Amidst unanswered questions about the future of open government in the United States, the Senate has provided a unanimous endorsement of a set of enduring principles that the Sunlight Foundation has advanced and defended for a decade: that data created using the funds of the people should be available to the people in open formats online, without cost or restriction.
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Read More… from Sunlight Foundation: US Senate passes historic endorsement of open government data
Two years ago, the city of Chattanooga adopted an "open data" policy that made public huge amounts of information gathered every day by local government agencies.
Now a small nonprofit organization is calling on Hamilton County government to follow suit.
Metro Ideas Project, an independent, nonprofit research startup based in Chattanooga, has released a new project, Open Hamilton, that argues as much.
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If you've ever wondered what all of those firetrucks or police cars were doing the other day on the Naperville street where you live, you need wonder no longer starting Monday.
As part of an "open data" initiative enacted earlier this month by the Naperville City Council, residents will be able to learn when, where and why police officers or firefighters were sent out on emergency calls, courtesy of a daily "public safety incident map" making its formal debut Monday on the city's website.
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Read More… from IL: Naperville residents can track police, fire calls via new online map
Pittsburgh officials Monday launched Burgh's Eye View , an app that includes a range of public records such as crime statistics, building code violations and excessive noise complaints.
The city Department of Innovation & Performance's Analytics and Strategy team built the app, which also is available as a website, as part of an effort to increase openness and accessibility.
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Read More… from Burgh’s Eye View app tracks Pittsburgh’s potholes, arrests, graffiti
BART is set to open the data floodgates.
Agency information that could include employee salaries, capital spending and parts inventory will soon be released in a user-friendly way after the BART Board of Directors unanimously approved a transparency measure Thursday morning.
“There are few things I can think of as important for government agencies, and government as a whole, as being transparent with the public,” said Nick Josefowitz, a BART board director. “We need to be a data-driven agency.”
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Read More… from SF: BART board approves ‘gold standard’ open data policy, despite misgivings
A year and a half after its launch, Bloomberg Philanthropies’ What Works Cities initiative is more than halfway to its goal of supporting 100 mid-sized cities’ data ambitions, according to a Bloomberg press release. With 16 new cities announced Monday, 55 cities across the U.S. are now participating in the network of municipalities aiming to utilize data to improve city services and inform local decision-making.
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Read More… from 16 New Cities Join Bloomberg’s Open Data Initiative
You don’t have to be a journalist or a Freedom of Information Act expert to access public records in Virginia Beach, thanks to a new open-data portal that launched Monday.
The portal provides Virginia Beach residents easy access to many public records normally available through a FOIA request. The idea is to cut the middle man, putting information at residents’ fingertips and encouraging city employees to look at ways to improve services, said Virginia Beach Director of Management Services Catheryn Whitesell.
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Read More… from New open-data portal increases transparency in Virginia Beach
The General Services Administration is working to create a place where data providers can go to see if their data fits into a set of standards others might be already using.
This new effort, the recently announced U.S. Data Federation, is a step forward in the open data movement toward not just publishing data on Data.gov but also coordinating it among specific topics to be interoperable and standardized, experts say.
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Read More… from Meet the U.S. Data Federation: A new hub for standardized, coordinated open data
