Civic Innovations

This is a great weekend for civic hacking.

Daylight Savings Time has given us an extra hour, advances in telephony application development have made it dead simple to build text messaging applications and Google has given us the Civic Information API.

With an election on Tuesday, I wanted to build a quick application that demonstrated the ease with which SMS apps can be built and the power of Google’s API.

The address of a polling place is both valuable and succinct – it’s the ideal kind of information to deliver through multiple communication channels. Text messaging (SMS) is a fairly ubiquitous communication channel, and in some cities – like Philadelphia – it’s an important way to engage with citizens that may face barriers to digital access.

The screencast above demonstrates how to use the script I developed using the Google Civic Information API and the Tropo telephony platform.

There are many ways to do this, and there are a large number of text messaging platforms and services to choose from, so if you want to use your extra hour this weekend to help people find their polling location pick the one you like best and get cracking.

It’s never been easier to build useful communication and messaging apps – in fact it’s getting easier every day. And with the richness of information available through APIs like Google’s Civic Information API, it’s never been easier to build an app that will help people get to their polling location.

Election day is just around the corner. Use your extra hour this weekend wisely…