Commentary: Opening data to the public isn’t at odds with cybersecurity, but supports it, says the executive director of the National Freedom of Information Coalition. With governments focused today on tighter security measures surrounding sensitive data, now is an opportune time to adopt reforms that also remove obstacles to open public records and improve access. […]
Read More… from NFOIC: With cybersecurity hot, now is the time to open government
Have you heard about “smart cities”? The idea that cities can make innovative use of data, algorithms and automation to improve services has been around for a while, but it seems to be gaining traction. Earlier this year, City Journal magazine described the “glowing futuristic predictions” in the steadily increasing number of news articles about the smart-cities […]
Read More… from Editorial: Cities must be open about data collection, data itself
The open government data movement came into its own with the Obama administration, at a time when governments—and society more broadly—was beginning to truly realize the value of government data, and open-standards were taking root as drivers of innovation. The thrust of this movement was to identify all valuable Government data sets, and to require […]
When state and local agencies open their financial data, benefits accrue not just to citizens who can keep tabs on local spending, but also to governments themselves. Open data is “essentially a change in the packaging of information, not a change in the information itself,” said Dean Ritz, the senior director of IP and digital […]
Read More… from Beyond transparency: Why open data is good for local government
The Obama administration Monday unveiled a new open data portal that melds tools from various federal and local government agencies to help communities find ways to improve their residents' lives.
The Opportunity Project is "grounded in the president’s background as a community organizer," said Aden van Noppen, a special adviser within the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, adding it was a form of "participatory development" based on the principle that "people are experts on their own lives."
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Read More… from White House highlights cities, announces plans to lift communities with open data
For the past several years police departments around the United States have been betting on “big data” to revolutionize the way they predict, measure and, ideally, prevent crime.
Some data scientists are now turning the lens on law enforcement itself in an effort to increase public insight into how well police officers are doing their jobs.
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Read More… from Beware of ‘big data hubris’ when it comes to police reform
Most kids learn the grade school civics lesson about how a bill becomes a law. What those lessons usually neglect to show is how legislation today is often birthed on a lobbyist’s desk.
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Read More… from When lobbyists write legislation, this data mining tool traces the paper trail
Governments across the country are striving to meet a call to transparency by upping their data collection and analysis efforts. But with this trend toward big data comes an influx of “bad data” — inaccurate, outdated or misused information that leads to ill-informed policies, misled initiatives and an ensuing lack of citizen trust.
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Read More… from Editorial: Transparency and avoiding the pitfalls of bad data
Given all the hype around so called big data at the moment, it would be easy to dismiss it as nothing more than the latest technology buzzword. This would be a mistake, given that the application and interpretation of huge – often publicly available – data sets is already supporting new models of creativity, innovation and engagement.
To date, stories of big data's progress and successes have tended to come from government and the private sector, but we've heard little about its relevance to social organisations. Yet big data can fuel big social change.
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Read More… from Believe the hype: Big data can have a big social impact
From Journalist’s Resource: Since the Progressive Era, ideas about the benefits of government openness — crystallized by Justice Brandeis’s famous phrase about the disinfectant qualities of “sunlight” — have steadily grown more popular and prevalent. Post-Watergate reforms further embodied these ideas. Now, notions of “open government” and dramatically heightened levels of transparency have taken hold as zero-cost digital dissemination has become a reality. […]
Read More… from Open government and conflicts with public trust and privacy: Recent research ideas
