Open data can help you even if you know nothing about data, because it can power tools and resources that are usable by anyone.
This was on clear display recently at TransportationCamp, an unconference that focuses on the intersection of transportation and technology. Several developers from Mapzen ran a session presenting some of the open-source mapping tools they’ve been working on recently.
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California’s Government Operations Agency relaunched its open data portal as open source Thursday, so civil coders and state departments might sustainably innovate on the new platform.
The state started piloting portals with greengov.data.ca.gov and a coinciding codeathon in October, out of which emerged 14 open source applications posted on the online project hosting site GitHub.
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On Wednesday, Mayor Muriel Bowser's administration launched a new economic development dashboard, with the aim of providing District residents with easily accessible data on employment, income and housing. The Mayor's office said the site was developed in response to demand from residents for more data, specifically around the status of affordable housing projects and other construction around the District. The administration built the dashboard after seeing the success of District's Real Estate Project Pipeline, last year.
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Meet Ben Balter. He's a Government Evangelist at GitHub, where he leads the efforts to encourage adoption of open source philosophies, making all levels of government better, one repository at a time.
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It’s not every day that NASA creates a position just for you. NASA did just that for Chris C. Kemp in 2010. The tech pioneer became the space agency’s first Chief Technology Officer for Information Technology, appointed to lead and nurture IT innovation at the U.S. space agency.
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While many of our nation’s problems are quite clear, the way our government addresses them is too often a black box—opaque and closed to all but insiders and lobbyists.
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Before open data, there was FOIA. Beginning in 1967, the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) empowered the public to request access to government documents. Unfortunately, some branches of government quickly began to push back, and within the decade the infamous phrase "can neither confirm nor deny" had been devised to avoid releasing information.
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It's Open Government Week at Opensource.com, and the Sunlight Foundation is celebrating by bringing amazing people and projects together in open government, open data, and civic hacking. Join like-minded folks at TransparencyCamp in Washington D.C. on May 30 and 31.
TransparencyCamp has brought together hundreds of people to share their knowledge about how to use new technologies and develop policies to make our government really work for the people—and to help people work smarter with our government.
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NASA is set to release on April 10 a comprehensive catalogue of software code that runs some of the most sophisticated robotics and rockets on the planet.
The agency, in line with the White House's Open Government policy, is also aiming to make the free online catalogue of more than 1,000 projects one of its most easily accessible.
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