O4C Methods empowering the citizens of Casablanca, Morocco — at a recent Open Data ‘Creathon’!
On May 19th 2017, the Open4Citizens project co-organised the first Open Data Hackathon for citizens in Morocco. The event was labelled a ‘Creathon’, since it was shorter in duration than a standard Hackathon, and was focused on the non-technical development of attractive open data based concepts.
The aim was to invite citizens who had registered in advance on an open Internet platform to reflect on the possibilities of using Open Data to address some of the city’s problems and challenges within the fields of global environment, mobility and health. The goal of the event was to arrive at a set of proposals and solutions that would improve the quality of life of Casablancans.
The overarching topic of the creathon was citizen sensitization and education to the environment. The hack event tried to build upon the momentum generated by the 2016 Marrakesh climate conference, to help empower the citizens of Morocco as digital social innovation leaders in the field of environment protection.
The Creathon was organized, following an invitation from Pr. Aawatif Hayar President of GreenTIC research centre, jointly with the 1st IEEE Spring School on Frugal Smart Cities and as side event of Smart City Expo Casablanca 2017 led by Casablanca Events and Animation.
Participants in the event analyzed the different challenges proposed, exchanged with fellow citizens and proposed solutions that aimed to have a clear impact on the needs of the citizens. Citizens and organizations involved in the project had access to city data and data experts, which supported participants in exploring how open-data-driven applications can help them respond to their needs. A team of student researchers from the Green Tic-TICDev research centre was trained to accompany the various groups on the data visualization side, inviting citizens to analyze data and propose solutions to improve the quality of services and quality of the data.
The representatives of Casablanca Prestations, SDL in charge of the city’s digital plans and services, did not miss the momentum of solidarity and offered themselves to help the different groups by answering various questions posed by the Citizens participating — e.g on the availability or lack of certain services at the level of the city of Casablanca to keep the groups updated in relation to what ideas they considered proposing. This was a valuable help and avoided the participants to develop ideas or e-services already deployed or being deployed in Casablanca. Students from the TICDev research center at Hassan II University were also very active in helping citizens, especially on the technical level, by presenting the data requested by each group according to the chosen topic on a computer medium.
The Open4Citizens methodology at work
Four specific challenges were presented to the participants:
- How can we use open data for better information on public transportation?
- How can we reduce pollution and waste with usage of open data?
- How can we use open data to educate and increase the public’s awareness of climate change?
- How can we use open data to make the city more sustainable and attractive?
The participants worked on these challenges with an abridged implementation of the O4C methodology, adapted to fit the 3 hour timeframe of the event.
The Creathon took place all afternoon in an excellent international atmosphere full of very studious participants and very responsible onlookers who passed by to stop and take pictures or ask questions. We also had spontaneous testimonies of Casablancans and tourists who greatly appreciated the initiative including a Jordanian tourist who gave us a good testimony on his appreciation of this initiative.
The hackathon outcomes
Six projects were presented by the hackathon participants. These were reviewed and evaluated by a jury panel composed of four local experts:
- Ms. Joundi Meryem (GreenTIC & TICDev research centres)
- Mr Mezzyane Amine (Start-up entrepreneur in Casablanca in the field of multimedia)
- Mr Ghabari Youssef (Casablanca City Council, Casa benefits)
- Mr Amrani Omar (Journalist, hacker activist and blogger of Casablanca — Chronicles of the Future)
After the presentations and withdrawal of the jury for evaluation, three projects were declared as winners:
- 1st prize, 5000 MAD: Casa Library, on promoting the heritage of Casablanca
- 2nd prize, 3000 MAD: We Green Move, on intelligent and green mobility
- 3rd prize, 2000MAD: Casa We Clean, on a waste management solution
What’s next?
The implementation of the prized projects will be considered in the coming months, as two departments of the Casablanca municipality (Education for the Environment and Smart City) have already secured funding to implement some of the top rated ideas.
From an Open4Citizens project perspective, this exciting experiment provided a window to generalize the methodology. The Casablanca creathon worked as a an excting proof of concept, clearly demonstrating how the flexible OpenDataLab methodology can be successful in empowering citizens in other cultural and socioeconomic contexts.
Thus, a new line of research for the OpenDataLab concept is opened up, as the the methods and iterations can play a role in innovating development projects, unlocking the potential of open data for the benefit of the citizens of developing countries.
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