Introduction
Despite the national financial crisis which has decimated the economy of every major city in the United States, the economy of Washington D.C. remained largely undisturbed. The economic data from last year suggested that the average personal income in Washington, D.C. grew by 2.7% and housing sales are still strong, largely because of an influx of young people moving to D.C. for their new jobs. These new Washingtonians come from all over the nation, and are generally ignorant about living in D.C. These relatively wealthy young people want to move to a neighborhood that adequately suits their needs. However, most of them get frustrated to find that data they are looking for is difficult to find, and are in raw data form that is very hard to understand.
Current Situation
The Government of Washington, D.C. is very open, and releases the city's statistics to the public every year. However, most of the data is in raw form and their website is very hard to navigate.
Opportunity Statement
Our team has decided to convert the statistics from just numbers into a tangible form. Our information is stored in the form of infographics, maps., and pictures so that anyone can freely and conveniently access much data about the neighborhoods in D.C.
How It Works
Our product is in the form of live Web app, and is designed in a way that young people can easily navigate and request information they need. For example, one of the most frustrating problems that young couples face is to find a safe, great neighborhood where they can send their children to well-performing schools. Currently, acquiring such information requires a great amount of investment in time and effort, as information is scattered around the Web. With our Web app, the user can search schools by many criteria, including but not limited to professional ratings, availability of AP/IB programs, standardization exam (CAS) scores, change in CAS scores in recent years, magnet programs, and Title I.
Our product not only has information about school, but also median household income, median housing price, crime rates, and average commute time. They are all synced by wards (comparable to counties in states) in Washington, D.C. that they can easily find a neighborhood that is most suitable to their various needs.
Scalability
One of the advantages of our product is that it was built from scratch, which means control over the application and data cannot be manipulated or influenced by third-party developers and government entities. Furthermore, since it does not depend any tools, its scalability is infinite, and can be expanded to other cities and states not just in the United States but also other nations in the world. Plus, more fields and criteria can be freely added upon the popular demand.
Support
Our product has very minimal maintenance requirement. It will be automatically data-mining information from the official statistics found in U.S. Census Bureau, and Washington D.C. Census Bureau reports, but also unofficial data written by non-government organizations including the Washington Post, Neighborhood Info D.C., Great Schools.org. Since most information is stored in text-based form and pulls up information from other sources as needed, it will require very little storage space requirement, so that it can be supported by any organization, even a start-up non-profit organization.
Closing
A code-a-thon in the theme of openness and transparency is something that had never been tried before. We are grateful to for this opportunity to develop a tangible application that can actually impact and improve the lives of the citizens through open and easy access to data. The users will be able to trust and use this application without much doubt on integrity of the data, since the data is automatically verified by non-profit organizations.
With our gratitude,
The University of Maryland Students