Over the past four years, we have seen an incredible shift in government data: more is open source and more information is being measured—especially in urban environments. Cities are developing unique data sets that include Urban Analytics where real-time information about traffic and pollution is measured by a variety of tools. This data is expandingRead… Read more »
Socrata has released an interesting benchmark study on open government data, which looks at the state of open data from the perspectives of citizens, developers and government. It is interesting to compare which data government stakeholders consider important to publish, compared to what citizens feel is important. Looking at Very Important from the tables (below)Read… Read more »
This is the second installment in a two-part series covering GovLoop and Esri’s virtual training event on open data and GIS. The first installment highlights a number of success stories at the state and federal levels. “I see the role of GIS as being able to make sense of [health] data. A lot of theRead… Read more »
The Spatial Industries Business Association (SIBA) in conjunction with the Victorian Department of State Development, Business and Innovation (DSDBI), have launched a data competition to identify approaches using Victorian government open data to improve awareness and literacy for social and safety issues. The competition is open for registration, with entries closing 28 February and winnersRead… Read more »
If you ask 20 people to define open government, you will get 20 different responses. The lack of uniformed definitions makes implementing open government services very difficult. It would be like asking a pastry chef to bake a cherry pie and then providing 20 different recipes. The chef would have no idea which pie youRead… Read more »
Going to college is an exciting, terrifying and downright confusing time for students and parents alike. Choosing the right college is a difficult choice. Paying for that college is tricky and figuring out student aid is almost impossible. That is why the White House Innovation fellows were tasked with opening up Education Department data toRead… Read more »
I’ve been completing a survey for the Spatial Industries Business Association (SIBA) related to the Queensland Government’s open data initiative, where one of the questions asked Can you list or describe any learnings that would be useful in Queensland? I’ve provided a number of my thoughts on this topic, having closely observed open data initiativesRead… Read more »
It’s time we start treating our data with the same love and respect that geeks treat their code. It’s time that we begin treating data as open source, not simply as something to be published. Putting process on a pedestal Geeks learned some two-decades ago that precision and transparency are everything. If so much asRead… Read more »
Default open data; that was one of the big takeaways from the Digital Government Strategy released last year. But the DGS was a bit murkey on how agencies should implement open data. The White House has formalized that dilemma with the Open Data Directive released in May. Hudson Hollister is the Executive Director for theRead… Read more »
The White House is ushering a new normal when it comes the federal government’s data. The administration’s new policy and executive order are the forcing functions to make data accessible and open that has been missing over the last decade. The Sunlight Foundation’s policy director John Wonderlich told Chris Dorobek on the DorobekINSIDER program thatRead… Read more »