--- title: 'Why write for Justice Hub?' author: apoorv date: '2020-05-02' tags: [writing] categories: [writing] summary: Writing is our way of giving back, sharing what we learned and asking for help where needed. --- The ideas behind a data or a community hub are not new. A few members of the Justice Hub team are part of one or the other open data hubs as either users or volunteers. Our work around a few data driven or empirical legal research projects, contributed to this idea of curating a repository of well documented datasets in the law and justice space and with that we started exploring this uncharted territory. There are a few common challenges which people face when they start working on a new idea, project or a proposal that involves working with legal datasets. Finding data is hard, working with external data is harder and building trust around the datasets, especially when the data collection methodologies are not available, is the hardest. One way of solving some of these challenges, at-least, is through well maintained open data ecosystems that are often backed by a strong community of users, contributors and maintainers. We started building the [Justice Hub](https://justicehub.in/) in December 2019. It began as a short experiment, where we wanted to explore a few ideas that we had submitted in our grant proposal for the [Agami - Data4Justice challenge](https://www.agami.in/data-challenge-2019). In the next six months, all we wanted to do was to learn, from the creators of data, from the users of legal data and from the existing data ecosystems that are operational throughout the world in different sectors. Our idea was to get closer to this community and learn not only about the challenges it faces, but also it's strengths. We believe that any project or initiative that wants to work for and with the community, needs to constantly learn about its stronger points and curate ideas around them. Doing this is far more productive and engaging rather than just working just with an intention to help someone externally. {{< youtube a5xR4QB1ADw >}} This talk by [Cormac Russell](https://www.nurturedevelopment.org/who-we-are/cormac-russell/), on _Sustainable community development_ better articulates this idea. An in-person discussion with our partners or a group meeting to brain storm a few ideas for the Hub, is the most productive way to collaborate. But given the diversity, both geographical and in terms of work, sometimes it gets difficult to keep everyone involved about the activities around the Justice Hub. This is why, it is important as a group to write about these ideas, share them in a language that people understand and relate to. Only then we'll be able to walk on the path of inclusivity and collaboration. We, ourselves learn a lot from similar initiatives from around the globe. If they had not shared their journey, we could have not landed here at this time. Writing is our way of giving back, sharing what we have learned and asking for help where needed. This post focuses on the _Why of writing_ and we have another post that talks about the process on [_how we write_](https://hackmd.io/@justice-hub/BkIOvfjYL). Please check it out as well, if you'd like to write for the Justice Hub. Also, checkout the post by [Richard Bartlett](https://twitter.com/RichDecibels) on [_Minimum Viable Post: the Lean Approach to Writing Your Masterpiece_](https://medium.com/swlh/rich-s-general-theory-of-blogging-aa2cb502fbc) Here is a list of articles around legal data, data collaborative and everything in between: * [A Data Commons for Law](https://medium.com/legal-design-and-innovation/a-data-commons-for-law-60e4c4ad9340) * [Closing the data divide: the need for open data](https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2020/04/21/open-data-campaign-divide/) * [Anything by the Humanitarian Data Exchange (HDX) ](https://centre.humdata.org/category/blog/) Read something interesting ? Please, [edit this page](https://hackmd.io/ma5EG4o1SPWpZbkK0WVhQA) and add links to this list.
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Content to write for the Justice Hub

Blogs The CoViD Blog - Detail out a few collaborations On initial collaborators - The D4J participants and their journeys What is the open data pledge and how it helps the Justice Hub The JH Engineering Blog (Talk about the architecture and why did we choose to go with an open model of development) On Data Governance - Who are we and why does it matter ? The JH logo and what it represents Designing the UI for the Justice Hub The plan on growing the data as commons in the law and justice sector

5/21/2020
Learnings from The Humanitarian Data eXchange (HDX)

The Humanitarian Data Exchange or HDX, an initiative started by UN OCHA (The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs), was created to find, share and use humanitarian data all in one place. The platform itself hosts a lot of important datasets, which are maintained by the respective team and users, that are used at crucial times especially during emergencies and natural disasters. It's an inspirational example for us now as we start building a very similar platform for the Law and Justice ecosystem in the country. While the data in this sector has the potential for saving lives and protecting the rights of individuals, the accessibility of these datasets is still a big problem to solve for. The systems of law and justice are now attempting to embrace the possibilities offered by adapting technology. This journey is one, which all of us play a part, people working within the judiciary and even outside the judiciary. Doing this collaboratively might help to create the kind of systems that work for us. The problem of accesibility is not limited to a few datasets or organsiations, but is present around most of the sources of legal data. Improving the source itself is one solution, but it requires a lot of stakeholders and a lot of itme. Meanwhile, another way is for organisations to come together and start sharing the public datasets they curate, clean and work on. This not only help people discover good datasets, but also helps people, who are responsible to maintain the source, to identify the gaps and challenges in the current systems of data generation. It is important for us to learn from platforms like HDX, who have been a part of this journey and have curated and worked around a lot of challenges that we might face in the fuure. At this stage, we can only appreciate the efforts of the HDX team in documenting their learnings and sharing it with the larger community. It helps all of us in ways more than one. As a shareback to the community, we will by curating a few blogs around data sharing, governance, processes, community etc from the humdata portal.

5/5/2020
How to contribute articles to Justice Hub - The Process

The process is designed to simplify the journey from an idea to an article. The Justice Hub uses HackMD as the primary platform to write, edit and publish collaboratively. Follow these steps to start contributing blogs to Justice Hub: Create an account on HackMD Share your HackMD username with the Justice Hub team. This can be done in several ways: If you're already part of the core team, then share it directly on the chat platform Write to us at info@justicehub.in Create an issue on the Github repository here

5/2/2020
Legal data platforms

Humanitarian Data Exchange Prison Policy Initiative Human Rights Data Analysis Group Eviction Lab GovLab World Justice Project Data Justice Lab Comparative Competition Law Chicago Data Collaborative The Stanford Open Policing Project

5/2/2020
Read more from Justice Hub
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