Jason Hare's Data Management Blog

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...

In looking forward to the next administration, the Center for Open Data Enterprise is excited to present the Open Data Transition Report, a nonpartisan informational report that offers an action plan for developing government data policy and programs. We invite you to attend a briefing featuring an overview of the report and perspectives from several experts. Featured speakers will talk about the importance of open government data and the opportunities for open data to make an impact. An Action Plan for Open Data in the Next Administration 12:00pm - 2:00pm October 24, 2016 National Press Club, Holeman Lounge The briefing will feature the following speakers: The Honorable Michelle K. Lee - Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office Max Stier - President and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service Shelley Metzenbaum - Good government catalyst; Senior...

Written by Sam McClenney.  View original article > The topic of macro-openness and the idea of openness as an institution (which is the next topic) overlap a good bit and so in the interest of not being redundant, I’m going to try and keep them as separate and unique as possible. That means this Medium post is going to be a little shorter than the others I have done. It also means that it will be more focused as well. Pretty much all of my Medium posts up until now have been about openness at a very local level, aka micro-openness. Here’s an interesting question though. How do all these grassroots organizations or open evangelists know when something is open? What are the requirements for data to be open? What technological barometers have to be met for something to be considered open source? Who makes these decisions? How are standards set for openness? All of these are questions that we answer by looking at openness at a macro level. The White...

+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 ...

OPEN DATA PANEL TO BE FEATURED WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 26 SEPTEMBER 26, 2016 Open Data will be a featured panel discussion at the All Things Open conference this year. With a new administration set to transition into place in January and multiple new initiatives starting at both the state and federal levels, the topic has never been more important.  The session, which will take place Wednesday, October 26 at 1:30 pm ET,  will feature some of the foremost experts in the world. The panel will be moderated by OpenDataSoft's Open Data Evangelist, Jason Hare. Topics to be discussed will include: The New Open Data Transition Report Future opportunities for Open Data at the local and federal levels with the DATA Act How the Open Data landscape is evolving, particularly through Demand Driven Open Data (DDOD) Future opportunities in open data at the Federal and local levels How the panel’s insights can...

The Yu and Robinson article "The New Ambiguity of 'Open Government'" was something I read a few years ago. I disagree that the edge of open government is going away. Yes there are data sets being published that have nothing to do with accountability. Yes there are open data initiatives that stand up a few data sets and call it "open". This does not mean that all or most open data professionals do this. This whole line of "government versus the people" is one of the reasons Public Sector Agencies (PSA's) have trouble getting open data initiatives launched in the first place. The main issue is the disconnect between PSAs and the private sector. There is little, if any, discussion on the value-add of releasing these data. This is not purely a government issue. Private sector, with a few shining exceptions (BuildingEye for example) have shied away from using or even trying to ...