- OECD Factbook — Flash-built impressive data explorer from OECD. Go to Indicators > Load and, in the words of Ben Goldacre, “prepare for nerdgasm”. (via bengoldacre on Twitter)
- James Boyle is on Twitter — author of the book The Public Domain.
- Sewers and Startups (Pete Warden) — designing to last, reminds me of Saul Griffith’s heirloom design riff. When I joined Apple back in 2003, the central build farm for all projects had both PowerPC and x86 Darwin boxes, and our code had to compile on both. Steve was playing a long game, years before the Intel switch he was obviously planning for it, (though I only caught the significance in retrospect).
- Open Data Makes Garbage Collection Sexier, Easier, and Cheaper — pragmatic use for open government data. For more on the author of this post, see Hello World for Open Data by Tim Bray.
"government 2.0" entries
Tim Berners-Lee on Data.gov.uk, open linked data and open standards
Gov 2.0 Expo Keynote Video and Exclusive Interview
Can you explain open linked data using a bag of chips? Tim Berners-Lee did precisely that yesterday in his keynote at the Gov 2.0 Expo. After the jump, you can watch an exclusive interview with Berners-Lee exploring open linked data, how governments' open data efforts should be judged, and more.
What does Government 2.0 look like?
Mark Drapeau offers a visual breakdown of the Gov 2.0 components.
The most important thing I learned in grad school was very simple: "Draw the picture." (Thanks Tony.) By that my advisor meant that it's often hard or impossible to describe a complex system in words alone. And consequently, if you can't draw a picture of what you're trying to explain, you probably don't understand it. Drawing pictures of complex systems…
Open government examples from the ONC
The Office of the National Coordinator has implemented a host of initiatives aimed at transparency and involvement
With the sea change caused by the Open Government Directive I know that many federal agencies might be struggling with how to actually implement this new policy. This is a major cultural shift in government and there are always challenges when trying to bring such broad changes to any large organization. Government bureaucracy is certainly no exception. But this last…
Commerce and the Wealth of Nations
I was struck the other day by an article in the New York Times that describes the different approaches of the US and China to Afghanistan, in which the US shoulders the burden of war, while China reaps the benefits of commerce. As we head into the second decade of the 21st century, we as a nation, we as a world need to make good choices about where we invest our time, our resources, and our ingenuity. It’s the job of our leaders to make choices that give us leverage, that is, that create multiplier effects on our efforts. I’d love to see, in this New Year, this new decade, deeper thinking about the society we want to build, and what kind of policies will encourage the market to make the right choices. And I’d love to hear your thoughts about policy choices that might encourage 21st century industries here in America and around the world.
Being online: Group identities and social network identities
Groups take on their own identities online, and social networks
threaten to subsume individual identities into groups. This section
of the identity article explores grouping in all its online facets.
Computerization in Nilekani's Imagining India
Imagining India: The Idea of a Renewed Nation promises to occupy a central position in discussions about India as well as the world economy this year. Author Nandan Nilekani can speak with quite a bit of authority on computers, having founded and led Infosys, an early success story in modern Indian commerce and a major player in the historic rise of outsourcing. Particularly relevant to this blog are the book’s observations on computers’ role in the economy and society.
Seeing the Future of Mapping in Crimespotting
This week Stamen Design released San Francisco Crimespotting. It’s a crime map and notification system that allows for time and crime trend analysis. SF Crimespotting has launched just over two years after the release Oakland Crimespotting (Radar post). Stamen had been waiting for crime data all this time and with the launch of DataSF they are able to use an official API for crime data. SF Crimespotting is very similar to the initial release for Oakland.
Privacy and open government: conversations with EPIC and others about OpenID
A few days ago I proposed a way to
offer more privacy to people visiting government web sites.
This blog builds on that proposal, which was largely technical, by
examining the policy and organizational issues that swirl around it. My ideas are informed by a discussion I had with Lillie
Coney, Associate Director of the
Electronic Privacy Information Center.
The blog is also inspired by two comments on the earlier blog and
brief email I exchanged with one commenter, which intertwine with
Coney’s in intriguing ways.
Four short links: 3 July 2009
Stats, Public Domain, Sewers, and Garbage
Naming an Emerging Movement
There’s a movement going on around the world. We don’t have a name for it, though. Gov2.0, e-gov, e-democracy, open gov–these are all names that get applied to what is happening. And they are great for describing a certain aspect of this movement, the aspect that actually deals with government. Recalling my post last week about the four pillars of an open civic system, these “gov” names–e-gov, gov2.0, open gov–focus on the G2C aspect of what is going on, to the exclusion of the other aspects of this open civic system that is emerging. So what do we call this new thing?