open-austin/project-ideas

Census 2020 Microsite

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Screen Shot 2019-10-21 at 11 57 04 PM

What problem are you trying to solve?

The census only happens once every 10 years. The accuracy of the count effects newly drawn election maps and the amount of federal funding that Travis County receives. How might we utilize web design and open data to support a Census 2020 "Complete Count" campaign?

Phase 1 - Microsite

Census 2020 is only a couple months away and we don't have much time. We've been recruited to stand up a very basic campaign microsite to educate and coordinate efforts to get everyone in Austin & Travis County counted.

Phase 2 - Data Viz

Through 2020, teams of Census block captains will partner with civic institutions and community organizations to get people counted. Some communities are known to be statistically undercounted. These census campaigners could use data to target their efforts using data made available by the Census. We could design an algorithm that calculates how much a neighborhood or census block is "at risk" of being undercounted based on demographics, displacement trends, and other open data.

Who will benefit (directly and indirectly) from your project?

  • Travis County Census Coordinator, John Lawler
  • City of Austin Public Information Office, Tara Olsen
  • Community orgs supporting the Census 2020 count effort
  • Residents of Austin & Travis County

What other resources/tools are currently serving the same need? How does your project set itself apart?

Where can we find any research/data available/articles?

What help do you need now?

  • Web design
  • Content writing/editing
  • Digital campaign content
  • Static site generator/JAM Stack web development

What are the next steps (validation, research, coding, design)?

  • prototype of information hierarchy (content)
  • content editing UX (tech architecture)
  • custom theme (web design)

How can we contact you outside of Github(list social media or places you're present)?

Open Austin Slack
slack.open-austin.org


Project management

Checklist for NEW ideas 👶

Hey, you're official! You're now part of the growing civic hacking community in Austin. Here's a few things to get started (a couple you've probably already done).

  • Create this idea issue
  • Flesh out the who, where, and what questions above
  • Start the conversation about this idea on Slack Replace this link to the #general channel with your project's preferred channel.

Checklist for ACTIVE projects 🔥

Let's get this project started! When this idea starts taking off, the Projects Core Team will start helping this project's lead(s) out with project management and connecting you to resources you may need. To get there, please complete and check off the following:

  • Post an update at least once a month to this issue. Use BASEDEF for ideas, but it's ok even if your update is just "nothing new happened this month" or "we saw a small increase in traffic to our app this month". If there's no activity for two months, that's no problem, life happens. We'll just label this as backlog so others know you'll get back to it when you have the time. If nobody hears from you at all in more than two months, we may mark it as abandoned so that others can pick up this idea and run with it.
  • Take 30 minutes to complete Open Leadership 101
  • Create a GitHub repository. Ask for help setting up permissions if you want your repository to be within the Open Austin Github organization.
  • Create a README file in your project repository. This file should help newcomers understand what your project is, why it's important, and kinds of help you're looking for.
  • Create issues to describe each task that you plan to do or need help with and how a contributor can get started on that task. You might start and stop a lot, so consider issues as your to-do list.
  • Create a team for your core contributors
    • This will make it easier for you to manage your github repo access. People on a team have the same level of access. Admin access will allow your trusted contributors to make changes as needed.
    • You can remove and add people to your team as needed.
    • View some of our teams: https://github.com/orgs/open-austin/teams
    • Note: You can also allow collaborators outside of your team and give them more limited access.
  • Create a user group in Slack so you can "@" your core contributors all at once, without bothering other people who use the Slack channel. You'll need permission from a Slack admin, so just mention @Leadership on Slack to get this set up.
  • Create a Google Drive, Dropbox, or other cloud storage to share larger files. Github and Data.World are good for code and data, respectively, especially when you need version control. But they're not good for very large files, documentation, articles, etc. A cloud storage option will allow you to easily share, create, and collaborate on documents with your team and help organize ideas and thoughts.
    • Doing this early on can help your team stay organized and to onboard new contributors who wouldn't have access to files you all have shared over email.

Checklist for FEATURED Projects 🎉

To have your project FEATURED on Open-Austin.org, complete the following documentation. In past projects, well-documented featured projects have more contributions than other projects.

If you get stuck at any point, feel free to reach out to the leadership team on Slack by adding @Leadership to your message. We're here to help you make real changes to our city.