The Open Civic Data Projectaims to provide and promote common data formats and a freely usable API for legislative information. Created by the same team that maintains Open States, the only freely available source of legislative information across all fifty states (including an API and bulk downloads), the Open Civic Data Project is built to do the same thing for municipalities. We believe that turning representative information into first-class open data will enable civic innovations that help cities serve their citizens better and more equitably.
Help the project by writing Python scrapers that will bring information on legislators, legislation, and events into the system and the hands of other civic tech developers.
You should start by looking for a municipality that has a web presence for its city council that is well suited to scraping. Start by finding the city council website -- typically a Google search will suffice. Next, determine what data the site contains. Does it have a calendar of meetings? A list of proposed legislation? An index of city councilors? It isn’t necessary to have all three of these, but having even 2 out of 3 will suffice to make the scraping effort worthwhile.
This task assumes a basic familiarity with web scraping and Python. The Open Civic Data Project has guidelines on how to begin writing scrapers for the project.
http://docs.opencivicdata.org/en/latest/scrape/index.html
There are example scrapers using the provided framework here:
https://github.com/opencivicdata/municipal-scrapers-us
https://github.com/opencivicdata/scrapers-ca
https://github.com/codeforcroatia/tools_for_civic_hackers
Consider forking the municipal-scrapers-us project and contributing there (scrapers already exist for: Albuquerque, NM; Boise, ID; Boston, MA; Cary, NC; Chicago, IL; Cleveland, OH; Columbus, OH; Denver, CO; New York City; Philadelphia; Roswell, NM; Santa Fe, NM; Temecula, CA; and Wellesley, MA). Also feel free to start a new repository if that’s easier for your purposes.
If your scrapers are for municipalities in the United States you can simply submit a pull request on GitHub when you’re ready. If you have started a new repository please introduce yourself on the Open Civic Data Google Group. (Go ahead and do this either way!)
If you’ve already finished one municipality feel free to contribute more.