Twice a month, an unlikely group of activists get together to brainstorm ways to improve Princeton. But rather than staging demonstrations or distributing pamphlets and petitions, the members of this group sit at laptops poring over lines of computer code or conducting research. For the hackers and technology enthusiasts of Code for Princeton, technology is the biggest tool for change.
Code for Princeton is a group of programmers and community members who work with the government to develop solutions to problems through the use of technology. They conduct research on what the people of Princeton need, and then set out to create an app, website or other project that can help remedy their issues. The group started with a hackathon event back in June—the first one ever hosted in Princeton—and has been growing ever since.
Code for Princeton’s Captain Claire Ralph, 31, worked closely with Mayor Liz Lempert to plan the hackathon. Ralph has a masters degree in chemistry, and taught herself computer programming through her work in the scientific field.
She moved here when her husband got a job with Princeton University, and she wanted become involved with her new community. The hackathon, and later Code for Princeton, provided her with the perfect outlet to do so while also honing her computer science skills.
“Looking more into civic hacking, I just really fell in love with the idea for the Code for America model,” Ralph said.
Code for Princeton is a brigade of Code for America, an organization that builds open source technology in an effort to make government services easier to use. According to their website, they believe the government can more efficiently work with people in the 21st century through the use of technology.
Ralph wanted to bring that model to Princeton, and the mayor was on board.
“It’s something I’ve tried to embrace—looking at ways for us to do things more efficiently, more effectively and to be more innovative and creative,” Lempert said. “I think that put us on the map of municipalities that are willing to take risks and to try out new ideas.”
Since the hackathon, Code for Princeton and the local government have formed a symbiotic relationship. The government provides information to the group, who then take the information and build a website or app that works to solve residents’ problems.
One of their upcoming projects that demonstrates this relationship is an election results app. The app will gather voting information on election day and put it into a visual context.
The app will display and break down the votes on a district-by-district basis, and even show how the town voted overall in the different Princeton elections.
“We’re working on an elections app that will help the municipality post the unofficial election results on their website as well as provide data visualization of results from the past 10 years, see district-by-district who voted for who and that kind of thing,” Ralph said.
The goal of the election app is to present complicated data in a way that people can easily understand, which Lempert said goes along with Princeton’s ultimate goal of being more open and transparent.
“It’s not just throwing out information because we can post it, say, in an Excel spreadsheet,” the mayor said. “Most residents are not going to have the time to pore through that and so it can’t just be that. We have to think about how to provide information in a way that’s going to be easy for residents to use.”
Gathering data, organizing it and presenting it in a manageable manner is no simple task, but Code for Princeton seems up to the challenge. Ralph said the group has anywhere from 10 to 30 members attend each meeting.
“I think our youngest person who’s been involved has been 8 years old, and we have people probably in their 80s coming,” she said.
Ralph said people join Code for Princeton for a variety of different reasons—from wanting to show off their coding skills to people with no coding experience who want to use this as a place to learn—but everyone works toward the common goal of building a tool to benefit their community.
While having programmers build the websites and apps is obviously a very big part of the process, noncoders are just as key to the overall success of the projects.
“Claire’s been really creative in thinking about how to make this a communitywide effort, in that you don’t necessary have to be a computer programmer to engage,” Lempert said.
The mayor said before the hackathon, the group met in the public library to generate ideas about what people would like to see, and the majority of those in attendance were not programmers—just citizens who wanted to improve their town.
“You don’t have to be a programmer to recognize what you’d like to see and what problems you think could be made better through technology or through presenting the information that’s out there in an easier to use format,” she said.
Hema Waghray is a member of Code for Princeton, and joined to do user research to find what the community needs. The 44-year-old sociologist said technology is a big problem solver, but before it can fix a problem, people have to understand just what the issue is. “[Technology] has to solve a problem, and that’s where my user research comes up,” Waghray said. “It came out of user need.”
Code for Princeton is currently working on various projects that were all created through researching the needs and problems in the community. The brigade is working with the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commision to create a cycling app that users’ could turn on to track their paths when riding their bikes.
All personal data would be stripped away before the riders’ routes would be shared with the planning commision. Ralph said that would allow officials to creater better cycling routes and do better urban planning. One such app, CyclePhilly, has been used successfully in Philadelphia.
They are also working on a carpool app that would allow people with similar commutes to connect with one another. Users would be able to message people until they found a person or group they’d want to commute with.
Along with solving commuting problems, Code for Princeton is also trying to simplify the process of applying for affordable housing. Ralph said there are a few different programs for affordable housing in the area, and applying for it can be a confusing process. To lessen the burden on those applying, they are creating a system that will allow people to make sure all their applications are complete and give them all of the information they need in one place.
While all of the apps and projects that come from Code for America brigades are aimed to benefit the community, it’s not unusual for the local government to refuse to work with the groups, or not disclose information. Ralph said Code for Princeton has been lucky that the municipal government has been so willing to work with them.
“A lot of other brigades have run into a hard time talking to the local government. But all of the people in our local government have been really open,” she said. “I don’t think we could be doing as well as we’ve been doing if it wasn’t for that.”
For Lempert, even if a project doesn’t end up coming to fruition, the simple act of getting more people involved in brainstorming ways to help the community is beneficial to everyone.
“Just the process by itself of asking questions—trying out new ideas—is really useful for everybody in government, and it’s great to be able to engage more people,” she said.
More about Code for Princeton is online at codeforprinceton.org.
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