“AskThem is a project of the Participatory Politics Foundation, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization with a mission to increase civic engagement. AskThem is supported by a charitable grant from the Knight Foundation’s Tech For Engagement initiative. AskThem is a free & open-source website for questions-and-answers with public figures. It’s a not-for-profit tool for a stronger democracy, with open data for informed and engaged communities. AskThem allows you to: Find and ask questions to over 142,000 elected officials nationwide: federal, state and city levels of government. Get signatures for your question or petition, have it delivered over email or Twitter, and... (More >)
The Brave New World of Good
Brad Smith: “Welcome to the Brave New World of Good. Once almost the exclusive province of nonprofit organizations and the philanthropic foundations that fund them, today the terrain of good is disputed by social entrepreneurs, social enterprises, impact investors, big business, governments, and geeks. Their tools of choice are markets, open data, innovation, hackathons, and disruption. They cross borders, social classes, and paradigms with the swipe of a touch screen. We seemed poised to unleash a whole new era of social and environmental progress, accompanied by unimagined economic prosperity. As a brand, good is unassailably brilliant. Who could be... (More >)
Global Open Data Initiative moving forward
“The Global Open Data Initiative will serve as a guiding voice internationally on open data issues. Civil society groups who focus on open data have often been isolated to single national contexts, despite the similar challenges and opportunities repeating themselves in countries across the globe. The Global Open Data Initiative aims to help share valuable resources, guidance and judgment, and to clarify the potential for government open data across the world. Provide a leading vision for how governments approach open data. Open data commitments are among the most popular commitments for countries participating in the Open Government Partnership. The... (More >)
How to Make All Apps More Civic
Nick Grossman in Idea Lab: “The big idea in all of this is that through open data and standards and API-based interoperability, it’s possible not just to build more “civic apps,” but to make all apps more civic: So in a perfect world, I’d not only be able to get my transit information from anywhere (say, Citymapper), I’d be able to read restaurant inspection data from anywhere (say, Foursquare), be able to submit a 311 request from anywhere (say, Twitter), etc. These examples only scratch the surface of how apps can “become more civic” (i.e., integrate with government/civic information... (More >)
Defining Open Data
Open Knowledge Foundation Blog: “Open data is data that can be freely used, shared and built-on by anyone, anywhere, for any purpose. This is the summary of the full Open Definition which the Open Knowledge Foundation created in 2005 to provide both a succinct explanation and a detailed definition of open data. As the open data movement grows, and even more governments and organisations sign up to open data, it becomes ever more important that there is a clear and agreed definition for what “open data” means if we are to realise the full benefits of openness, and avoid... (More >)
Imagining Data Without Division
Thomas Lin in Quanta Magazine: “As science dives into an ocean of data, the demands of large-scale interdisciplinary collaborations are growing increasingly acute…Seven years ago, when David Schimel was asked to design an ambitious data project called the National Ecological Observatory Network, it was little more than a National Science Foundation grant. There was no formal organization, no employees, no detailed science plan. Emboldened by advances in remote sensing, data storage and computing power, NEON sought answers to the biggest question in ecology: How do global climate change, land use and biodiversity influence natural and managed ecosystems and the... (More >)
The transition towards transparency
Roland Harwood at the Open Data Institute Blog: “It’s a very exciting time for the field of open data, especially in the UK public sector which is arguably leading the world in this emerging discipline right now, in no small part thanks to the efforts to the Open Data Institute. There is a strong push to release public data and to explore new innovations that can be created as a result. For instance, the Ordnance Survey have been leading the way with opening up half of their data for others to use, complemented by their GeoVation programme which provides... (More >)
Making All Voices Count
Launch of Making All Voices Count: “Making All Voices Count is a global initiative that supports innovation, scaling-up, and research to deepen existing innovations and help harness new technologies to enable citizen engagement and government responsiveness….Solvable problems need not remain unsolved. Democratic systems in the 21st century continue to be inhibited by 19th century timescales, with only occasional opportunities for citizens to express their views formally, such as during elections. In this century, many citizens have access to numerous tools that enable them to express their views – and measure government performance – in real time. For example, online... (More >)
Open Data 500 gives voice to companies using government data
Fedscoop: “Federal agencies have been working toward a Nov. 1 deadline to unlock their data, as mandated by an executive order issued in May. But what has yet to be examined is how useful those data sets have been to companies and the economic value they have created. Enter the Open Data 500 – a project that gives companies the opportunity to provide feedback to government about which data sets are most useful and which type of data demand exists. The initiative is part of a broader effort by the New York University’s Governance Lab’s research of how government... (More >)
Open Data’s Road to Better Transit
Stephen Goldsmith in GovTech: “Data is everywhere. It now costs less to capture, store and process data than ever before, thanks to better technology and economies of scale. And more than ever, the public expects government to use data to improve its services. Increasingly, government’s problem is not capturing the data, but having sufficient resources to clean and analyze the information in order to address issues, improve performance and make informed decisions. In particular, public transit not only produces an immense volume of data, but it also stands to benefit from good analysis in the form of streamlined operations... (More >)
