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Status Update on US Open Data Collaboration

Angela Guess — Mon, 20 May 2013 14:30:37 +0000

Todd Park

Justin Kern of Information Management reports, “The U.S. government is outlining its new program for an open source repository to foster collaboration on getting more information to citizens in a faster manner. Federal CTO Todd Park formally introduced Project Open Data on Thursday in a blog post, and gave an update on its first days of activity. In the first 24 hours after Project Open Data was published, more than two dozen contributors submitted to its GitHub platform, including fixes to broken Web links and policy input. Other, meatier contributions, or ‘pull requests,’ included a tool that converts spreadsheets and databases into APIs for ease of use by developers, and code that translates geographic data from locked formats into open, available formats, according to Park.” continued…

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San Francisco Boosts Open Data Efforts

Angela Guess — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 13:00:07 +0000

Joshua Sabatini of The San Francisco Examiner reports, “San Francisco has fallen behind in the open-data movement, but city officials say a new proposal will once again put it on the forefront. Three years ago, The City adopted its first open-data ordinance to encourage departments to release their data sets — i.e., restaurant health scores or details on special events in The City. But the effort appears to have wilted, and cities such as New York, Philadelphia and Chicago have since created more aggressive initiatives than San Francisco. ‘Unfortunately we have fallen a little bit behind,’ said Board of Supervisors President David Chiu. ‘We have about 500 city-maintained data sets. But there are literally thousands of data sets that we could put out to the public’.” continued…

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Chicago Uses GitHub to Open Up Data

Angela Guess — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 14:30:00 +0000

Alex Howard of O’Reilly Radar reports, “GitHub has been gaining new prominence as the use of open source software in government grows. Earlier this month, I included a few thoughts from Chicago’s chief information officer, Brett Goldstein, about the city’s use of GitHub, in a piece exploring GitHub’s role in government. While Goldstein says that Chicago’s open data portal will remain the primary means through which Chicago releases public sector data, publishing open data on GitHub is an experiment that will be interesting to watch, in terms of whether it affects reuse or collaboration around it. In a followup email, Goldstein, who also serves as Chicago’s chief data officer, shared more about why the city is on GitHub and what they’re learning. Our discussion follows.” continued…

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New Contest: Visualize Open Data & Win $2K

Angela Guess — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 11:50:44 +0000

The Guardian, Google, and the Open Knowledge Foundation have launched a new competition to find the best open government data visualization. The announcement states: “Governments around the world are releasing a tidal wave of open data – on everything from spending through to crime and health. Now you can compare national, regional and city-wide data from hundreds of locations around the world. But how good is this data? We want to see what you can do with it. What apps and visualisations can you make with this data? We want to see how the data changes the way you see the world. In conjunction with Google and the Open Knowledge Foundation (who will be helping us judge the results), see if you can win the $2,000 prize.” continued…

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Japan Embraces Open Data, Launches Multiple Open Projects

Angela Guess — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 13:00:14 +0000

Julia Wetherfell of Tech President reports, “Last summer, the Japanese government announced a new open data strategy, with the intention of connecting the country’s governmental, industrial, and academic sectors. Now Japan is set to have a record year for open data projects, with open government advocates leading the way. Global Voices reported yesterday on a cluster of civic hacking events occurring this winter. An Open Data Day was held in Yokohama last weekend, where participating developers worked to make public services and cultural resources more accessible to citizens and visitors to the city. Japan’s branch of the Open Knowledge Foundation, founded last summer, is partnering with Hack for Japan, established following the 2011 earthquake, to run events in Tokyo and elsewhere for International Open Data Day on February 23.” continued…

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DERI Researchers Spearhead ‘Puzzled by Policy’ Project

Angela Guess — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 18:00:46 +0000

Marie Madden of the Galway Independent reports, “Researchers at the Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI) in NUI Galway are leading a multi-million euro European Union initiative aimed at government transparency and giving citizens a voice in creating policies. The project, entitled ‘Puzzled by Policy’ has now launched a new widget (http://join.puzzledbypolicy.eu) that provides a fun way for users to find out about immigration policy and become actively involved in the immigration policy-making process. This unique widget encourages users to explore their opinions on various immigration topics, as well as enabling them to see how their views compare to those of policy-makers, NGOs, and other immigration stakeholders.” continued…

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White House Changing Policies to Open Up More Data…

Angela Guess — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 12:30:44 +0000

…and make it machine readable. Jason Miller of Federal News Radio reports, “White House technology leaders are close to issuing a new policy that will change the way agencies release data to the public. Todd Park, the federal chief technology officer, said Friday the new policy is one of several steps to spur the release of more data from agencies. ‘We are going to continue to enlist additional federal agencies in the open data initiatives program as fast track liberators of key existing data sets that could create large scale economics benefit while protecting privacy,’ Park said at the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology meeting in Washington. ‘We also, as per the recently announced Digital Government Strategy just this past summer, with OMB will be releasing policy soon that makes open and computer readable the default status of new data created by the government going forward’.” continued…

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Open Data and Recovery from Hurricane Sandy

Angela Guess — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 14:30:07 +0000

Rachel Haot of the Open Gov Partnership reports, “From hackathons to social media, open government is transforming the way that Mayor Bloomberg’s administration and New York City government serve the public. And there has been no greater testament to open government’s potential than the strategy and innovation in action during Hurricane Sandy. Learning from our experience during Hurricane Irene, in the days leading up to Hurricane Sandy’s landfall in New York City, government technologists reached out to the data science community to share recently updated hurricane evacuation zone maps based on up-to-the-minute flooding projections.” continued…

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Data.gov Moving to Open Source Platform

Angela Guess — Thu, 27 Dec 2012 18:00:21 +0000

The team at Nextgov reports, “The team that manages Data.gov is well on its way to making the government data repository open source using a new back-end called the Open Government Platform, officials said during a Web discussion Wednesday. The governments of India and Ghana have already launched beta versions of their data catalogues on the open source platform, said Jeanne Holm who heads the Data.gov team. Government developers from the U.S. and India built the OGPL jointly. They posted it to the code sharing site GitHub where other nations and developers can adopt it as is or amend it to meet their specific needs.” continued…

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Co-Chair of the Open Government Partnership Shares Vision for Open Gov

Angela Guess — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 18:00:07 +0000

Francis Maude, Minister of the United Kingdom’s Cabinet Office, recently shared his vision for Open Government. Maude writes, “The movement for transparency and openness in government took decisive steps forward last week. As lead co-chair of the Open Government Partnership, the UK hosted the first ministerial level meeting in Britain of this growing international initiative. But this meeting wasn’t just symbolically significant. We put in place key measures that will help move the OGP from fine words to accountable actions.”

Maude continues, “At the same time, the Open Data Institute, based in London’s Tech City, and the first organisation of its kind anywhere in the world, officially opened for business. continued…

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Crowdsourcing the UK’s Freedom of Information Act

Angela Guess — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 18:00:07 +0000

The Guardian reports, “The [British] government has launched an open consultation on the guidance that public authorities will use to enhance the right to data in the Freedom of Information (FoI) Act. These provisions, covering the re-use of data and the form in which it is made available, are expected to come into force in April 2013, and – delivering on a commitment in the open data white paper – we are opening up the process of developing the guidance to the public. The white paper presented clear actions to strengthen people’s access to data, improve its usability and ensure that its full potential for economic and social growth is unleashed.” continued…

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Upcoming Hackathon Plans to Track Flow of Money in EU

Angela Guess — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 14:30:54 +0000

2011 Knight News Challenge Winner Lucy Chambers recently wrote, “As a journalist, to understand European Union institutions, policies and commitments, you have to look where the money goes and understand who affects the money flow in the EU. As the influence of Brussels lobbyists grows, it is increasingly important to draw the connections between lobbying, policy-making and funding. The EU publishes information on its spending and also maintains a transparency register. These, however, are difficult for journalists and citizens to use. With OpenSpending, we set out to use the power of technology to catalyze greater government transparency by providing new tools for media and citizens to more easily access government data in searchable, sortable and machine readable formats.” continued…

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Open Government Partnership Celebrates First Anniversary

Angela Guess — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 13:00:33 +0000

Kedar Pavgi of NextGov.com reports, “A year ago, President Obama and 46 other heads of state launched the Open Government Partnership, an initiative designed to increase transparency within governments around the world. The group’s declaration said that all adherent countries would: (1) Promote openness, because more information about governmental activities should be timely and freely available to people; (2) Engage citizens in decision-making, because this makes government more innovative and responsive; (3) Implement the highest standards of professional integrity, because those in power must serve the people and not themselves; and (4) Increase access to new technologies because of their unprecedented potential to help people realize their aspirations for access to information and a more powerful voice in how they are governed.” continued…

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Congress.gov an Improvement, but Not Fully Open

Angela Guess — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 18:00:59 +0000

Alex Howard of the O’Reilly Radar reports that the newly launched Congress.gov is more responsive, but falls short in terms of linked open data. He writes, “Today, the nation’s repository for its laws launched a new beta website at Congress.gov and announced that it would eventually replace Thomas.gov, the 17-year-old website that represented one of the first significant forays online for Congress. The new website will educate the public looking for information on their mobile devices about the lawmaking process, but it falls short of the full promise of embracing the power of the Internet. (More on that later).” continued…

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Open Data Lessons at ODCC

Angela Guess — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 11:48:24 +0000

The Open Data Cities Conference happened last Friday, and Adam Tinworth was on hand. He has provided informative recaps of several of the presentations on One Man and His Blog. One of the most intriguing is his recap of Emer Coleman’s reflections on her experience building the London Data Store. Tinworth reports that the first lesson Coleman learned was “It was never about the data.” He writes, “The conversations are not about data – they’re about the threat it was to the public sector. It creates a totally different approach to governance, so you gave have mature conversations with the electorate, who have the same data that government does. You move from the tyranny of the experts to the wisdom of the crowds. But that’s uncomfortable for back office statisticians who have not been used to being in the public gaze.” continued…

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