We gathered data about Chicago lobbyists as well as a master dataset with links for each of the Chicago hackathon projects. While preparing for the hackathon, we imported key datasets from the City of Chicago portal and other sources. We wouldn’t be able to share our findings or process alongside the data, making it more difficult for others to benefit from our analysis.
#Uchicago slack download download#
That meant we’d have to download each dataset (breaking the provenance chain), and create new files from them. Client industries were classified haphazardly, column definitions weren’t always clear, and tracing lobbyists to legislators would require joining multiple files. It (almost) sounded like the work was already done!īut, as we explored the data, it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows. A quick search yielded a number of relevant datasets, including a list of all registered lobbyists since 2012 and their political contributions. We started with the City of Chicago’s open data portal. So, we set out to answer this question: How does money make its way from a business or special interest into the hands of Chicago’s elected officials? Step 1: Get the data We considered the possibilities – what if we could link individual contributions to an alderman’s voting records? Could we track which special interests were influencing votes, understand what, when, and how much lobbyists were paying caucuses, and find a way to to put it all out in the open? That would be pretty rad. “We could link alder-people by caucus or other ties, see their connections on the graph through politics and through lobbyist connections…maybe something in Shiny app form that people can play with… a network igraph would be pretty rad,” she mused on the #city-chicago Slack channel. It all started with an idea Stephanie floated before the hackathon: Here’s what our group did in less than 24 hours together, and all the data you need to dig in yourself. We worked on dozens of civic projects, leveled up our data skills, and ate our weight in pizza (or, at least we did in Chicago).
Last weekend, hundreds of volunteers met up in major cities across the country (and remotely) to participate in the first D4D hackathon. D4D uses data.world, the social network for data people, to discover and explore data while collaborating on data projects. So, how does an interested citizen stay informed about their local representatives? It seems impossible to keep track of legitimate political contributions, let alone the shady ones.īut, what if you could trace the money, based on publicly available data? Enter Data for Democracy and data.world.įor the uninitiated, Data for Democracy is a group of 1,300 self-organized volunteers who work with data in order to improve the global community.
Pretty stiff competition to get into the Chicago Hall of Shame. Those are the charges filed against Willie Cochran, a Chicago alderman accused of stealing “at least $30,000 from a charitable fund for poor constituents.” Cochran is the latest in a long line of Chicago officials indicted for corruption charges-over 1,000 since 1973. Read on to see how we made it! Bribery, extortion, and wire fraud. A collaboration between Data for Democracy and data.world Our final visualization.