Government

How far should openness extend?

How far should openness extend?

Selling the idea of open data seems straightforward. If taxpayers paid for it, a government should share it. But there have to be exceptions for National Security and privacy. » Read more

3 CommentsPosted 26 Jan 2012 by Colin Dodd (Red Hat)

Crowdsourcing the State of the Union

Crowdsourcing the State of the Union

Mozilla partners with public media to empower citizen engagement in U.S. election coverage

Tuesday's State of the Union Address from U.S. President Barack Obama will include something special: crowdsourced captions and subtitles provided by everyday citizens around the world. » Read more

0 CommentsPosted 24 Jan 2012 by OpenMatt

Ideas for your open government

Ideas for your open government

Open Government Partnership is a global effort initialized by the government of United States to make worldwide governments better. To this date, 46 countries have committed to take steps to change their government to more open, more transparent, and more valuable for the citizens.

Individual countries are now working on their commitments for year 2012, and they will present them at an annual OGP conference in Brazil. This is a perfect time to join the process and clearly express what you as a citizen want from your government. » Read more

0 CommentsPosted 23 Jan 2012 by Marek Mahut (Red Hat)

Vote for the 2011 People's Choice Award

Vote for the 2011 People's Choice Award

It's the time of year when we like to celebrate our community. And as we did last year, we want you to choose your favorite author for the 2011 People's Choice Award.

Voting will be open through January 27, 2012.

The winner will be announced on January 30, 2012 on opensource.com.

Voting is now closed.

 

0 CommentsPosted 23 Jan 2012 by opensource.com Admin (Red Hat)

Calling all open government communities: Where do you start?

Calling all open government communities: Where do you start?

How does someone new to the open government movement know where to start? Where can they can get involved and align their interests and passions with a community already hard at work?

There are myriad open government communities, ranging from Code for America to The Sunlight Foundation, GovLoop to CityCamp, and everything in between. Where is the list of organizations that are working specifically on government transparency, collaboration, participation, and open data? Until recently, I'm not sure one existed. » Read more

2 CommentsPosted 20 Jan 2012 by Jason Hibbets (Red Hat)

Honolulu looks to build new local tools and applications

Honolulu looks to build new local tools and applications

For a 24 hour period, on January 20-21, 2012, starting at 5 p.m., a mix of programmers and entrepreneurs--partnered with City and County of Honolulu officials and armed with an broad array of government data--will come together to develop applications designed to improve the day-to-day lives of Honolulu residents. » Read more

0 CommentsPosted 17 Jan 2012 by Ryan

What makes a city open source?

What makes a city open source?

What qualities make a city open source? Is it technology, government policies, or businesses? No. It's the mindset of the people. It's the philosophy and the culture.

About a year ago, I started trying to define an open source city.  I'm very interested in seeing my own city (Raleigh, NC) become a hub for open source and a leader in open government.  With Red Hat's announcement to stay headquartered in Raleigh earlier this month, the City of Raleigh appears poised to "establish a growing ecosystem of partners and providers around the open source leader and to bolster Raleigh’s reputation as a leading open source community."

» Read more

0 CommentsPosted 16 Jan 2012 by Jason Hibbets (Red Hat)

Take our reader survey to help us improve opensource.com

Open source is built on community, and opensource.com is no exception. To make this an effective resource, it helps us to know who you are and what's important to you. Please take a few minutes to fill out our quick reader survey. We'll be accepting responses through January 27.

And of course, you can contact us any time you have questions, problems, or story ideas.

Thanks for being a part of opensource.com. » Read more

3 CommentsPosted 16 Jan 2012 by Ruth Suehle (Red Hat)

NYT features Chicago’s "Adopt-a-Sidewalk"

NYT features Chicago’s "Adopt-a-Sidewalk"

As the Windy City prepares for another major snow season, Chicago’s CTO John Tolva and team have been hard at work, turning out a robust suite of online tools to help citizens track and even support the city’s management efforts: ChicagoShovels.org. The New York Times recently featured their innovative efforts — which ranged from real-time snow plow tracking to 311-powered crowdsourcing:

» Read more
1 CommentPosted 12 Jan 2012 by Abhi Nemani

Does your local government promote meaningful citizen engagement?

Does your local government promote meaningful citizen engagement?

In a previous post I discussed how Faith Gordon requested the City Council in Lackawanna, NY to make available to the public copies of the entire Council meeting agenda not just a summary. Ms. Gordon requested that the entire City Council meeting agenda including resolutions, memos etc. be put on-line, so that the public can see what the Councilmembers see when voting at a meeting.

The response Ms. Gordon received from one Councilmember was, » Read more

1 CommentPosted 11 Jan 2012 by Paul Wolf