Smart Cameras Blog

From Smart Mobs:

The City of Chicago now has a free browsable database of crimes reported in Chicago. With RSS feeds for every policy beat and every city block! It even uses Google as a mapping interface.

Wow!

This is a great example of how IT can be enabling for citizens while serving to increase transparency of the government. However, note that while the data comes from the Chicago police, the web page is run by an individual, Adrian Holovaty, and the information he uses is there because of the Citizen ICAM. Essentially this data arose out of a project for the police officers, which they later made publicly accessible.

rshah Chicago