February Roundup

If January was a busy month, February was downright outrageous. 21 working days, here are the highlights:

Data Journalism Academy

We launched the Code for South Africa data journalism academy. During an initial 2-week intensive bootcamp, journalists were taught to thrust with Excel spreadsheets and parry with data visualisations. Of the 12 who participated, 8 continued after the intensive to join the academy newsroom where they will spend the next 10 weeks gaining real world data journalism experience. The journalists represented the following news outlets: Sunday Times, Business Day, The Daily Dispatch, Financial Mail, Cape Argus and the Weekend Argus. Also attending on a scholarship was a student from the Centre for Film and Media Studies at UCT. Another freelance journalist was also awarded a scholarship to cover tuition and living expenses.

Photo credit: Hassel Fallas

Sarah Evans formerly of the Mail and Guardian joined us as a news editor to run the newsroom. We were also fortunate that Hassel Fallas, data news editor of La Nacion in Costa Rica joined us for 4 weeks to provide mentorship on how to run a successful data newsroom.

Read more: here and here.

State of the Nation

Soon after the launch of the newsroom, the first story about the State of the Nation speech and how it played out on Twitter was published on IOL. In collaboration with TNS, 430,000 tweets were used to explore what the Twittersphere thought of the President’s speech. The article included this nifty little visualisation: . The star tweet was of the sign language interpretor showing us how to sign “Zupta must fall”:

In case anyone was wondering what "Zupta must fall" is in sign language #SONA2016 pic.twitter.com/l8QgAci2Sq
— Bryan (@BryanKardash) February 11, 2016

Vote for the Budget

Through the academy we launched a tool called Vote for the Budget together with the International Budget Partnership. Developed as a microsite, its objective was to inform South Africans about their right to make submissions to Parliament about the budget. The tool was released to coincide with the Minister of Finance’s budget speech. It allows users to rank their approval for various decisions incorporated in the national budget. Using these preferences, a template email is generated which is then populated with their answers. Users have the option of sending this email directly to the appropriations committee for consideration.

204 submissions were sent through the site to Parliament’s Standing Committee on Appropriations. It was also published nationally in the following publications:

Adi Eyal’s tenure on the City’s open data steering committee came to an end. At this last meeting, we presented Julia Renouprez’ research on data governance policies employed by open data portals around the world.

MP Attendance

Damian Schlecter’s MP attendence tool launched last month on People’s Assembly was used by the Daily Maverick to report on how certain members of parliament are skipping committee meetings

The People's Assembly website, which hopes to promote accountability between ordinary citizens and elected representatives, has just released a nifty little data cruncher monitoring the attendance of members of parliament at committee meetings where much of the real work gets done. While it shows that Winnie Madikizela Mandela is still MIA, the data holds a few surprises. 

Project Enable

Codebridge has begun to transition from being an office under a bridge to become the centre of the nascent civic tech movement in South Africa.

Photo credit: Damian Schlecter

We are supporting civic tech startups by providing mentorship, desk space and general support where needed. Project Enable, a pair of occupational therapists and a computer programmer are building a mobile app that will help parents of children with cerebral palsy play with their children and stimulate them by providing examples of various games and exercises. During a 3 day intensive, Richard Gevers from Open Data Durban took them through lean startup process effectively tearing their ideas apart only to help them rebuild. We plan to extend this pilot by running bi-annual intakes of aspiring civic tech entrepreneurs.

Photo credit: Adi Eyal

Code for Cape Town

We have started working with a group called Code for Cape Town (absolutely no relation to Code for South Africa). They are passionate about teaching young girls to code. Led by Code for South Africa alumnus Jason Norwood-Young, we started running a module to teach these girls about data and how to use it to tell stories. The module was taught over three successive weekends. These girls are sharp. If they are at all representative of the youth, we might actually have a bright future to look forward to.

Photo credit: Code for Cape Town

Naked Data

600 subscribers, 80 issues. Jason Norwood-Young is tirelessly keeping us up to date with the world of data journalism while continuing to offend with his uncensored writing style.

Wazi-ECD

Take Wazimap and tailor it to become a tool to inform policy around early childhood development. Development is still underway but is already being tested out by end users.

African Minds

Ever wondered which universities in Africa publish their own books? Here is an interactive map developed by Guus Hoekman.

Open Bylaws

R40,000 fine for anyone caught peeing in public in Durban - News24 used Greg Kempe’s labour of love to write an article on new bylaws coming into effect.

R40k fine for anyone caught peeing in public in Durban New by-laws coming into effect this Friday in Durban could mean a R40 000 fine or two years imprisonment for anyone caught relieving themselves in public.

IOL has a very similar piece