Benjamin J. Balter's Blog Posts Tagged 'federal' (3)

Despite increasing public support (as well as a number of executive mandates) publishing public data in a machine-readable format is not as simple as pressing the “publish” button. Why? Equally important as exposing the information itself is fostering a vibrant developer ecosystem around it. By making the publishing agency, not the public, responsible for making information immediately useful, government can lower the barriers associated with consuming its data and introduce additional…

“Fix typo.” Not quite “one small step for man,” but a significant first nonetheless. These simple words, typed by an open-source developer operating under the pseudonym “iceeey,” may represent the first collaborative effort between the federal government and the broader open-source community, and surely represents a tangible win for the open-government movement as a whole.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is in a unique position. As the youngest federal agency, they…

Most often, when we talk about open source in government, it’s talked about in one of two ways: either it’s the pitfalls of the federal IT procurement model that can’t seem to comprehend a world in which open-source is an option, much less potentially a superior choice (“acquisition as a roadblock“), or it’s reiterating…