Chicago law is now available at the tip of your fingers, thanks to a joint initiative from the OpenGov Foundation and the City Clerk’s Office that has opened up the City’s Code and turned it into an accessible online tool. Gone are the days of phone calls put in to the Clerk’s office, fruitless online hunts, and unsuccessful inquiries made to a friend of a friend who read the Municipal Code back in law school. Now Chicagoans are granted the ease of typing the domain ChicagoCode.org into the address bar and accessing the entire Chicago Municipal Code and Ordinances for their own personal and public interest.

The data-driven OpenGov Foundation is dedicated to using technology to help create a more citizen-friendly, responsive government, and that requires not only making government data available, but also creating easy, efficient tools for its widespread use among citizens. According to Chicago Decoded’s website, the project “is part of a broader initiative to bring the law—the most important information in any community—to the people in more accessible, modern formats that can be used and reused.” Chicago follows San Francisco (CA), Baltimore (MD), and Philadelphia (PA) in releasing its municipal code to its owner community (Chicagoans) via The State Decoded platform that translates legal codes into formats understandable to ordinary people. (Beyond municipalities, Maryland, Virginia, and Florida have implemented the software statewide.)

So how does this impact you?

Because the Municipal Code is owned by the citizens of the city and is not governed by copyright laws, Chicagoans can use the data however they like. Accordingly, the implications of this data release can be far-reaching, depending on how people choose to engage with the platform. On a basic level, the site will simply satisfy the curious who wish to browse the Code—primarily for reasons of its availability. Citizens may also rely on the convenience of having access to the Code in order to fact-check a law and determine if they—or others—are acting within its measure. Ideally, both of these actions could lead to higher levels of engagement, in which citizens use the platform for transformative, action-oriented purposes. For example, a recent article on SFGate.com highlighted how the platform in San Francisco is being used as a civic engagement tool through which citizens are working with government to abolish unnecessary laws and update others. Certainly Chicagoans could do the same—or they might creatively devise other various uses for the data to mutually benefit citizens and government alike. Indeed, technologically-minded citizens could be encouraged to use the platform to build applications based on the data useful for city life.

In any capacity, ChicagoCode.org presents an opportunity for community members to engage with city government in an easy and accessible way that values their individual time, insights, and obligations to their public and personal lives. The data has been made available. Now it’s up to Chicagoans to get creative and engage.