Commanding Chaos for Coworking, Open Source and Creative Communities

codeforamerica

Why Is It So Hard to Make a Website for the Government?

Wed, 11/23/2016 - 14:05 -- rprice

The Code for America team’s plan had always been to leave the scarier stuff off the website — questions like, “Have you ever traded food stamps for explosives?” or “Have you ever committed a felony?” Those questions could be answered during the live interview. The key was to settle on how much information to ask for at the start. Require too much, and users would be put off and give up; too little, and the eligibility workers, who preferred more details rather than fewer, would complain. In the end, the team settled on a compromise.

government
codeforamerica
sanfransisco

Is Coding the New Literacy? | Mother Jones

Tue, 06/24/2014 - 11:05 -- rprice

the greatest contribution the young programmers bring isn't the software they write. It's the way they think. It's a principle called "computational thinking," and knowing all of the Java syntax in the world won't help if you can't think of good ways to apply it. Unfortunately, the way computer science is currently taught in high school tends to throw students into the programming deep end, reinforcing the notion that code is just for coders, not artists or doctors or librarians.

education
codeforamerica
battideas

What Data Visualization Can and Can't Tell Us About Pennsylvania's Voter ID Law | TechPresident

Thu, 08/09/2012 - 13:55 -- rprice

"It appears that Pennsylvania's new strict photo ID requirement may be in effect a racially discriminatory voting procedure," Tamara Manik-Perlman, Azavea's spacial data analyst, wrote in a recently published blog post.

But she admitted that the findings are limited in scope because the analysis is confined to the city of Philadelphia, the only geographic area for which Azavea has all the relevant datasets.

voting
battideas
codeforamerica
data_science
data
philly
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