Maryland was recently ranked 46th in the nation for transparency, but a new law could put the state ahead with a policy requiring that data be made more easily accessible to the public.
Though officials post a good deal of public information on Maryland's StateStat database, advocates of open government say that data can be hard to evaluate, search and use because it is not formatted in a way that computers can easily scan.
The Maryland Open Data Policy, passed by the General Assembly and signed into law by Gov. Martin O'Malley this month, requires the state to make much of its public information machine-readable and searchable.
"This is the first step of this new pillar of governmental transparency and open data," said Sen. Bill Ferguson of Baltimore, co-chairman of the Joint Committee on Transparency and Open Government. Continue>>>
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