In an effort to solve community problems and increase interaction between city government and residents, Champaign is seeking useful applications of the city’s database.

Champaign is one of four cities to pilot the Illinois Open Technology Challenge, a competition to create software applications with the ability to address civic issues. The three-month initiative aims to increase visibility of the Illinois database at data.illinois.gov.

Champaign residents and city staff met at the Champaign Public Library on Thursday to brainstorm ideas for potential uses of this data.

Some application suggestions brought up at the meeting included a program that would contain city council agendas, meeting minutes and video, and a community service program similar to Adopt-A-Highway.

Mayor Don Gerard said he thinks the competition will help create a more interactive relationship between city government and citizens.

“I think the more connected people are to local government, the more useful they find it,” he said. “They see the tax dollars at work. It’s great for us to be in touch to let them know how we benefit them.”

The Illinois Science & Technology Coalition and Smart Chicago Collaborative are working with Champaign, Belleville, Rockford and Chicago’s south suburbs to provide the municipalities with the technology to publish the data.

Gerard said everyone is encouraged to submit ideas. The challenge will end Feb. 28, and each city will choose the best application, awarding the inventor $18,750 from the state.

Currently, there are no criteria to determine a winner, but Daniel O’Neil, executive director of Smart Chicago Collaborative, said official rules will be solidified by Feb. 1. He added that although there will be one challenge winner, cities may decide to implement other applications that were submitted.

O’Neil said that as long as the application uses data from the site and relates to a Champaign city problem, inventors have a lot of freedom to be creative.

“My goal is that we find all sorts of innovations and have people that want to make their community better,” he said. “In Champaign, there already is a lot of innovation, and we want to be in the context of all of that instead of a one-time prize.”

Patrick East, Champaign city webmaster, is the leader of the city side of the project collecting the data, such as city ordinances and building permits for the applications. East said community input is important to the success of the application.

“Without input of citizens, we don’t know what problems or applications people would use,” he said. “We want to find out what data people would be interested in having so we can prioritize our research.”

The city will hold another meeting in mid-January and take more ideas from the community.

Corinne can be reached at [email protected].