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Tag Archives: Open data
Govtrack’s new crystall ball … er … Docket page
Our pal Josh Tauberer at Govtrack.us wrote recently that he's started a new Docket page on which readers can now know up to a week ahead when a bill is scheduled to come to the floor of the House or Senate. He was able to cobble together the data needed to do this because of the freely available -- and new -- House website called docs.house.gov and Senate.gov where the Senate's floor for the next day is published. And don't forget to follow govtrack for tweets on the upcoming bills. Way to use structured, open government data, Josh!! Continue reading
Open Government vs. Open Data
A new paper distinguishes between open government data that makes the government as a whole more transparent and politically neutral public data that have nothing to do with public accountability.
- Yu, Harlan and Robinson, David G., The New Ambiguity of 'Open Government' (February 28, 2012). Princeton CITP / Yale ISP Working Paper. Available at SSRN. Today a regime can call itself "open" if it builds the right kind of web site -- even if it does not become more accountable or transparent. This shift in vocabulary makes it harder for policymakers and activists to articulate clear priorities and make cogent demands. This essay proposes a more useful way for participants on all sides to frame the debate: We separate the politics of open government from the technologies of open data.
Thursday: Live Webcast of House Legislative Data and Transparency Conference
There will be an all day conference on on public access to legislative information on Thursday, February 2, 2012, 9AM to 6PM EST, in Cannon Caucus Room, 345 Cannon HOB, Washington, D.C. It is hosted by the House Committee on House Administration.
Continue readingNBII goes dark. Libraries do what they do: harvest and preserve it for future access #opendata
Many of us in the government documents world woke up to 2012 with the following message posted on the Web site of the [w:National Biological Information Infrastructure] (NBII) and distributed around to various library listservs:
In the 2012 President's Budget Request, the National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII) is terminated. As a result, all resources, databases, tools, and applications within this web site will be removed on January 15, 2012.NBII has been a critical program since 1994 (See Bill Clinton's Executive Order 12906 which created the "National Spatial Data Infrastructure" ("NSDI")). NBII was set up to coordinate a broad array of information at the federal level about biodiversity and ecosystems. Todd Carpenter, director of National Information Standards Organization NISO, put it nicely and succinctly when he tweeted:
What is particularly sad about NBII shutting down is it's precisely the thing we need MORE of not less=>trusted data repositories #opendataWell have no fear, the Library of Congress, Internet Archive and Stanford Libraries have all harvested (separately) the NBII Website -- Stanford harvested twice between January 5 and January 13, 2012for its Fugitive US Agencies collection. Continue reading
Private Sector Supports Public Data
A recent Farm Foundation Forum, sponsored by The Farm Foundation, addressed the issue of "Data Collection on Agriculture in a Time of Fiscal Constraints." A presentation [pdf] by Tom Wegner of the private company Land O’Lakes, Inc. addressed the value of public data, the challenges to data collection, and the impacts and consequences of cutbacks in the collection of public data. Wegner noted that public data from the USDA is reliable, objective, consistent, timely, and unbiased, and widely available for all. He said that Land O'Lakes uses public data for business planning, risk management, and evaluating policy options. He concluded by saying that Land O’Lakes is strong advocate of continuing public collection of agricultural data. An audio file of the Forum is available. It is very nice to see the private sector recognizing the value of public data at a time when many politicians are challenging, not just the funding of data collection, but the very idea that the government should be involved in such activities. See also: Farm Foundation Briefing Focuses on Agricultural Data, COSSA Washington Update, Volume 30, Issue 17 (September 26, 2011) The Consortium of Social Science Associations. Continue reading
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