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 […]
Tag: data
Beyond transparency: Why open data is good for local government
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 […]
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A bastion of student data privacy, Colorado yields a bit to demands for more openness
Colorado education officials are reconsidering the data privacy rules that for three years in a row have hidden large amounts of student achievement data from public view. With Thursday’s release of state test results, the public has greater ability to see how well certain groups of students perform on state tests compared with their peers than they’ve […]
Treasury rolls out open beta for new USASpending.gov
The Treasury Department rolled out an open beta of the new USASpending.gov, coming one step closer to meeting the requirements of the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act.
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FBI Director: Don’t Trust Government, But Give It Your Data Without Transparency
The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) director James Brien Comey, Jr. is one of the nation's top cops. But he's drawn the ire of civil liberty groups and citizen activists alike both over allegations of his agency's role in helping the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) spy on Americans and over his recent comments to the press that suggest it's "dangerous" for mobile firms to offer full-device encryption.
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Going behind the scenes at Data.gov
Data.gov wants to be the fuel that helps power the organizations and people that will change the world.
Data by itself is just the tinder for the spark of imagination and innovation. Without it many of the kinds of innovations we see like iTriage, Bright Scope, and Patients Like Me would not be possible. The Data.gov project is how the United States government, under the Obama administration, is striving to empower citizens to create the change they envision; not just by fixing a temporary problem, but by helping to let citizens solve the problem themselves.
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Montana, Bozeman launch online data portal for public information
Bozeman has joined the state of Montana’s open government push as the first city to publish local databases on a state website. The website, data.mt.gov, contains 36 datasets. It includes all public information about the facilities leased by the state and employee pay information, among other databases. Four datasets from the city of Bozeman include all building permits issued since 1996 and city zoning districts.
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Editorial: Expand public access
Short of rewriting the Virginia Constitution, there is no better way to recast the relationship between citizens and state government than overhauling the Freedom of Information Act. The law enables oversight of officials who operate on the people's behalf, spends public money and should be subject to scrutiny.
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Tensions between student privacy and excessive secrecy may be heating up
From NFOIC: COLUMBIA, Mo — Will there be an onslaught of new state legislation that aims to moot the impact of a relaxed Department of Education regulation that gives educational researchers access to data to track individual students’ progress?
The Student Press Law Center, press associations and some open are bracing for legislative overreach at the state level that might result in attempts to respond to the Department of Education’s relaxed regulation.
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