Jason Hare's Data Management Blog

The Open Government Partnership was launched in 2011 to provide an international platform for domestic reformers committed to making their governments more open, accountable, and responsive to citizens. I wrote a blog post for the Open Government Partnership in 2013. The post called for an international body, independent of the OGP, to oversee OGP country commitments. At the time I named the Open Data Institute (ODI) as a possible neutral world leading organization to oversee, rank and hold accountable countries that made commitments. 3 years passed and I realize the ODI is not the right vehicle. One of the global NGOs like the World Bank might be a possibility as a watchdog. Open Government: Ambiguity through “Open Washing” I read the Yu and Robinson article “The New Ambiguity of Open Government” 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 ...

OpenDataSoft is thrilled to kick the Summer off with an exciting announcement: we are proud to have been chosen as a winner in the2016 Amazon Web Services City on a Cloud Innovation Challenge, solidifying our status as a global Open Data innovator! The Global City on a Cloud Innovation Challenge is a program that recognizes developers or local and regional governments that are innovating for the benefit of citizens, using the AWS Cloud. Awards are given across three categories: Partners in Innovation, Dream Big, and Best Practices. OpenDataSoft was chosen for the Partners in Innovation Award for providing an application that solves local government challenges. A panel of worldwide experts selected 15 winners from a pool of 43 finalists. The awards are based on the solution’s impact, the long-term likelihood of success, potential to help other local governments solve similar challenges, and the implementation of AWS services. We would like to offer our congratulations to our fello...

The other day, I flooded a customer website licensed for 75 datasets with 318 additional in five minutes while using the OpenDataSoft ArcGIS Harvester. Yup. I did that. I felt not so much like “Darth Vader” as much as I did “Dark Helmet” (Rick Moranis in Spaceballs, see below if this reference goes over your head). I was using OpenDataSoft’s ArcGIS Harvester. It’s still in private beta, but will likely be available by the end of December (consider it a Christmas gift to you!) for data publishing. Luckily, the Harvester also came with a delete button so the customer was not affected. I took the usual ribbing from my co-workers. David Thoumas added that we do not need “too many datasets”. I was awed with the power of the Harvester. I had seen it work a year ago and take most of an afternoon to mine data. I innocently put the root of the GIS server into the Harvester, and suddenly it was pulling in data at “Ludicrous Speed”. Ian Henshaw noted we hit hyper drive...

I was invited to attend the Round Table on Data Quality in Open Data held at the White House in Washington, D.C. on April 27th, 2016. The round table was the second in a series of four meetings around the open data initiative sponsored by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and the Center for Open Data Enterprise. This round table was intended to bring together experts to advise the White House Office of Science and Technology on how best to address data quality. DATA QUALITY IS AN ISSUE THAT THREATENS THE VIABILITY OF OPEN DATA Project Open Data is designed to make data held by government agencies more accessible to the public as a way to promote transparency in government operations and to promote business through the incorporation of open data into commercial products. The April 27th round table focused on the issue of data quality in open data. DATA QUALITY IS A GLOBAL PROBLEM In September 2014, Martin Doyle wrote an article for Business2Community on ...

Are we convening a community? The US Nodes have voiced their opinion. Second annual report  celebrates hitting reach, influence and impact targets The ODI has announced that it has been awarded a grant of $4.1m from  Omidyar Network , aimed at creating value from open data across the world. Most of the nodes in the US decided to close because the new unfranchise model from the ODI was not financially viable. Some nodes felt that the ODI was competing with their own nodes in regards to opportunities for working on open data tenders. The former US ODI nodes have decided to convene a congress and create a network of nodes in the US that champion the "convening of a community" around open data. A US Open Data Congress could define how to choose a platform provider, how to choose and evaluate business services around the open data programs and provide guidance beyond transparency. We l...

The US Congress is working on Open Data legislation to protect current Open Data policy. While this all sounds good, it is also important to lay out a clear picture of what has been done so far to detect the right Open Data legislation opportunities. THIS ALL SOUNDS GREAT Congress is stepping up to protect Open Data! When I read this I was struck by two feelings: Elation, and Surprise. The Center for Data Innovation published the who and what of this legislation on April 16, 2016. Quoting from the article: Sponsored by Representatives Derek Kilmer (D-WA) and Blake Farenthold (R-TX) in the House and Senators Brian Schatz (D-HI) and Ben Sasse (R-NE) in the Senate, the bill would make changes to the U.S. Code to institutionalize open data best practices, such as publishing government data, by default, using open and machine readable formats and with an open license that imposes no restrictions on reuse. “Open by default” has been a mainstay of the open data movement for years, and for...

I thought I was done with Open Data in the late Spring of 2015. I had experienced severe brain trauma from an accident and penned my retirement letter on my blog the same day Mike Bracken left the UK’s Government Digital Service. So why did I come back? Mostly because I have recovered. But I also came back because I believe that there is a superior product to deliver data storytelling. That product is OpenDataSoft. I have spent the last half-decade as an open data pundit. I worked hard to keep my comments agnostic to the technology. But OpenDataSoft's platform, work culture and ethics won me over. I am a believer, and I believe the best Open Data Platform solution is OpenDataSoft. If you live in the US and have something to do with Open Data then you probably know my name. Among the American Open Data portals I have built are the City of Raleigh, City and County of Durham, Gainesville, Roseville, Newark, Rutgers and now the Town of Chapel Hill. We may have met at the World...