THE CITY AND COUNTY OF DURHAM BEGIN OPEN DATA PARTNERSHIP

-

This article is a reprint of a Durham Press Release.

A wealth of public data exists, but accessing it can sometimes be time consuming. Now, thanks to a new local government partnership, “open data” in Durham is just months away from becoming a reality.

The City of Durham and Durham County Government are embarking on an open data partnership that will lay the groundwork for businesses, non-profits, journalists, universities, and residents to access and use the wealth of public data available between the two government organizations, while becoming even more transparent to the residents of Durham.

A relatively new concept according to technology industry analyst Gartner, Inc., “open data” refers to the idea that certain data should be freely available to everyone to use and republish as they wish, without restrictions from copyright, patents or other forms of control.

“This is a unique collaborative effort that demonstrates a regional commitment,” said Durham County Manager Wendell Davis. “There will be shared costs, a common platform and portal, and a combined effort by both organizations to reach into the community to bring about business development and new community benefits and services.”

Plans are underway now for a joint work plan and project framework, with a projected site launch date of summer 2015. “Durham is uniquely positioned to be a very successful site that demonstrates the business and social potential for open data,” said Durham City Manager Thomas J. Bonfield. “Our community’s entrepreneurial energy and creativity gives us an advantage to innovate new ways of doing business by making information readily accessible.”

Bonfield noted that, over the past two years, open data “hackathons” have been conducted at American Tobacco leading to the development of applications that provide important information for consumers. Code for America, advocates for Open Data, has already worked with the City and County to deliver an application tied to the health inspection reports for local restaurants.

“Between the City and County, a lot of information and data exists in many areas, from transportation to public health,” said City of Durham Mayor William V. “Bill” Bell. “This information has always been publicly available, but open data makes it easier to use by developers, marketers, community enrichment agencies and the general public.”

The City-County partnership joins other local government open data efforts that include Wake County and the City of Raleigh. For information about Durham’s open data partnership, contact Chief Information Officer Kerry Goode with the City’s Technology Solutions Department at (919) 560-4122, ext. 33248 or by email at Kerry.Goode@Durhamnc.gov, or Chief Information Officer Greg Marrow with the County’s Information Services and Technology Department at (919) 560-7003 or by email at gmarrow@dconc.gov.

About the City of Durham

The more than 2,400 employees of the City of Durham are dedicated to the service of the City’s residents – to provide quality services to make Durham a great place to live, work and play. Guided by the City’s Strategic Plan, 25 departments work to ensure the health, safety and welfare of residents and visitors. Services range from building inspections and code enforcement, to providing emergency services, to trash and waste collection, to constructing and maintaining streets, to providing essential water and sewer services.

To learn more, visit http://durhamnc.gov, likehttp://Facebook.com/CityofDurhamNC, followhttp://Twitter.com/CityofDurhamNC, or watch Durham Television Network (Time Warner Cable channel 8, 97-5 and AT&T U-verse channel 99) andhttp://YouTube.com/CityofDurhamNC.

About Durham County

Durham County is one of the fastest growing counties in North Carolina and in the nation. The economic diversity of the county ranges from agricultural communities to the internationally known Research Triangle Park, which is home to more than 50 major research and development organizations. Durham County’s population grew from about 180,000 in 1990, to more than 280,000 in 2013. To learn more, visit http://dconc.gov.

Original article: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/city-county-durham-begin-open-jason-hare?trk=mp-reader-card

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Podcast: Open Data Discussions with Anthony Fung

-
Image
A look back at Virginia’s 4 years of data innovation with Anthony Fung, Deputy Secretary of Technology for the Commonwealth of Virginia  Welcome to the OpenDataSoft Leadership Podcast Series, “Open Data Discussions”. Each month, Jason Hare, our Open Data Evangelist, features a different open data program around the country to discuss what has made it successful. These examples will provide insights and strategies that you can implement in your own city. We had the pleasure of welcoming Anthony Fung, Deputy Secretary of Technology for the Commonwealth of Virginia for the fifth podcast in our series. Anthony discussed various subjects, including: What role does open data play in policymaking at the state level in Virginia? Does his department work on ensuring open data quality? What are some of the steps he makes in ensuring sound data governance? How did Virginia come up with this technology and engagement solutions?  How, for exampl...
Read more

WHITE HOUSE OPEN DATA INNOVATION SUMMIT - WHAT I SAID, WHAT I MEANT TO SAY

-
Image
+OpenDataSoft participated in the celebration that was 8 years in the making at the White House. Yesterday, for the first time, the White House held the 2016 Open Data Innovation Summit.  I work for OpenDataSoft as the Open Data Evangelist. I was asked to introduce the White House Agenda and then to speak on Civic Innovation regarding Open Data. What I said and what I wanted to say were different. The event was full of excitement and also of reflection Megan Smith and Tony Scott kicked off the event touting the 200k datasets that had been released through Data.Gov. Certainly this is refreshing from even a decade ago when serious effort and even lawsuits were required to make data available to the public. That all was not good and could be better was brought up by +Alex Howard from the Sunlight Foundation. Alex noted that HTML and PDFs were counted among the "datasets" being released. Note that while HTML and PDFs are indeed 1 star ...
Read more

Open Data Licensing

-
Image
Everything you wanted to know but you were afraid to ask. Making data open and available is not just about choosing a format or having an API. A poor choice in your license can prevent people from using them. A traditional open license reassures potential users that their work on the data will be useful in the long run. So, what license should you pick for your data to be broadly used? There are a few things to consider. Choosing a license for your open data can usually be one of the biggest challenges for an open data project. There are plenty of licenses available for your data. Choosing one mostly depends on the usage and reach you want to give to your project. CHOOSE A LICENSE: BASED ON NATIONAL, INTERNATIONAL AND LOCAL STATUTES IN ADDITION TO REUSE It should be noted that different parts of the world use data licensing terms differently. In the US, works in the “public domain” are works are not covered by intellectual property rights, such as copyright. The copyright mig...
Read more