About

The California Civic Data Coalition is an open-source network of journalists and computer programmers from news organizations across America.

History

The coalition was formed in 2014 by Ben Welsh and Agustin Armendariz to lead the development of open-source software that makes California's public data easier to access and analyze. The effort has drawn hundreds of contributions from developers and journalists at dozens of news organizations.

Our primary focus is refining CAL-ACCESS, the jumbled, dirty and difficult government database that tracks campaign finance and lobbying activity in California politics.

In 2015 the coalition was named a winner of the Knight News Challenge and awarded $250,000 in philanthropic funding from the Knight Foundation, the Democracy Fund, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Rita Allen Foundation.

Leadership

Jennifer LaFleur

Jennifer LaFleur

Senior Editor Center for Public Integrity
Cheryl Phillips

Cheryl Phillips

Hearst Professional in Residence Stanford University
Ben Welsh

Ben Welsh

Data and Graphics Editor Los Angeles Times
Aaron Williams

Aaron Williams

Senior Visualization Engineer Netflix

Developers

James Gordon

James Gordon

Lead developer
Sahil Chinoy

Sahil Chinoy

Student developer

Contact

Events

Development has been advanced by a series of code sprints and training events.

What others are saying

“A terrific idea.” The Huffington Post
“This is important work.” Joyce Terhaar, Executive Editor, Sacramento Bee
“Turns ugly government data into something useful for reporters.” Ryan Pitts, OpenNews
“These folks are the best in the business.” Brian Boyer, Editor, NPR Visuals
“Great stuff.” Ellen Miller, Co-Founder, Sunlight Foundation
“One of the journalism projects I talk about most often. So smart.” Anjanette Delgado, Gannett
“Que coisa foda!” Rodolfo Viana, Freelance journalist
“Amazing #opendata work” Simon Rogers, Data Editor, Google
“Fantastic” Simon Willison, Co-Creator, Django
“Monumental” Forest Gregg, Partner, DataMade
“Really amazing” Michael Keller, Interactive News Reporter, Bloomberg
“Really, pretty fantastic” Amanda Hickman, Director, Buzzfeed Open Lab for Journalism, Technology and the Arts
“Saved me a ton of work.” Michael Corey, Reveal and The Center for Investigative Reporting
“Sets a new, high bar for publishing campaign and election data.” Derek Eder, Partner, DataMade
“This is dank af.” Michael Rosenberg, HH Civic Hackers

Logo

The coalition's official logo is known as the geobear. It was created by Aaron Williams based on Bennett Kowald's design for the Noun Project.

California Civic Data Coalition logo