Red White and Hacked? The First National Day of Civic Hacking

As Slice of MIT readers know, hacks come and go on MIT’s campus as casually as pickup basketball games might elsewhere. The current issue of Fast Company magazine credits MIT with coining both the first benign and the first pejorative uses of the term.

As for "hack days" and "hackathons," sources trace these lengthier events—devoted to hacks ranging from frivolous to useful—back a decade.  

And at least five years old is the term "civic hacking," in which individuals or groups apply their love of technology or data to civic issues they are passionate about.

This weekend, the White House intends to put civic hacks and hackers on a national stage with the National Day of Civic Hacking.

Despite President Obama’s statement in March that hacking has become “a big problem” after First Lady Michelle Obama’s financial information was compromised, the White House clearly sees the value in celebrating the word's positive connotations and getting the most out of crowdsourcing data for public good. In February, it hosted a day-long hackathon, which MIT Center for Civic Media RA Catherine D'Ignazio attended.

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and its Office of Digital Strategy are co-sponsoring this week's event, which, according to its website, will use “publicly-released data, code and technology to solve challenges relevant to our neighborhoods, our cities, our states and our country.”

That’s much in line with how the Tech Model Railroad Club first used the term hacker in the 1950s, to indicate someone “who applies ingenuity to create a clever result.”

Ahead of the weekend event, government agencies have listed dozens of challenges the country faces in the years ahead: affordable housing, safe drinking water, crime, and malnutrition, to name a few. Hackers have uploaded publicly-released data sets to the website as a reference library.

Organizations in 38 states (to date) have listed their hackathon events. On campus, this includes UndocuTech, a collaborative effort between United We Dream and MIT’s Center for Civic Media. Becky Hurwitz, the center’s codesign facilitator and community organizer, is leading the effort to “use media and technology to support immigrant rights.”

"The National Day of Civic Hacking is an excellent opportunity to bring civic hackers and immigrant rights advocates closer together," says Hurwitz. "The hacker community has historically been a great ally of social movements and a force for change, so this is a good opportunity to connect with more allies!"

If this first annual event takes off, with thousands of hackers cracking patriotic code, will the term finally return to its roots?