This post was initially published by the DC Open Government Coalition. As a parent raising children in a city whose... View Article
Continue readingWhat DC should have done differently with its new open data policy
Here's how DC missed an opportunity for improvement on its open data policy and what it can do next.
Continue readingThe state of state and local campaign finance: D.C. primary edition
While not yet perfect, D.C.’s campaign finance website has a number of features that allow reporters and other researchers to access many aspects of campaign finance data in bulk form.
Continue readingOpen Data Day DC, 2013
A couple Saturdays ago, I helped Josh Tauberer, Kat Townsend, Dmitri Kachaev, Sam Lee, and Julia Bezgacheva organize a hackathon... View Article
Continue readingOpenGov Voices: Building a Community of Data Professionals and Opening Government Data, One Meetup at a Time
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by the guest blogger and those providing comments are theirs alone and do not reflect the opinions of the Sunlight Foundation or any employee thereof. Sunlight Foundation is not responsible for the accuracy of any of the information within the guest
blog.
Sean Patrick Murphy and Harlan Harris wrote this post. Sean has served as a senior scientist at Johns Hopkins University for over a decade. When not doing research, he currently advises several startups and provides general data science and learning analytics consulting for EverFi. Follow him on Twitter (@SayHiToSean) or contact him at SayHiToSean@gmail.com
Harlan has a PhD in Computer Science (Machine Learning) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and post-doctoral work in Cognitive Psychology at several universities. He currently is Senior Data Scientist at Kaplan Test Prep, and co-organizes Data Science DC. Follow him on Twitter (@HarlanH).
Potential
The greater National Capital Region (i.e. the DC metro area), has always had a wealth of technical talent, waist deep in data, calling the region home. Whether launching satellites at Goddard Space Center in Greenbelt to decrypting messages at the NSA, this region is literally littered with three (or more) letter organizations -- NIH, JHU, DoD, DARPA, AOL, NIST, etc. -- working extensively with data.
Despite this intense concentration of professionals who share this common bond, these groups exist in isolated silos preventing the open dissemination of knowledge and best practices that would accelerate progress across industries. A rising tide of data-expertise would indeed raise all ships.
DC Arts Advocacy Day Promotes Local Budget Transparency
When you think about your typical advocate for government transparency, who comes to mind? I bet lawyers, bloggers, teachers, Tea... View Article
Continue readingDC Gov Builds Amazing Open Gov Dashboard
On Saturday, the White House released its Open Government Dashboard. It features a big chart with 29 agencies on it measured by four attributes. I suspect that the technology behind this dashboard is likely an excel file, alongside staffers or interns checking each agency website for compliance. It's a start of something-- but a chart does not a dashboard make.
Here in Washington DC, amidst a couple feet of snow (with more on the way!), Mayor Fenty released Track, a real way for citizens to watch their government's performance. Both substance wise and technically, it out-atheletes the White House's Open Government dashboard.
More on how after the jump
Continue readingMaking Cities Think Like the Web
Mark Surman, executive director of the Mozilla Foundation, gave a very interesting talk (audio and slide show available) at last... View Article
Continue readingApps for Democracy: 2 Days Left to Compete
The District has been getting major kudos for its IT projects and which are well-deserved. DC’s data catalog, for instance,... View Article
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