“What’s Your Emergency?”
The National Day of Civic Hacking is reimagining the 911 emergency system
Little Rock, AR, September 17, 2021 – On February 16, 1968, Alabama Senator Rankin Fite made the first 9-1-1 call in the United States. The moment launched a nationwide initiative to expedite emergency services to the American people. Today, about 240 million calls are made to 9-1-1 in the U.S. each year.
This September 18, the cyber community asks, “Can we make this staple of American security even better?”
“Reimagining 911” is this year’s theme for the National Day of Civic Hacking, established in 2013 to “bring together citizens, software developers, and entrepreneurs from all over the nation to collaboratively create new solutions using publicly-available data and technology to solve challenges relevant to our neighborhoods, our cities, our states and our country.”
Common citizens may envision “hacking” as a nefarious activity perpetrated by sinister individuals bent on extracting sensitive information from unsuspecting victims. But there is bad (black hat) hacking and there is civic (white hat) hacking. In the cyber community, civic hacking is a means to solve immense challenges through collaboration and technology. Improving the 9-1-1 emergency system is one such civic hack.
On Saturday, September 18, thousands of developers, designers, government employees, data scientists, and citizen do-gooders will apply their insight and skills to making 9-1-1 a more efficient and better system. For example, how can we better filter calls to determine what emergency calls need an enhanced response? How can the service be more responsive to community needs? 9-1-1 has saved thousands of lives, and yet, it can always save more.
We here at Forge Institute think this is an exciting opportunity to change the conversation about cybersecurity and hacking. Traditionally everyone is up-in-arms trying to destroy hackers, this day brings forth a call to use your hacking skills for good. It will be exciting to see the innovation that comes from this day. It really is amazing to see what we come up with when we all work together for good.
As the National Day of Civic Hacking approaches, participants are encouraged to use the hashtag #HackForChange to stay connected and help others follow the events. Government and social organizations like the U.S. Small Business Administration, Code for America Brigades and Secondmuse are leading the initiative. If you have coding and cyber skills, your input could actually save innumerable lives. We know we’ll be following.
About Forge Institute
At Forge Institute, our mission is to empower our partners with advanced capabilities to achieve operational objectives. We forge exceptional talent and enable cyber threat analytic collaboration between the private and public sectors. Together, we are creating a more prosperous and secure economic future. For more information, visit the Forge Institute at: https://www.forge.institute.
Sources
https://nationaltoday.com/national-civic-day-hacking/
https://discourse.codeforamerica.org/t/announcing-the-2021-national-day-of-civic-hacking-ndoch/1100
https://www.codeforamerica.org/news/what-is-civic-hacking/