"open data" entries

The City of Chicago wants you to fork its data on GitHub

Chicago CIO Brett Goldstein is experimenting with social coding for a different kind of civic engagement.

GitHub has been gaining new prominence as the use of open source software in government grows.

Earlier this month, I included a few thoughts from Chicago’s chief information officer, Brett Goldstein, about the city’s use of GitHub, in a piece exploring GitHub’s role in government.

While Goldstein says that Chicago’s open data portal will remain the primary means through which Chicago releases public sector data, publishing open data on GitHub is an experiment that will be interesting to watch, in terms of whether it affects reuse or collaboration around it.

In a followup email, Goldstein, who also serves as Chicago’s chief data officer, shared more about why the city is on GitHub and what they’re learning. Our discussion follows.

Chicago's presence on GitHub

The City of Chicago is on GitHub.

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GitHub gains new prominence as the use of open source within governments grows

The collaborative coding site hired a "government bureaucat."

github-social-codingWhen it comes to government IT in 2013, GitHub may have surpassed Twitter and Facebook as the most interesting social network. 

GitHub’s profile has been rising recently, from a Wired article about open source in government, to its high profile use by the White House and within the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. This March, after the first White House hackathon in February, the administration’s digital team posted its new API standards on GitHub. In addition to the U.S., code from the United Kingdom, Canada, Argentina and Finland is also on the platform.

“We’re reaching a tipping point where we’re seeing more collaboration not only within government agencies, but also between different agencies, and between the government and the public,” said GitHub head of communications Liz Clinkenbeard, when I asked her for comment. Read more…

Governments looking for economic ROI must focus on open data with business value

Harvey Lewis shares insights from Deloitte UK's research on the open data economy.

There’s increasing interest in the open data economy from the research wings of consulting firms. Capgemini Consulting just published a new report on the open data economy. McKinsey’s Global Institute is following up its research on big data with an inquiry into open data and government innovation. Deloitte has been taking a long look at open data business models. Forrester says open data isn’t (just) for governments anymore and says more research is coming. If Bain & Company doesn’t update its work on “data as an asset” this year to meet inbound interest in open data from the public sector, it may well find itself in the unusual position of lagging the market for intellectual expertise.

As Radar readers know, I’ve been trying to “make dollars and sense” of the open data economy since December, looking at investments, business models and entrepreneurs.

harvey_lewisIn January, I interviewed Harvey Lewis, the research director for the analytics department of Deloitte U.K. Lewis, who holds a doctorate in hypersonic aerodynamics, has been working for nearly 20 years on projects in the public sector, defense industry and national security. Today, he’s responsible for applying an analytical eye to consumer businesses, manufacturing, banking, insurance and the public sector. Over the past year, his team has been examining the impact of open data releases on the economy of the United Kingdom. The British government’s embrace of open data makes such research timely. Read more…

White House moves to increase public access to scientific research online

More federally funded research and data will be made freely available to the public online.

Today, the White House responded to a We The People e-petition that asked for free online access to taxpayer-funded research.

open-access-smallAs part of the response, John Holdren, the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, released a memorandum today directing agencies with “more than $100 million in research and development expenditures to develop plans to make the results of federally-funded research publically available free of charge within 12 months after original publication.”

The Obama administration has been considering access to federally funded scientific research for years, including a report to Congress in March 2012. The relevant e-petition, which had gathered more than 65,000 signatures, had gone unanswered since May of last year.

As Hayley Tsukayama notes in the Washington Post, the White House acknowledged the open access policies of the National Institutes of Health as a successful model for sharing research. Read more…

VA looks to apply innovation to better care and service for veterans

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs launched a new innovation center to solve big problems.

va-header-logoThere are few areas as emblematic of a nation’s values than how it treats the veterans of its wars. As improved battlefield care keeps more soldiers alive from injuries that would have been lethal in past wars, more grievously injured veterans survive to come home to the United States.

Upon return, however, the newest veterans face many of the challenges that previous generations have encountered, ranging from re-entering the civilian workforce to rehabilitating broken bodies and treating traumatic brain injuries. As they come home, they are encumbered by more than scars and memories. Their war records are missing. When they apply for benefits, they’re added to a growing backlog of claims at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). And even as the raw number of claims grows to nearly 900,000, the average time to process them is also rising. According to Aaron Glanz of the Center for Investigative Reporting, veterans now wait an average of 272 days for their claims to be processed, with some dying in the interim.

The growth in the VA backblog should be seen in context with a decade of war in Afghanistan and Iraq, improved outreach and more open standards for post-tramautic stress syndrome, Agent Orange exposure in Vietnam and “Gulf War” illness, allowing more veterans who were previously unable to make a claim to file.

While new teams and technologies are being deployed to help with the backlog, a recent report (PDF) from the Office of the Inspector General of the Veterans Administration found that new software deployed around the country that was designed to help reduce the backlog was actually adding to it. While high error rates, disorganization and mishandled claims may be traced to issues with training and implementation of the new systems, the transition from paper-based records to a digital system is proving to be difficult and deeply painful to veterans and families applying for benefits. As Andrew McAfee bluntly put it more than two years ago, these kinds of bureaucratic issues aren’t just a problem to be fixed: “they’re a moral stain on the country.”

Given that context, the launch of a new VA innovation center today takes on a different meaning. The scale and gravity of the problems that the VA faces demand true innovation: new ideas, technology or methodologies that challenge and improve upon existing processes and systems, improving the lives of people or the function of the society that they live within. Read more…

Personal data ownership drives market transparency and empowers consumers

The White House added a community for the "smart disclosure" of consumer data to Data.gov.

On Monday morning, the Obama administration launched a new community focused on consumer data at Data.gov. While there was no new data to be found among the 507 datasets listed there, it was the first time that smart disclosure has an official home in federal government.

Data.gov consumer slide apps image

Image via Data.gov.

“Smart disclosure means transparent, plain language, comprehensive, synthesis and analysis of data that helps consumers make better-informed decisions,” said Christopher Meyer, the vice president for external affairs and information services at Consumers Union, the nonprofit that publishes “Consumer Reports,” in an interview. “The Obama administration deserves credit for championing agency disclosure of data sets and pulling it together into one web site. The best outcome will be widespread consumer use of the tools — and that remains to be seen.”

You can find the new community at Consumer.Data.gov or data.gov/consumer. Both URLs forward visitors to the same landing page, where they can explore the data, past challenges, external resources on the topic, in addition to a page about smart disclosure, blog posts, forums and feedback.

“Analyzing data and giving plain language understanding of that data to consumers is a critical part of what Consumer Reports does,” said Meyer. “Having hundreds of data sets available on one (hopefully) easy-to-use platform will enable us to provide even more useful information to consumers at a time when family budgets are tight and health care and financial ‘choices” have never been more plentiful.”

Read more…

Looking at the many faces and forms of data journalism

Leading experts on data-driven storytelling came together in our recent Google+ Hangout.

Over the past year, I’ve been investigating data journalism. In that work, I’ve found no better source for understanding the who, where, what, how and why of what’s happening in this area than the journalists who are using and even building the tools needed to make sense of the exabyte age. Yesterday, I hosted a Google Hangout with several notable practitioners of data journalism. Video of the discussion is embedded below:

Over the course of the discussion, we talked about what data journalism is, how journalists are using it, the importance of storytelling, ethics, the role of open source and “showing your work” and much more.

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Investing in the open data economy

Open Data Institute CEO Gavin Starks on how open data's current state is similar to the World Wide Web's early days.

If you had 10 million pounds to spend on open data research, development and startups, what would you do with it? That’s precisely the opportunity that Gavin Starks (@AgentGav) has been given as the first CEO of the Open Data Institute (ODI) in the United Kingdom.

GavinStarksThe ODI, which officially opened last September, was founded by Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Professor Nigel Shadbolt. The independent, non-partisan, “limited by guarantee” nonprofit is a hybrid institution focused on unlocking the value in open data by incubating startups, advising governments, and educating students and media.

Previously, Starks was the founder and chairman of AMEE, a social enterprise that scored environmental costs and risks for businesses. (O’Reilly’s AlphaTech Ventures was one of its funders.) He’s also worked in the arts, science and technology. I spoke to Starks about the work of the ODI and open data earlier this winter as part of our continuing series investigating the open data economy.

What have you accomplished to date?

Gavin Starks: We opened our offices on the first of October last year. Over the first 12 weeks of operation, we’ve had a phenomenal run. The ODI is looking to create value to help everyone address some of the greatest challenges of our time, whether that’s in education, health, in our economy or to benefit our environment.

Since October, we’ve had literally hundreds of people through the door. We’ve secured $750,000 in matched funding from the Omidyar Network, on top of a 10-million-pound investment from the UK Government’s Technology Strategy Board. We’ve helped identify 200 million pounds a year in savings for the health service in the UK. Read more…

NASA launches second International Space Apps Challenge

In 2013, developers will once again boldly contribute code to projects where their code has never gone before.

From April 20 to April 21, on Earth Day, the second international Space Apps Challenge will invite developers on all seven continents to the bridge to contribute code to NASA projects.

space app challenge

Given longstanding concerns about the sustainability of apps contests, I was curious about NASA’s thinking behind launching this challenge. When I asked NASA’s open government team about the work, I immediately heard back from Nick Skytland (@Skytland), who heads up NASA’s open innovation team.

“The International Space Apps Challenge was a different approach from other federal government ‘app contests’ held before,” replied Skytland, via email.

“Instead of incentivizing technology development through open data and a prize purse, we sought to create a unique platform for international technological cooperation though a weekend-long event hosted in multiple locations across the world. We didn’t just focus on developing software apps, but actually included open hardware, citizen science, and data visualization as well.”

Aspects of that answer will please many open data advocates, like Clay Johnson or David Eaves. When Eaves recently looked at apps contests, in the context of his work on Open Data Day (coming up on February 23rd), he emphasized the importance of events that build community and applications that meet the needs of citizens or respond to business demand.

The rest of my email interview with Skytland follows. Read more…

Open data economy: Eight business models for open data and insight from Deloitte UK

Two open data items of note from readers.

When I asked whether the push to free up government data was resulting in economic activity and startup creation, I started to receive emails from people around the United States and Europe. I’ll be publishing more of what I learned in our ongoing series of open data interviews and profiles over the next month, but two responses are worth sharing now.

Open questions about open growth

The first response concerned Deloitte’s ongoing research into open data in the United Kingdom [PDF], conducted in collaboration with the Open Data Institute.

Harvey Lewis, one of the primary investigators for the research project, recently wrote about some of Deloitte’s preliminary findings at the Open Government Partnership’s blog in a post on “open growth.” To date, Deloitte has not found the quantitative evidence the team needs to definitely demonstrate the economic value of open data. That said, the team found much of interest in the space: Read more…