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How Can Tech Power Community Development?

By Carl Vogel on Friday, July 16, 2010

The world of community development connects only sporadically with the world of information technology.

Faced with countless urgent demands, working in neighborhoods that typically have few technology resources, shackled by budget constraints, community organizations and nonprofit partners don’t often have the time or money to bring in anything beyond the most basic IT support.

And the tech world, focused on e-commerce and the endless next big thing, hasn’t had a consistent interest in low- and moderate-income communities.

That doesn’t have to be the case, however. At a session at a recent information technology conference in Chicago, a panel of presenters offered a clinic to interested techies on how to get involved with local community issues.

It was quickly apparent that community development IT can be a lot more than simply a sharp website for the local community development corporation.

“This is an opportunity to work with people who are at a job where every single day they’re in a neighborhood making change. It’s an incredibly exciting opportunity,” said Justin Massa, the data services project director at Metro Chicago Information Center.

Massa was one of the three presenters of the workshop, “Civic Hacking,” along with Rishi Desai, the program manager for Humboldt Park’s Smart Communities program (with Bickerdike Redevelopment Corp.), and Demond Drummer, a technology advocate who has extensive experience in community organizing.

The hour-long session was part of “DrupalCamp Chicago 2010,” held June 26-27 at the University of Chicago, open to anyone interested in the open source content management system called Drupal.

The two dozen participants in the room for “Civic Hacking” were split between those who wanted to find a way to get involved and those who were already grappling with how to best bridge the gap between communities and technology.

Complex Issues, Many Solutions
To start, the panel highlighted the impact well-implemented technology solutions have had—or could have—on crucial issues in urban communities.

They explained how well-organized foreclosure data has driven better mortgage policies, why community organizers are sometimes frustrated with the City of Chicago's reporting system for crime data, and how important online applications have become for job seekers.

During a discussion about problems in implementation, audience members mentioned a university program designed to capture community opinions in a broad database, and a project to use mesh technology to provide low-cost broadband in a low-income community in St. Louis.

Much of the presentation revolved around how IT professionals can build a lasting, effective relationship at the community level—avoiding those common problems that derail many projects. Advice ranged from being clear at the start about limitations in volunteer time to understanding the local needs and resources. The key, all agreed, was to listen, be a real partner, and be persistent.

“I worked in Africa for a while,” Desai said. “A saying there was that when things go wrong or if they are difficult, you have to remember that if it was easy, everyone would be doing it.”

Finding the Right Match
The discussion also included successes at the local level—Desai gave an example of how Humboldt Park community groups are now using a weekly New Communities Program e-newsletter to stay on top of events, grant opportunities and other community news, for example.

And Massa talked about how a more flexible new database has helped Metropolitan Tenants Organization keep better track of what issues are bringing in the most calls and which communities need the most help.

Both examples showed how technology can be useful, but only when it’s targeted to genuine needs for the organization. “It’s not cool to them because it’s an open format database,” Massa said about the MTO program. “It’s cool because of what it now helps them accomplish.”

One audience member asked about how many community-level programs are built for people in the neighborhood — and not just as a way to communicate and impress funders and other downtown partners.

Drummer responded that with smart phones, technology in schools and increasing demand for technology in every aspect of our lives, it’s a mistake to assume that people in urban neighborhoods are uninterested or unable to access tech tools.

“Research shows that more people than you would think have access to the Internet in some way,” he said. “We need to help get them the information and the tools they need.”