open data – Page 20 – National Freedom of Information Coalition

NR: Canadian company announces Community plaftorm for open data

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Civic Dynamics has announced its formation and unveiled its Civic Dynamics Platform (CDP), the first truly dynamic, open-data platform for local governments. CDP's underlying open-source software and supporting systems enable municipalities to publish open government data in a dynamic format that allows citizens to easily view, mix, match and analyze it. The company is a partnership with two U.S. companies, Structured Dynamics, open data and semantic technology experts, and Buzzr, a Drupal-based hosted content management platform for building affordable yet robust websites.

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Open Data: Good For Citizens & Government

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Governments and citizens across the country and around the world are demonstrating the powerful benefits that can be created by making government data available and accessible to the public.

We see it in the form of increased fiancial transparency in states such as Massachusetts, Maine, and Alabama, which have launched Open Checkbook websites that let residents view how their tax dollars are being spent.

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5 reasons why good governments should embrace open data

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Jonathan Reichental is the CIO of the City of Palo Alto, Calif., and one of the world’s leading proponents of open data. Why is he so big the idea of giving citizens access to the data their governments collect? Because even in times of recession and debt, he said on our Structure Show podcast this week, the one thing governments always have in abundance is data. And it belongs to the people.

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Looking towards next week’s open data executive order deadline

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From Sunlight Foundation: November 30th marks the first major deadline for agency compliance with President Obama’s Open Data Executive Order and accompanying Memorandum M-13-13. In addition to representing an important step in the march towards open government and proper data management, this is an opportunity to evaluate agencies, identify best practices, and advocate for change. The Executive Order will continue to be implemented over the coming months and years, but agencies should, and will, be judged on how much effort they put into this first deadline. […]

NFOIC’s State FOIA Friday for November 15, 2013

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From NFOIC: A few state FOIA and local open government news items selected from many of interest that we might or might not have drawn attention to earlier in the week. While you're at it, be sure to check out State FOIA Friday Archives.

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Documenting political influence

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From NFOIC: COLUMBIA, Mo – Do you know which industries spend the most to influence politics in your state?

If not, or even if you think you have an idea, you might be in interested in a report by Mother Jones staffers Alex Jones and Tasneem Raja. Using data on political contributions during the 2012 election cycle that was compiled by Followthemoney.org, the pair produced an interesting report and state-by-state map.

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NYC launches redesigned open data portal and new APIs

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From Programmable Web: The New York City Government has raised the bar for open government programs everywhere by launching several brand new NYC Open Data APIs, a redesigned Open Data Portal and Developer Website. The NYC Open Data Portal now has over 1,100 datasets available including 200 brand new datasets that have just been added.

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Public Open Data: The Good, the Bad, the Future

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From Idea Lab: New technology tools, combined with raised expectations among voters and stakeholders for government transparency, have sparked a movement toward “open government.” Championed by advocacy organizations and a few high-profile elected officials, the trend seeks to promote greater accountability and responsiveness for the systems of representative democracy. An area of particular opportunity — as well as potential concern — is the growing cache of large datasets of public information now available on the Internet.

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Four unique approaches to government crowdsourcing

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From GovExec.com: What Is Crowdsourcing?

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White House expands guidance on promoting open data

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From NextGov: White House officials have announced expanded technical guidance to help agencies make more data accessible to the public in machine-readable formats.

Following up on President Obama’s May executive order linking the pursuit of open data to economic growth, innovation and government efficiency, two budget and science office spokesmen on Friday published a blog post highlighting new instructions and answers to frequently asked questions.

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