open data – Page 8 – National Freedom of Information Coalition

How is the government spending your money? Ohio’s figured it out

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Ohio in 2014 launched a searchable database of the state's expenditures, allowing residents to browse how their money was being spent by both the state and participating local governments.

Government watchdogs view it as a model for something that could be applied across the nation. "It's a transparency initiative rooted in the concept of making the government small and the individual big," said Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel, who launched OhioCheckBook.com through his office.

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MIT Media Lab launches ‘Data USA’

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Combing through federal data has typically been a daunting affair. Even with tools and know-how, it requires patience and a penchant for understanding minutiae. Yet a partnership between the MIT Media Lab and tech companies Deloitte and Datawheel are vying to change this.

On Monday, April 4, the trio released Data USA, an open source platform promoted as “the most comprehensive website and visualization engine” ever created for U.S. government data.

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White House tech office to co-host open data roundtables

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The White House Office of Science Technology Policy has unveiled plans to co-host four open data roundtables, with the first to get underway Thursday, as part of a continuing push to advance the use of federal data.

The sessions are expected to bring together a limited number of technical, policy and legal experts from federal agencies, academia and the private sector — and collect input from the public — as part of an effort to accelerate the use of government open data sets, according to an OSTP briefing.

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Open Data Census provides a to-do list for states

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The U.S. States Open Data Census took a new approach when rating open data across all 50 states and Puerto Rico.

It allowed states to improve their results as the census looked into their open data initiatives. Instead of a closed assessment process, states watched their scores emerge and made improvements.

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When publishing open data, cities and states have variety of platform choices

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The Louisville Metro Government in Kentucky started its open data efforts in 2011 with a homegrown Web portal, and is now automating the publishing processes and using the data for performance improvement.

As it does so, Louisville is working with a handful of vendors specializing in open data catalog publishing. “We are at a crossroads,” said Jason Ballard, director of the Department of Information Technology.

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California needs better open data on state government spending, lawmakers say

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California lawmakers this week called for more transparency in state government, noting the federal government, local entities and other states have implemented open data initiatives that provide detailed accountability of how public money is spent.

“I feel like government is just so opaque and so complicated,” Assembly member Ling Ling Chang, R-Diamond Bar, told an audience at Open Data Day held Tuesday in Sacramento. “There’s so many layers of bureaucracy to get the right information,” Chang added.

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Do universities, research institutions hold the key to open data’s next chapter?

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Government produces a lot of data — reams of it, roomfuls of it, rivers of it.

It comes in from citizen-submitted forms, fleet vehicles, roadway sensors and traffic lights. It comes from utilities, body cameras and smartphones. It fills up servers and spills into the cloud. It’s everywhere. And often, all that data sits there not doing much.

A governing entity might have robust data collection and it might have an open data policy, but that doesn’t mean it has the computing power, expertise or human capital to turn those efforts into value.

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New Mexico governor endorses new online campaign database

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A new law that overhauls New Mexico’s online clearinghouse for information on political contributions and lobbying expenditures has been signed by Gov. Susana Martinez.

The Republican governor signed legislation Monday designed to standardize electronic reporting so that filings by candidates, lobbyists and political committees can be searched, cross-referenced or downloaded for analysis.

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To prevent another Flint, make all open data machine-readable

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The lead poisoning of the entire city of Flint, Michigan was preventable and should never have happened.

Numerous pundits and industry experts have said this. Most of them, however, explain that if government had functioned properly, the environmental agencies would have properly communicated to their higher-ups and the problem would have been spotted much sooner.

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Texas to launch data-sharing pilot, aims to deliver services more efficiently

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Texas plans to launch an open-data pilot program that will let state agencies share information and collaborate on providing services to residents.

Although the trial program, set to start in March, is just a test, a key Texas IT official hopes it will turn into a full-fledged program to deliver services more efficiently. The goal of the pilot is to spark connections between agencies.

That is especially needed in Texas, according to Ed Kelly, the statewide data coordinator at the Texas Department of Information Resources (DIR).

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