I think you’ve got this backwards. I’d argue that Chicago, and every other major city in this country that has a digital services team or innovation office, owes a debt of gratitude to their local civic hacking community. These communities were the ones that first demonstrated to governments the possibilities of what open data could do and what it could mean for how governments to what they do. I say this as someone who started out in a civic hacking community, joined government and helped establish a government digital team.