Civic Tech DC x GW OSPO Hackathon: RideScore DC + FEC Data
Saturday, October 3, 2026 · 10:00 AM to 5:30 PM · George Washington University (building and room to be announced)
A one-day open source hackathon co-hosted by Civic Tech DC and GW's Open Source Program Office (OSPO). Two civic data projects, one room, one day. Pick a project, pick a track, form a team, and make real progress, whether you've been with a project for months or are showing up for the first time.
Project 1: RideScore DC
RideScore DC is a Civic Tech DC volunteer project building an open data pipeline and interactive map that scores DC streets for bike safety and comfort.
Website / UI: frontend work, new features, and interface improvements on the RideScore DC map. A ready-to-run environment (HTML or Docker) with instructions will be waiting so you can plug in and go.
Models: plug and play. We'll provide a data pipeline and a clean, downloadable dataset with instructions so you can build and test your own scoring model.
Non-technical (tentative): outreach, benchmarking peer projects, strategy, and user research. Whether this track runs depends on who steps up to help shape it. If that's you, say so when you register.
Project 2: FEC Data
Do you think money in politics is an important problem? The Federal Election Commission publishes campaign finance data for every federal race: candidates, committees, contributions, and spending, available through the openFEC API and bulk downloads. You will have the freedom to combine datasets, perform analysis, and build tools for researchers, journalists, and everyone to better understand who is influencing US elections and politicians:
Data: pull, clean, and combine FEC datasets so they're easy for others to build on. E.G. combine FEC candidate data with demographic data and voting scorecards to explore where money goes based on gender, race, or various issues.
Analysis & visualization: explore where the money comes from and where it goes, and tell a clear story with the data.
Tools: build tools based on combined datasets and using the openFEC API or bulk data to help people learn about donations to and from specific candidates, corporations, and individuals.
We encourage all attendees to make all data, analysis, and tools open source so they can be shared and will continue after the hackathon.
Schedule
10:00 AM: Check-in & coffee
10:30 AM: Kickoff, project backgrounds & track introductions
11:00 AM: Choose a track & form teams
11:30 AM: Build begins
1:00 PM: Lunch
1:45 PM: Volunteer & mentor check-ins
4:00 PM: Submissions close
4:15 PM: Demos & showcase
5:15 PM: Wrap-up & group photo
5:30 PM: Happy hour (location TBD). Come celebrate with us!
Who should come
Developers, data scientists, designers, students, cyclists, open source contributors, people who care about campaign finance transparency, and anyone who wants better civic data in DC. No prior involvement with either project needed. Bring a laptop.
Before the day
We'll run an onboarding session ahead of the hackathon to walk through the projects, the data, and the codebases. Details will be posted here and sent to registered guests.
Want to help run it?
We need setup and registration volunteers, breakdown volunteers, mentors, and people to help present at the onboarding session. Tell us at a Civic Tech DC Project Night or use the Contact Host button on this page.