Posts

The Effect of the White House Open Data Policy Release on GitHub

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  What is the White House Open Data Policy?  Recently there has been a lot of buzz around the release of the White House’s new  Open Data Policy released in  Memorandum M-13-13 . For those of you that may not have read the memorandum in its entirety it directs federal agencies to make all data open and machine readable by default. Obviously there are caveats to that. Agencies can redact data that does not meet disclosure standards regarding security and privacy. The excitement centers around the language of “open by default”. The Real Impact of “Open by Default” What impact does this have on open data initiatives at the municipal level and more directly, how does this affect Open Raleigh? Some immediate impacts are listed below: M-13-13 creates a new standard for governments to emulate. “Open by default” is a completely different paradigm in regards to an enterprise data strategy. All enterprise applications at the White House level will now have to make machine readable open data as p

Open Raleigh and Open Data: Definitions

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  Above is a heat map of geospatial data from the City of Raleigh's Open Data Portal This is a reuse of a great post on http://www.opensource.com by  +Jason Hibbets . See the Creative Commons attribute at the end of this post. Open Raleigh One of the keys to a successful open data portal is to make it useful for the end user. Citizens and developers should be able to understand data sets without needing a PhD. Many folks have followed the progress of Raleigh, North Carolina's open data initiative, which  launched  a beta of their  data.raleighnc.gov  portal in March 2013. One of the most important parts of Raleigh's open data initiative is that it's not just about the data. The city staff working on the data policy and the open data portal have a full and complete understanding that presenting raw data sets only gets you halfway to your open data mission. Without visualization tools or a way for the average person to understand what the data means, the job is only half

Triangle Data Jam Information

  Forward Impact is excited to announce that the nation’s first-ever Regional Data Palooza is coming to the Triangle, and we’d like to invite you to participate!  What is Data Palooza? Data Palooza is a regional open-data competition that connects local experts, innovators, and entrepreneurs to relevant, clean data drawn from federal, state, and local resources to develop applications and solutions that catalyze positive community and economic impact. Previous Data Palooza events have taken place in Washington, DC, using open data to spark innovation in the fields of health, education, and energy. By hosting the first-ever regional Datapalooza, the Triangle will be recognized as a center for open data, collaboration, and entrepreneurial innovation, furthering our goal to make our region a top five entrepreneurial community in the country. When is it? Data Palooza is a two-part event, beginning with a competition in April. The competition, called NC Data Jam, will take place at HUB Rale

Triangle Regional Data Jam

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The Where and What Yesterday when I was writing about the history of the Triangle Data Jam I forgot to post where and when and a link to the event registration. The Data Jam is Really Happening Dr. Rajiv Shah and Todd Park at the USAID Data Jam The Data Jam that is happening in two weeks came together through the efforts of many folks. +Jason Widen, +Mital Patel, +Chris Gergen, +Erin Monday, +Zach Ambrose all worked very hard and graciously included me in the club starting this past December. It All Started When... In December at the White House there was a USAID Data Jam . Until that moment I only thought of the White House in terms of data.gov . I was not aware of the amazing job The Office of Science and Technology does in promoting the use of open data. I attended the event. Everyone else there was Federal and I was the only municipal person. I keep meaning to blog about. I returned and I gave my presentation to the Raleigh HUB. It was Chris Gergen that got me the invite from Nic

Tension between Open Data Directives and Privacy Protection

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                      Big Data Creative Commons I posted some comments on the Open Knowledge Foundation's new mailing list "My Data and Personal Data" with an appeal toward a dilemma I am facing. How do I reasonably protect privacy while at the same time providing a useful open data portal that makes a difference in my city? Can I protect your data?  Not yet. The answer is not simply "yes I can" or "it's just not possible" but rather how one defines useful and how one defines privacy and personally identifiable information. Defining the question as more about something lacking than in something that cannot be resolved. It is not the case that I am unable to, it is the case that I am not legally entitled to. For most Americans, privacy is something we worry about but with which we make little, if any effort to protect. Santa Clara University discussed changing attitudes in American thinking on privacy. In Are Attitudes about Privacy Changing? the a

Working On-Site at Socrata

I just finished my slide-deck for my presentation to City Council next Tuesday on Raleigh's new open data portal. I have twenty minutes to present 6 months of work and to showcase what I built with the Socrata team last week. Here are some reflections on my time there. Visiting Socrata I went to Seattle to visit my implementation team at Socrata HQ on February 24. I landed in Seattle on Sunday and gave myself a walking tour around the Pioneer Square area that afternoon. Monday I woke up at 3:30 AM local time and started doing my preparation work. My meeting with Kellie was at 1pm. I finished my day to day work and made my way over to Socrata. I met with Saf, Chris Metcalf and several other folks. Saf made sure I understood two things about visiting Socrata: Make yourself at home with coffee, snacks or beverages Follow the recycling bin signage very carefully! Working with Socrata Working with Socrata is like being immersed in all of the open data intiatives world-wide all at once.

FEB 27 Notes from Cary Open Data Day: The Concept of "My Data"

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  Recently +Laura James brought up a concept that I have seen floating around. The concept of "My Data" and "Open Data". She wrote on the OKFN blog here: blog.okfn.org/2013/02/22/open-data-my-data . Now while I was speaking at the Cary Open Data Day during our policy session and gentleman asked me a questions about personal data. This started with my keynote remarks regarding privacy policy and privacy in practice. In my remarks I discussed some of the diagrams used by +David Eaves to explain the difference between personal data and open data. David used wonderful Venn diagrams to show where personal data and open government data intersect. I have provided a link to this great post on personal data here: http://eaves.ca/2013/01/07/the-journal-https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5930427769440764073#editor/target=post;postID=706240073538139688news-gun-map-open-vs-personal-data/ This set off a series of questions about how privacy works in the real world, how we