Participants in the International Open Data Hackathon at the World Bank on February 23.

In an auditorium at the World Bank on a Saturday in late February, groups of computer hackers huddled over their computers, intently pouring through thousands of lines of code and massive amounts of raw data.

No, they weren’t launching a denial of service attack against a government agency or engaging in industrial espionage, but rather putting their collective coding abilities to use for the greater good as part of the International Open Data Hackathon. At similar events across the globe, developers and coders—known more simply, though not pejoratively, as “hackers”—identified problems and used their computer know-how and stacks of open data to devise clever solutions.

At one table, a group worked to classify and map every structure in earthquake-prone Kathmandu. The project, led by local mapping firm MapBox, could eventually enable emergency workers to more effectively respond the next time the ground shakes in the Nepalese capital. At another table, a group waded through hundreds of congressional bills, attempting to find a way to better allow regular citizens to track the progress and history of any legislative measure.

A few tables away, the concerns were a little closer to home. Brian Pate, a Ward 6 ANC commissioner, sought recruits for a project that would allow him to more easily map blighted and vacant properties in his neighborhood. Justin Grimes, a Ph.D. student at the University of Maryland, asked for help in creating a visual representation of how and where D.C. spends its money. Andrew Salzberg planned to create a simpler and more easily navigable map of the city’s zoning code and land uses, and Greg Bloom tried to find a way to improve 211, an free phone service that’s supposed to offer social service referrals to residents in need. (A full summary of the event is available here.)

While individuals and organizations in D.C. and around the world have pushed governments to make more data open and free to the public as a means to promote transparency and creative problem-solving, the movement has only recently started tackling hyperlocal problems. Code for D.C., an off-shoot of Code for America, laid down roots last October, while the Sunlight Foundation announced in January that it would start focusing its efforts on local government transparency—including in D.C. (The foundation has a new tool, Scout, which allows anyone to track the progress of bills on any issue in any state capitol.)

The goal, advocates say, is simple: to use the reams of data put out by D.C. government agencies to create tools that allow residents to become better-informed consumers and citizens.

For Sandra Moscoso, a Ward 6 resident and mother to two school-aged children, nowhere is the need for open and easily accessible data more evident than in education. D.C. families face a panoply of school choices: they can opt for a neighborhood school, apply for out-of-boundary placement or try for any of the city’s high-performing charter schools. The process of choosing the right school—and getting their children in—has become competitive and cutthroat enough that there’s even a consultant that dedicates her time exclusively to helping parents navigate their options.

Moscoso, who works on open-data initiatives for the World Bank, thinks that more open data can make this process easier. From her own experience advocating for Ward 6 middle schools in 2009, she says that too much information about local public schools is kept in separate silos and out of public view. Worse yet, when information is made available, it’s often too generic to be of much use and doesn’t allow parents to easily compare public against charter schools.

In the lead-up to the hackathon, Moscoso penned a letter to Mayor Vince Gray requesting that the Office of the State Superintendent of Education, which is supposed to serve as a clearinghouse of information for both public and charter schools, make public reams of data on everything from graduation rates to where students who enter the out-of-boundary lottery end up going to school. With the data, she said, hackers could create a usable database that might allow parents to start disentangling the complicated process of choosing a school for their kids.

“I think it’s important that we, as parents, have equal access to information that is collected about our children, our families, and the children and families of the children we will share this public school experience with. It will help us to better advocate for our children, our schools, and the educators we trust our children with every day. We may not want to be in the weeds every day around every decision made, but it’s our right to have answers to questions on hand, without the need of enlisting the help of a lawyer,” she said. (Yesterday, on Greater Greater Education, Moscoso further explained how open data could help parents make better school choices.)

OSSE didn’t only release the data, it also sent a data analyst along to the hackathon to help Moscoso and other local hackers start to make sense of it. It didn’t only happen because Moscoso was persuasive, though; Councilmember David Grosso (I-At Large), who sits on the D.C. Council’s Education Committee, penned a letter to State Superintendent Hosanna Mahaley to ensure that the data were made available.

“I believe that if we’re going to ask the community to be engaged in the government the way we want them to be, we have to make it possible for them to engage. If you don’t put information out there in a usable format, then what you’re doing it you’re stymieing all that ability for people to be engaged,” Grosso said in an interview, adding that he would continue to push for more school data to be made available to the public.

Open data advocates admit that D.C. has already made headway in making data available. The Office of the Chief Technology Officer maintains an open portal where 500 data sets from city agencies are available. The District’s open-data efforts were recognized by the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in 2009, and by theSunlight Foundation in 2012. Salzberg, who spent his time at the hackathon working on a new zoning map, said that the D.C. Office of Planning does a good job in making geospatial data available for bulk download.

Still, open-data advocates admit that some of the data that D.C. makes available are out of date, and the quality of data can differ from agency to agency. While Capital Bikeshare releases trip information that’s easy to understand, Metro makes it more complicated. (Metro isn’t controlled by D.C., of course.) The Metropolitan Police Department has recently had problems providing updated data—it has also struggled internally and with a contractor to revive the crime mapping tool it used to have—and school-related data are often hard to find in a single place.

Rob Mancini, D.C.’s chief technology officer, said in an interview that his office is working on improving the data that are available to the public, notably with a new online data catalog that he expects to be unveiled soon.

“This updated data catalog will possess a new look and feel, which is more user-friendly and makes government operational data even more easily accessed by the public,” he wrote in an email. “The updated application will provide data visualizations in the form of charts and graphs for the data catalog’s most popular datasets and will allow users to download these charts as well as embed them within their own applications and blogs. Additionally, OCTO is working with some District agencies to not only provide business intelligence in the form of dashboard applications and reports, but to also make agency-specific data and information available to the public via OCTO’s development of public-facing dashboards.”

Grosso said he plans on keeping on top of open-data efforts, and plans on pushing city officials to keep putting data out there for the public to analyze.

“I am shocked every time someone gives me a reason why we wouldn’t share data with anyone who would want to see it,” he said. “This is government information that we are using to make decisions. If you give that to the public, what’s the worst that can happen? I can’t imagine something horrible. All I can imagine is people wanting to give us good ideas.”

Those good ideas were on display at the day-long hackathon. By the end of the event, hackers unveiled their (somewhat) finished projects: Grimes created a basic visualization of the D.C. budget, Salzberg had mapped population density across the city and Moscoso was able to compare schools based on accountability index scores and walkability scores. One of the local hackers was even able to map out every single street tree in D.C. by type; American elms are found along the historic avenues, while maples are found on normal city streets.

Pate wasn’t able to find anyone to help him with his project, but he still thinks that there is value in being able to use data to more easily identify vacant and blighted properties in around town. Citing a New Orleans model, he said that open data could offer residents better information on blighted or vacant properties and even allow government agencies to more easily identify those properties that are illegally taking advantage of tax breaks.

This, said Pate, could be the true value of open data—engaged citizens helping government do the work its supposed to, and many times doing it better.

“There is a legion of folks out there (literally a ‘coder brigade’) ready to help the city tackle problems and better engage residents,” Pate wrote in an email. “In an era of fiscal cliffs and sequestration, free labor is not to be scoffed at! Seriously, the process of sharing open data and collaborating with people who want to use if for civic purposes is in and of itself a positive action that yields greater transparency, efficiency and accountability. So keep it coming.”

Mancini agrees: “Open data informs and empowers residents, and reinforces the idea of government working for the people,” he said “It makes data transparent and the success or failure of government operations available for all to see. The data presented via the data catalog and TrackDC is in its rawest form, and tells the full story; data doesn’t lie. While the possibility of misinterpretation of some data exists, the data itself is the direct result of government operations and forces government to be both responsive and accountable.”