While this is a little late-- late's better than never for giving thanks. And this year, we've got a lot to be thankful for. Open Data in Open Government is making leaps and strides. The Vice President is talking data quality in government on the Daily Show. ABC News along with Recovery.gov's controversy have brought government data into prime time. It's been a long time since transparency like this has seen this kind of attention.
At this time of Thanksgiving here in the United States I wanted to give thanks for the new and changing government datasets that we have now. Some are truly amazing.
Continue readingRecovery.gov’s Success
We spend a lot of time talking about how Government does a lot wrong with data. And we harass them and complain a lot to the extent that even I get on my own nerves. But the fact is, the people and programmers working on these projects on the inside are neither malicious nor incompetent. The problem isn't people, but a weird system of priorities and incentives that often leaves the citizen short-handed. After all, transparency isn't even an inkling the constitution (yet!) and I'm fairly certain that the framers of our constitution weren't really considering data portability when they drafted the Bill of Rights.
Continue readingVotersDaily: What it’s all about
About a week ago, Christopher Groskopf posted a question to the Sunlight Labs Google group. After completing a parser for North Dakota in the Fifty State Project he asked the question: "Has anyone addressed the parsing of federal schedules?"
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