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San Francisco passes open data law
This is an historic day for the open government movement and makes me proud to live in San Francisco! Yesterday, EB Boyd reported that the San Francisco Board of Overseers voted unanimously to approve the first municipal open data law in the United States*. This turns the executive order that San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom issued last year directing the city’s departments to make their data public into law. **Commenter Phillip Ashlock corrected the reporting by noting that "Portland passed the first open data law in the U.S. about a year ago and their law was largely influenced by the legislation passed in Vancouver about six months before that. The major difference (and a very important one) with San Francisco's new legislation is that it is more explicit about using open licenses with the open data."
In the year since Newsom opened the data treasure troves, 200 sets of data have been released, and at least 50 apps have been built using them. Among the apps: EcoFinder, which helps people find recycling locations for all sorts of odds and ends; SpotCrime, which plots crime incidents and sends alerts to residents; and, possibly the favorite of the city's transportation-beleaguered residents, Routesy, which lets people plan tips on public transportation and provides real-time information about when the next bus or train is coming.
World Bank data also includes API
The news about the World Bank opening up its data just gets better and better. I talked with Jose de Buerba at the World Bank yesterday. Jose confirmed the open access and also said that the site also includes a link to the World Bank Data API and that they encourage developers to create new applications with the data. It also has a link to DataFinder, the new World Bank iphone application. They're now in phase I of their data plan, the launch. Phase II will focus on improvements to the API. Very cool indeed! If anyone builds mashups with World Bank data, please leave a comment here and/or email Jose (jdebuerba@worldbank.org). They're very keen on understanding how researchers, developers, students and the public are using their data. Continue reading
World Bank Posts Data Online
World Bank Posts 2000 Data Sets Online, By Elizabeth Montalbano, InformationWeek (April 21, 2010).
In an effort to make its data more widely available, the World Bank this week released online more than 2,000 data sets documenting human development worldwide. The data -- available online at the World Bank's Open Data Web site -- includes worldwide information about health, business, finance, environment, and social welfare statistics that were previously available only to paying customers. ...In conjunction with the site, the World Bank released an iPhone application called DataFinder, which allows search of the Open Data site and the creation of charts or data visualizations from iPhones.data.worldbank.org Data Catalog "The Data Catalog provides download access to over 2,000 indicators from World Bank data sources."
The World Bank's Open Data initiative is intended to provide all users with access to World Bank data.... These resources include databases, pre-formatted tables and reports. Each of the listings includes a description of the data source and a direct link to that source. Where possible, the databases are linked directly to a selection screen to allow users to select the countries, indicators, and years they would like to search. Those search results can be exported in different formats. Users can also choose to download the entire database directly from the catalog.Continue reading
OpenSecrets.org Goes OpenData
How cool is this? Today the Center for Responsive Politics has announced that it's putting 200 million data records from its archive directly into the hands of citizens, activists, journalists and anyone else interested in following the money in U.S. politics. The data are available through the site's Action Center. Thanks OpenSecrets!
The following data sets, along with a user guide, resource tables and other documentation, are now available in CSV format (comma-separated values, for easy importing) through OpenSecrets.org's Action Center at http://www.opensecrets.org/action/data.php: CAMPAIGN FINANCE: 195 million records dating to the 1989-1990 election cycle, tracking campaign fundraising and spending by candidates for federal office, as well as political parties and political action committees. CRP's researchers add value to Federal Election Commission data by cleaning up and categorizing contribution records. This allows for easier totaling by industry and company or organization, to measure special-interest influence. LOBBYING: 3.5 million records on federal lobbyists, their clients, their fees and the issues they reported working on, dating to 1998. Industry codes have been applied to this data, as well. PERSONAL FINANCES: Reports from members of Congress and the executive branch that detail their personal assets, liabilities and transactions in 2004 through 2007. The reports covering 2008 will become available to the public in June, and the data will be available for download once CRP has keyed those reports. 527 ORGANIZATIONS: Electronically filed financial records beginning in the 2004 election cycle for the shadowy issue-advocacy groups known as 527s, which can raise unlimited sums of money from corporations, labor unions and individuals. To download bulk data from OpenSecrets.org, users must register on the site and agree to prominently credit the Center for Responsive Politics, along with other terms of service. CRP is making its data available through a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license, which allows users to remix, tweak, build upon and share the Center's work non-commercially. CRP will continue to offer its data to commercial users for a negotiable fee. OpenSecrets.org also offers a number of APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) to give users direct access via web programming to data displayed on OpenSecrets.org. Web developers are already using these APIs to display OpenSecrets data on their web pages and create mashups using live, up-to-date data. Users can also share CRP data using OpenSecrets.org's widgets, which can be placed easily on any website or blog. New widgets for the 2010 election cycle are in development.Continue reading
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