“the future of a strong, open, and secure internet is the future of our democratic society”
Noel Hidalgo is the Executive Director of BetaNYC, one of the nation’s largest civic organizations dedicated to improving lives in New York through civic design, technology, and open data. Among its initiatives, BetaNYC known for the People’s Roadmap to a Digital New York City. Developed through a participatory listening tour in partnership with the City, this document engaged over 500 New Yorkers in its design, shaping BetaNYC’s community values. It has also led to new proposed legislation, laws, and public-private partnerships that model open data practices in the digital era. A bedrock of NYC’s Civic Tech community, Noel fights for greater transparency, meaningful civic engagement, and better open data laws by organizing communities to leverage public data for their own empowerment.
Tell us about your work.
BetaNYC started as a meet-up and evolved into an community organization with over 5,000 members. We help evolve open data, civic design, and technology in government operations. We do this through 250 annual community events that include hack nights, theme-based salons, capacity-building work, and free, public, open-data trainings. For example, we work closely with the Manhattan Borough President and Community Boards throughout NYC to build curricula that effectively help New Yorkers utilize open data. We also partner with local public universities to develop Civic Innovation Labs, a service corps that trains local university students to leverage open data. Most recently, we helped to establish a CTO role in all community boards to promote the use of open data and to draw more designers, technologists, and data scientists to community boards. And once a year we host BetaNYC’s School of Data Conference, which kicks off the City’s annual weeklong open data celebration. It’s really important these two things happen together: it’s not enough to just release data – New Yorkers also need tools and opportunities to use this data for personal and professional empowerment.
Looking ahead, BetaNYC can address a broader array of issues that affect internet health. For example, in the latest iteration of the People’s Roadmap to a Digital New York, which emerged through a year of active listening and engagement with New Yorkers from all backgrounds, we outlined four universal digital freedoms: to connect, to learn, to innovate, and to collaborate. The Roadmap has brought 14 ideas into legislation, nine signed into law, and another nine have become public-private partnerships – from a digital, open source platform to track all FOIA requests to expansion of the Mayor’s Office of Data Analytics, for example.
What are you are proud of?
I’ve worked on a number of open government and civic tech initiatives, but the one I am most proud of is working with New York’s City Council to pass the City’s first Open Data Law. One of the strongest open data laws in the country, it has helped advance open data through successive legislation. Since its passage, the City has released over 2,000 data sets. This work was possible through Beta NYC and a coalition of good government groups networked together as the NYC transparency working group, spearheaded by Reinvent Albany.
And here’s why open data is so important in real terms – right now, NYC is facing a dramatic affordable housing crisis. Because of NYC’s Open Data Law, tenant and affordable housing advocacy organizations were able to leverage access to previously unavailable data to analyze tax information, property, construction permits, building violations, and 311 service requests. This directly led to the creation of things like Association for Neighborhood & Housing Development's Displacement Alert Map and JustFix's Who Owns What Tool. Using this information, community organizations are doing critical work going door-to-door and protecting the limited amount of affordable housing left in the city.
What challenges persist to having better open data practices – locally and beyond?
One problem is that government procurement is an extremely difficult and lengthy process, so we need to make sure that all of the city leaders that influence technology see the value and impact of open data programs, and continue to invest in the growth of this movement.
How can NYC be an active partner in this work?
NYC has many resources that can enhance our impacts. For example, we would love to partner with the City’s public libraries to hold public programming that empowers New Yorkers to utilize open data to improve their communities. The City is also doing more to build tools through open frameworks and open source. Through open technology practices, New Yorkers can provide open feedback and directly address underlying problems inherent in technology creation.
Final Word
Recently, a ballot proposal to establish a civic engagement commission was passed. Their mission includes expanding language access at polling sites, developing a more significant city-wide participatory budgeting program (PBP), and partnering with community organizations in their civic engagement efforts. An office like this can champion public engagement practices, listen at scale, and help address issues in a concrete way. A small coalition has already started to emerge to shape technical support for community boards, including ways to better access and use open data, CRM databases, and digital and civic engage practices more broadly. The future of a strong, open, and secure internet is really the future of our democratic society.