open data - Page number 2

The term "Open Government" (OG, hereafter) has been used since the 70s to refer to the effort to reduce bureaucratic opacity and open up governments to public scrutiny. Current notions of OG are thus the result of more than four decades of endeavours to increase the transparency of government actions. These efforts materialized mainly in the enactment of legislation on access to information, privacy, data protection and administrative procedures, and by creating ombudsman offices and supreme audit institutions.

» Read more

Data on the products we buy is rarely viewed as something to be opened. But in fact, the international standards that make it possible for products to be traded across borders can be used by consumers for their own ends—to help improve information—sharing and choice across the planet. There is currently no public database of this information, but we’re working to change that at Product Open Data.

» Read more

I have a regional, collaborative philosophy of open data initiatives and municipalities. In North Carolina, the cities of Cary, Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill all share the economic engine that is the Research Triangle Park. They also share the innovation engine of five, top universities.

The Triangle just got its next open data participant: the Town of Cary.

» Read more

I recently co-founded an organization called OpenOakland with Code for America alumni Eddie Tejeda. One of our passions was that we both believe that government can and should be much more than a vending machine. It’s no secret that current local governments have a ton of changing to do, but we think it is unlikely that these changes will come about swiftly without all of us being involved and engaged; and supporting our government staff and leaders to make these changes. » Read more

It's been a great year for the open source movement in government. I feel like we've moved the needle on the transparency, collaboration, and participation fronts. More importantly, the open government movement saw a fair amount of code released under open source licenses and lots of activity in the open data space.

In 2012, we discussed a variety of topics on opensource.com. » Read more

Two years ago, I met some open data advocates from Brazil and Ottawa, and we schemed of doing an international open data hackathon. A few weeks later, this blog post launched International Open Data Day with the hope that supporters would emerge in 5-6 cities to host local events. » Read more

There's a new twist on election day—giving feedback on your voting experience.  U.S. citizens voting in today's election can share what it was like at their polling location using MyFairElection.

» Read more

U.S. Chief Technology Officer Todd Park and Director of New Media for the White House Macon Phillips held a roundtable at North Carolina Central University's School of Law last week to discuss open government projects spearheaded by the new Presidential Innovation Fellows program. » Read more

Everyone is talking about maps lately. Google maps are no longer on the iPhone. Apple maps have some serious bugs. Luckily, open source maps are making a move. » Read more

In March 2012 I reported in a post entitled “Open by design” a paper by Harlan Yu and David Robinson entitled “The New Ambiguity of Open Government“. A discussion of the paper has now appeared on the World Bank blog by Anupama Dokeniya entitled “Opening Government Data. But Why?” [A thank you to Jacques Raybaut at en.europa-eu-audience for the heads-up]. This is also even more relevant given the UK Public Accounts Committee report back so recently which was linked to and commented upon in Transparent e-gov. » Read more