needed.

While the applications and the data that we produced and released were certainly important. The lasting impact of citizens that are trying to solve issues in their city, with a city that is receptive to getting input and working together with residents, is the most important outcome.