Meet the Canadians who Code for America

And how they’re giving public transit data back to the American people

If you know anything about government, it’s that the government can be pretty outdated when it comes to tech.

And that’s what makes Code For America so important.

Officially, Code for America’s goal is to make government services “simple, effective, and easy to use” with the help of open source technology. Which is good news for our team, since we need open government data for our app to work.

Open data! It’s a word bandied about a lot these days. But you should recall that just six years ago, transit agencies were still sending cease and desist letters to developers who tried to publish their timetables online. Weren’t those the days, eh?

Now why is open data so important to us? Our pride and joy — Transit App — is the most popular urban transport app in North America. It helps millions of people access transit information in 99 cities — including Cleveland, where we’ve just integrated real-time data. But without transit agency data, we’d have nothing to show our users.

Largely thanks to the efforts of organizations like Code for America, open data has come a long way — from the radical pilot project of a few rogue innovators to generally-accepted practice for most agencies.

With Code for America, we’ve been able to leverage the power of open data to accomplish some pretty amazing feats — and ruffle some pretty significant feathers along the way. And together, we’re changing the way public transit riders get around their cities. Here’s how: