Open Data To Action With IFTTT (ODTAWI)

[mgottholsen]

Open Data To Action With IFTTT (ODTAWI)

Allow residents and city services to take automated action when open datasets are updated using IFTTT.

Hundreds of governments have open data websites that share the same open data schema supported by all the major platforms (CKAN, OpenDataSoft, DKAN, Socrata). This data.json schema has real-time API information on every dataset on the site, when it was updated, and includes links.

The ODTAWI platform will use IFTTT to catalog available datasets, monitor for updates, and allow anyone to take action when specific data is available.

Examples

• Send me a text when my favorite restaurant gets an new health rating
• Send my neighborhood group an email weekly with a list of crimes in the area
• Log any 311 missing animal reports to a Google Spreadsheet in my city
• Send a monthly email of the number of scooter rides that ended outside of my business
• Tweet to residents each time our salary dataset is updated and provide a link to it

How Does This Work?

Using data standards like data.json for open data, LIVES for Yelp and restaurant data, Open311 for service request reports, GTFS/MDS for scooters, and tying them all together for any city's open data platform, IFTTT can be used to take action on these in a standardized way across the world.

Note: This ODTAWI project is based upon the work of the the SCDI project, which you can read about below.

IFTTT Smart City Data Integrator (SCDI) Project

IFTTT Smart City Data Integrator (SCDI) Project is a new medium for governments to deliver light touch digital services, that empower the citizen to customize their interaction with government while maintaining respect for their privacy. The IFTTT service has a tightly controlled user experience that allows us to present a consistent service to our citizens, in an era of poorly designed government app experiences. It enables us to democratize and operationalize data of all kinds to our citizens, solving a historic issue with Open Data, providing immediate and applicable value to the initiative. Louisville is the first government partner on this platform, which initiated the creation and adoption of Data Access Project by IFTTT.

The IFTTT Smart City Data Integrator (SCDI) Project is an open source API middleware that enables citizens to customize city data sources (Open Data, IoT, Smart City data) to fit their digital needs, using the IFTTT platform.

For example, Louisville Metro Government is exposing an in-house air quality API to this middleware, which connects to the IFTTT service. We have built a predefined applet that connects this to the service that Philips Hue has exposed to IFTTT. This allows the applet to trigger a color change on a Philips Hue lightbulb when the air quality changes. This is only one example, citizens can mix and match services as they like, adapting services in new and exciting ways.

Example:
https://ifttt.com/smartlouisville

Louisville Metro is currently exposing the following data sources to IFTTT:

• Air Quality Information
• Rave Emergency Alerts
• Louisville Metro News
• Louisville Metro Events
• Mayor Greg Fischer's podcast episodes

Program Features:
The IFTTT Partner program also includes anonymized analytics, application health, performance, API testing and strict branding requirements to ensure a consistent and quality experience for citizens. Additionally it has the ability for a staging environment, private applets for testing, and suggested applets that are frequently created by users. Service implementation documentation is available here.

Cities & Federal Agencies that have signed up to IFTTT due to Louisville's involvement:
City of Tampa
City of Edmonton, Canada
EPA
ClinicalTrials.gov
Department of Labor
Bureau of Economic Analysis
SEC
FCC
Library of Congress
National Science Foundation
Energy Information Administration
USA.gov
Department of Defense
Department of Homeland Security, National Vulnerability Database
World Health Organization
Department of State

Potential Partners:
IFTTT
Any cloud provider
Federal agencies (18F, USDS, or any of the active IFTTT customers)
Local businesses, both corporate or small/mid (for instance in Louisville we have UPS & Humana)

Requirements:
IFTTT Partner Subscription
PHP/MySQL (current arch, running on a T2.Micro instance on AWS, next implementation should use a more responsive language in addition to IFTTT's Real Time API.)

Codebase:
https://github.com/louisvillemetro-innovation/IFTTT-Smart-City-Data-Integrator

Open Issues / Feature Requests:
https://github.com/louisvillemetro-innovation/IFTTT-Smart-City-Data-Integrator/issues

Media coverage:
https://ifttt.com/blog/2017/02/louisville-is-the-first-city-on-IFTTT
https://www.zdnet.com/article/louisville-is-the-first-smart-city-on-the-ifttt-platform/
http://www.govtech.com/civic/Louisville-Ky-Looks-to-IFTTT-as-Future-of-Open-Data-Among-Other-Services.html
https://www.engadget.com/2017/02/06/louisville-ifttt-channel-smart-home-air-quality/
https://www.cnet.com/news/hows-the-air-up-there-in-louisville-you-can-just-ask-your-light-bulbs/
https://ifttt.com/blog/2017/06/introducing-the-data-access-project

[schnuerle]

Going to talk with IFTTT about this project.

[mgottholsen]

After meeting with Linden Tibbets (IFTTT CEO), and some internal discussions with his team, they have committed to a hackathon for Oct/Nov, possibly a week long in length. Their entire team is very excited to contribute, and I'd like to get involvement from all different levels of government (city, state, federal/18f). I'm working on a contact for that.

In conjunction, we are planning a user stories session here in Louisville Metro to gather more ideas around what we could expose to IFTTT, and some applets that could be built around it.

One of the things I'd like to see, is a way to drop in a data.json from an Open Data portal into the IFTTT platform, and start building applets based off of data feeds found within. This would enable an explosion of applets on the part of governments everywhere, operationalizing Open Data, into something completely new... Open Applets (I think that name needs work)?

[hunterowens]

LA would love to help

[mgottholsen]

@hunterowens Do you all have any use cases, or ideas that you'd like to explore with this? What sort of help are you all offering?

[hunterowens]

@mgottholsen

Biggested couple use cases

We update Building Permits and 311 Data every 2 hours on our Socrata Portal. Would love to be able to IFTTT

1. New Permit
2. New open ticket
3. New closed ticket

[mgottholsen]

Hey all, we're getting this work codified on the wiki for this project. Take a look here: https://github.com/louisvillemetro-innovation/IFTTT-Smart-City-Data-Integrator/wiki