Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Using FOIA Data and Unix to halve major source of parking tickets

mchap.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 248 posts

Re: Using FOIA Data and Unix to halve major source of parking tickets

#151

Post by garmaine »

TheCapeGreek wrote: post #139
garmaine wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just competitive, but better paying. Take Taiwan and other East Asian countries—government service is desirable, high paying, and a really prestigious job. And lo and behold, their government services really do work very well.

This doesn't always work out. Case in point with Greece. Decades of cushy government jobs and tons of people flocking to those positions to be lazy and do nothing, with policies that amount to tenure so they'll never be fired. I do agree that government jobs should be more competitive in the job market, just with caution.

> with policies that amount to tenure

You've identified the problem.

Re: Using FOIA Data and Unix to halve major source of parking tickets

#152

Post by [deleted] »

ir0nic wrote: post #47
bpchaps wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey! Thanks for posting this, and the kind words. Interesting note about getting data like this - Illinois FOIA allows a requester to submit a SQL as part of their request.. so long as they know the tables and columns within the database ;)

Now wouldn't it be funny if you got them to drop a table this way?

[deleted]

Re: Using FOIA Data and Unix to halve major source of parking tickets

#153

Post by chrismeller »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #144
ekianjo wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the government, serving the people? Since when? Do you think they install cash grabbing radars on the roads to better serve us?

There's one neat trick to stop 'them' getting your money. It's so easy you'll be amazed! It's "not speeding" /savedyouaclick

Sure that's a bad example, but he does kind of have a point.

In the blog post he estimated it's saved $60,000 in fines. That's a drop in the bucket at the scale we're talking about (a quick Google says the proposed 2018 budget for Chicago was $10.1 billion), but still a decrease. Not only would it cost the government money to employ someone to go through this data and find hotspots like this, someone to go out and evaluate the signs, presumably several someones during the approval process to change signage, and finally people to make and install that signage, but the end result would be to purely cost them more money by decreasing revenue from fines.

I don't personally think governments are inherently evil (though some do seem to try harder than others), but even from a purely capitalistic viewpoint that's a hard sell for anyone who cares about their budget. At the very very best I could see it becoming a token effort that's mostly marketing ("look, we're using big data to make your life better!").

Re: Using FOIA Data and Unix to halve major source of parking tickets

#154

Post by chrismeller »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #150
bpchaps wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny enough, I submitted one of those to all of the biggest cities in each state for a list of their databases and the columns/tables within each. Pretty much universal rejection. The ones that didn't send me a rejection letter all told me that the cost would be somewhere between $400 and $2,000 to complete the work. While it's nice, and I've spent similar on requests before, it's not something I'm exactly intereste…

I'm reasonably sure that in UK FOIA requests have to be handled at cost? It's that true in Chicago. Mind you the company responsible probably said "the database schema will cost $2k to put in a PDF".

It varies by state in the US (what doesn't?), but most states do have a clause in their FOIA law that says something along those lines as well. It may be completely ambiguous ("at cost", fees must be "reasonable", etc.) or it can be more specific ("may not exceed the hourly salary of the lowest paid employee who can do the work", etc.).

Of course the former is pretty worthless, especially if the state doesn't outline any formal appeals process - you'd have to actually sue them for the records, which is rarely going to end up being cheaper. It also doesn't mean that the actual cost couldn't end up being insane. If no one has access to perform that particular query or knows how to get that data it could involve requesting a custom report from whomever developed and/or maintains the system. No one is reasonably going to pay IBM's hourly rate to write a report for them...

Re: Using FOIA Data and Unix to halve major source of parking tickets

#155

Post by masklinn »

jessaustin wrote: post #69
btrettel wrote: post #13

Would be nice to use the same skills to help reduce cars illegally parked in the bike lane. Identify areas which cyclists commonly complain about that (e.g., to the city) and encourage them to put up better signs?

This problem would solve itself if vandalism laws were changed slightly.

Wouldn't it be more sensible to deputise willing cyclists for a limited range of offenses?

Re: Using FOIA Data and Unix to halve major source of parking tickets

#156

Post by masklinn »

morei wrote: post #50
amaccuish wrote: post #41

$190 million?! What does the architecture consist of? A database, some forms and some integrations/api? I'm 90% sure they could have done that with free software and a good support contract with a UNIX provider for far less :/

This is a very common reaction that shows a lack of experience in dealing with scale IT systems. You're correct that a simple DB with some forms would be cheap. But integration tends to be crazy expense. For this sort of system, other things that also need to be covered: 1. Billing integration. Including changes to billing codes, bill (fine) printing, testing. 2. Audit integration. Because whenever money is handled,…

FWIW in case you wanted to format the list HN does not really support markup, so you need a blank line between list items so they get displayed as separate paragraphs rather than folded into a single one.

Re: Using FOIA Data and Unix to halve major source of parking tickets

#158

Post by maxerickson »

kioleanu wrote: post #149

Wow, great stuff! Did you give more thought into the address cleaning bit? Or does anyone have an idea how to go about transforming mangled addresses into coordinates? I have a problem that's been bothering me for months, similar to what you have here: people from an emergency service call-center are inputting the addresses of the emergencies. For emergencies that happen on the public domain, there is often not a spe…

Maybe try https://github.com/openvenues/libpostal

It's a C library with gigabytes of data, so it isn't light weight, but it attacks the problem aggressively.

Re: Using FOIA Data and Unix to halve major source of parking tickets

#159

Post by ekr »

On the one hand, this is a really neat hack. On the other hand, given the current situation with cars, pollution in cities (air quality, noise-level etc), global warming, I would personally think twice before doing something that would make car driving easier and more pleasant, as that simply incentivizes more driving. (getting a ticket might be a small inconvenience, but it does contribute to creating a slight aversion to driving).

Sure, this may seem a bit "evil", and the better solution is reducing negative externalities through taxing, which is a more transparent and ethical solution, but most of us don't have that level of power and influence within local councils and governments.

Re: Using FOIA Data and Unix to halve major source of parking tickets

#160

Post by oh_sigh »

dannyw wrote: post #25
ecnahc515 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The TL;DR is: "any criminal records is public information". Fundamentally, even if it's very minor, it's public information until expunged, cleared, or sealed. I think most people are generally fine with this, it's only really a problem if you consistently are committing offenses.

I wouldn't be that generous. You park 15 mins longer than permitted once outside your workplace, and now your violent ex knows where you now work.

Your violent ex would know your license plate number, but not know where you work?
Post reply on HN