Open Data
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The Promise and Pitfalls of Government APIs
Fresh off a week in San Diego for the annual Accela Engage conference (where Tim O’Reilly gave a keynote presentation) and some stolen hours over the weekend for hacking together an entry in the Boston HubHacks Civic Hackathon, I’ve got government APIs front of mind. Getting to hear the Godfather of “Government as a Platform”… Continue reading
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Turning Governments into Data Stewards
The civic entrepreneurs behind Open Counter recently launched a new service called Zoning Check that lets prospective businesses quickly and easily check municipal zoning ordinances to determine where they can locate a new business. This elegantly simple app demonstrates the true power of zoning information, and underscores the need for more work on developing standard… Continue reading
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Making FOIA More Like Open Data
The Freedom of Information Act, passed in 1966 to increase trust in government by encouraging transparency, has always been a pain in the ass. You write to an uncaring bureaucracy, you wait for months or years only to be denied or redacted into oblivion, and even if you do get lucky and extract some useful… Continue reading
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In Defense of Transit Apps
The civic technology community has a love-hate relationship with transit apps. We love to, and often do, use the example of open transit data and the cottage industry of civic app development it has helped spawn as justification for governments releasing open data. Some of the earliest, most enduring and most successful civic applications have… Continue reading
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Building a Government Data Culture
“‘Are people innately altruistic?’ is the wrong kind of question to ask. People are people, and they respond to incentives.” – Steven Levitt & Stephen Dubner (SuperFreakonomics) One of the most important things an open data directive can accomplish – whether it takes the form an informal policy, an executive order or an open data… Continue reading
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The Philadelphia Experiment
Three years ago next month, the City of Philadelphia’s open data portal was launched by local technology firm Azavea as part of the inaugural Philly Tech Week. Two years ago next month, Philadelphia joined the small (but growing) fraternity of cities to adopt a formal open data policy – a milestone that stands as one… Continue reading
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On Sustainable Civic Technology
Sustaining civic technology will mean that both government’s IT infrastructure and the civic technology sector that builds on it will need to change. A pair of recent blog posts caught my eye and highlighted this theme in my head, and motivated me to capture a few thoughts on this topic. The first post was by… Continue reading
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The Problem with Public Data
Governments make a wealth of data available on their public websites. Forward thinking governments have take steps to ensure that more and more of this information is available in open formats. But the majority of the data available on government websites – even those with formal open data policies, like Philadelphia – is not open.… Continue reading
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5 Minute REST API
Inspired by one of Waldo Jaquith’s recent projects to create an easy solution for converting data into a REST API, I wanted to try doing the same thing with a bit of a different approach. Below is a quick screencast demonstrating how to take a CSV file and convert it into a powerful, flexible REST… Continue reading
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Don’t Hang Any Pictures
A few lessons learned and insights gained serving as a municipal Chief Data Officer – I hope this will be of value to anyone interested in starting an open data program. Helping to create an open data culture in government is a process, not an outcome. It takes time. Though it may sometimes seem easier… Continue reading
About Me
I am the former Chief Data Officer for the City of Philadelphia. I also served as Director of Government Relations at Code for America, and as Director of the State of Delaware’s Government Information Center. For about six years, I served in the General Services Administration’s Technology Transformation Services (TTS), and helped pioneer their work with state and local governments. I also led platform evangelism efforts for TTS’ cloud platform, which supports over 30 critical federal agency systems.
Civic Innovations 