From Coding To Tangible Results: FEMA’s First Open Data Town Hall

I’ve been fortunate enough to attend a few “hackathons” and “data jams”, both inside and outside of the government space.  These events often have a simple premise: bring together tech experts from different disciplines and organizations so they can create cool, useful solutions or products.  The challenge at these gatherings isn’t coming up with great ideas – the tough task is transforming big ideas into tangible to-do lists and, ultimately, a useful product.

The approach to FEMA’s first-ever Data Town Hall was refreshing because our OpenFEMA team harked just as much about project management and results as they did about getting creative when using FEMA’s data. The attendees were asked to break into five challenge tracks: GIS, Disaster Assistance Assessment Dashboard, Accessibility, API and Fire Viz; each with a specific project and private sector team lead.  Then experts from the tech sector, government, and non-profits worked to “move the ball forward”.

The projects were all at different stages of development – some were new ideas gathering requirements, others built upon progress from the White House Safety Datapalooza, last year’s National Civic Day of Hacking, or individual effort by emergency management stakeholders.