Civic Innovation Lab Los Angeles

Title: The Civic Innovation Lab Los Angeles

Status: Multi-year initiative

Type of Project: Lab/Accelerator

My Role: Founding Partner, Experience Designer & Facilitator

Project Description: Civic Innovation Lab exists to engage the ingenuity of citizens to develop urban solutions through the use of open data, local government support, and a facilitated design process.

• Prototype new ways citizens can work productively with government and engage a community of designers, developers, nonprofit leaders, artists, activists, data scientists, policy makers, academics, and entrepreneurs to tackle city-wide challenges such as housing, education, small businesses, neighborhood stabilization, and transportation;
• Use Open Data to create solutions that further our local economy and better our communities;
• Demonstrate a stakeholder engagement process of designing with and for end users;
• Activate and connect the civic tech community to experts in government and policy issues to create lasting, impactful solutions.

Partners: Hub LA, The City of LA, Microsoft, Learn Do Share @Columbia University 

Official site: Civicinnovationlab.la

Stats: In a recent innovation session called #DroughtHack, more than 600 designers, data scientists, technologists and others came together to work on issues of water conservation, transportation and community. A partnership of 15 government, nonprofit and community organizations hosted, judged and awarded prizes.

 

 

Part of the design included a set of data cards to help citizens and government develop effective solutions. Click the following image to view a set of the cards as a pdf.

 

What people are saying

There is a wave of new innovation at the local level of government, and much of it is coming not from government but from citizens. This is happening through a rapidly proliferating ecosystem of civic innovation labs, platforms that connect citizens with each other and with government to share ideas, define community problems and find solutions…  The Los Angeles Civic Innovation Lab is one of many in the country focused on making cities work.

 

– Digital Communities Magazine

 

Civic Innovation Lab LA named one of 20 inspiring social innovation lab examples worldwide

 

– Crisscrossed