{"id":54562,"date":"2019-02-01T14:22:53","date_gmt":"2019-02-01T22:22:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/?post_type=arcnews&#038;p=54562"},"modified":"2023-08-04T16:03:47","modified_gmt":"2023-08-04T23:03:47","slug":"cook-county-opens-data-hub-to-citizens-civic-activists","status":"publish","type":"arcnews","link":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/arcnews\/cook-county-opens-data-hub-to-citizens-civic-activists","title":{"rendered":"Cook County Opens Data Hub to Citizens, Civic Activists"},"author":1312,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"sync_status":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","castos_file_data":"","podmotor_file_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[10562,401,19602],"tags":[1451,160542,160522,151552,1171],"arcnews_issues":[25212],"class_list":["post-54562","arcnews","type-arcnews","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arcgis-hub","category-government","category-open-data","tag-citizen-engagement","tag-county-government","tag-health","tag-hub","tag-open-data","arcnews_issues-spring-2018","arcnews_sections-collaborations"],"acf":{"short_description":"On most Tuesday nights in downtown Chicago, a group of \u201chactivists\u201d gathers to work on making their city a better place to live.","pdf":{"host_remotely":false,"file":"","file_url":""},"flexible_content":[{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image":54572,"image_position":"center","orientation":"horizontal","hyperlink":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"On most Tuesday nights in downtown Chicago, a group of \u201chactivists\u201d gathers to work on making their city a better place to live. They are designers, web developers, academics, journalists, policy wonks, and concerned citizens. At one such Chi Hack Night event, Cook County GIS developer David Treering and senior GIS analyst David Arfa debuted Cook Central, an open data hub built to support Cook County\u2014home to 5.2 million residents.\r\n\r\nTreering and Arfa work in the GIS department of the Cook County Bureau of Technology and are part of the team behind the Cook Central hub. The creation of Cook Central was bolstered by strong support from Cook County board president Toni Preckwinkle, who wanted a way for government and citizens to share maps, apps, and data.\r\n\r\n\u201cCook County is committed to transparency and accountability,\u201d Preckwinkle said. \u201cWe launched the Cook Central hub at Chi Hack Night because we want to provide the site as a foundation for local developers to build useful tools with our data.\u201d\r\n\r\nWhile Cook Central serves the civic tech community, Treering said the site also meets two other important objectives: it creates easier data access for partner agencies and local governments, and it is a public landing page for all open spatial data and interactive map apps.\r\n\r\nThe Cook Central hub features 125 datasets on the environment, transportation, boundaries, land records, places of interest, and more. It provides access to high-resolution aerial imagery of the county. Available interactive mapping apps include the county\u2019s property portal, municipal boundary changes, economic and demographic data, a government facility locator, and taxing district information. Visitors can find information on public health, social services, and economic development. Developer resources link to APIs and examples of apps built using Cook County\u2019s open data.\r\n<h2>Making the Cook Central Hub<\/h2>\r\nAt a recent Esri User Conference, the Cook County GIS team saw the pioneering hub work done by the City of Los Angeles and learned about ArcGIS Hub, a two-way engagement platform that connects government and citizens. This inspired the team to transition the county\u2019s existing open data site into a hub that provides access to data, apps, and maps and helps put data to work on policy initiatives that impact the public.\r\n\r\nFor Cook County, hub implementation was straightforward. Using the default styles and design from ArcGIS, the team produced a clean, modern interface. It used Esri\u2019s online ArcGIS documentation as a guide for customization. The team translated its existing process for maintaining data in ArcGIS Online into Cook Central maintenance without any extra overhead.\r\n\r\nCook County built individual landing pages for each open data category, such as Boundaries and Districts, Transportation, and Places of Interest. These themed pages each feature a popular dataset or highlight an app that uses data from the category, providing greater context for the datasets than simply browsing by tags.\r\n<h2>Serving Data and Apps<\/h2>\r\nMany municipal governments in Cook County do not have the capacity to collect and maintain their own GIS data. They had to request critical information\u2014such as planimetrics, property boundaries, and current imagery\u2014from the Cook County GIS department. Now, Cook Central provides a self-serve solution to access current and historical data. This is significantly reducing the amount of time the GIS team would otherwise have to spend on fulfilling data requests.\r\n\r\nMost of the mapping apps currently available on Cook Central\u2014including those for viewing highway construction projects, finding good fishing lakes, or exploring social services\u2014were created by the county\u2019s GIS department using the open-source Configurable Map Viewer template and ArcGIS Server map services.\r\n\r\nThe apps are used by internal county offices and departments in their daily workflows, providing services and resources to Cook County residents and businesses. Citizens can also access and use the apps to be better informed about services and activities dealing with property, business, transportation, taxation, recreation, and more.\r\n\r\n\u201cCook County GIS applications created for the public can be difficult to find on their own,\u201d said Arfa. \u201cCook Central provides not only a window to our open spatial data but\u00a0<em>[also]<\/em>\u00a0a portal to explore our many useful applications.\u201d\r\n<h2>Hub Focuses on Health<\/h2>\r\nA current effort of Cook County is to improve residents\u2019 health outcomes by providing them, as well as service agencies, with informational resources and data services. Cook Central spotlights the Cook County Medical Examiner\u2019s office, for example, to bring greater public attention to gun violence and opioid deaths since 2014. The Cook County GIS team used Web AppBuilder for ArcGIS to create point and hot spot maps that display medical examiner case records. The maps are featured on the Cook Central hub, identifying the location and number of such deaths to underscore the need for preventative public services.\r\n\r\n\u201cIt is expected that having a place online to inform and begin conversations about important policy initiatives will increase community engagement and improve how Cook County delivers services for residents and businesses,\u201d Treering said.\r\n<h2>Information Is Free<\/h2>\r\nWhile Cook Central is already freeing up information for local governments and agencies, it is also expected to satisfy area journalists and researchers. Typically, when someone needs data from a county agency, such as the medical examiner\u2019s office, that person has to file a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. But Cook Central gives the public access to many important datasets, which should reduce FOIA requests, save county staff time, and increase transparency.\r\n\r\nWith ArcGIS as the platform for Cook Central, there is a direct link to the county\u2019s ArcGIS Online content. Instead of having to upload static shapefiles, as was done with the original Cook County open data site, Cook Central points directly to county services based on data replicated from the county\u2019s production database. Cook Central also makes it easier for the county to share imagery services without needing to extract raster tiles and send them to people upon request.\r\n\r\n\u201cCook Central showcases our applications and data in a more seamless way so people can browse everything in one spot,\u201d said Arfa. \u201cUsers of Cook Central have the most up-to-date data available, immediately.\u201d\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http:\/\/cookcountyil.gov\/CookCentral\">Explore Cook Central<\/a>\u00a0and all that the engagement platform has to offer."},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image":54582,"image_position":"center","orientation":"horizontal","hyperlink":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"<h2>About Cook County\u2019s GIS Department<\/h2>\r\nHoused within the Bureau of Technology, Cook County\u2019s GIS department supports and promotes GIS initiatives throughout the county\u2019s many departments and agencies. The GIS department is responsible for developing, maintaining, and providing access to the county\u2019s authoritative spatial datasets for the 13 offices of elected officials, 135 county municipalities, and 5.2 million residents. This enterprise service department provides custom app development and mapping services to the county clerk, assessor\u2019s office, forest preserve district, public health department, homeland security and emergency management agencies, animal control, department of highways and transportation, building and zoning, and more, to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/en-us\/industries\/needs\/operational-efficiency\">improve operational efficiencies<\/a> and enhance decision-making on important policy initiatives.\r\n"}],"references":null},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.9 (Yoast SEO v25.9) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Cook County Opens Data Hub to Citizens, Civic Activists | Spring 2018 | ArcNews<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"On most Tuesday nights in downtown Chicago, a group of \u201chactivists&#039; gathers to work on making their city a better place to live.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" 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