Open Data Essays
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A Look at the Databases Used in Reporting “City gives felon six-figure grant to open liquor store”
This morning I read the story, “City gives felon six-figure grant to open liquor store: Liquor store with ties to felon just the latest problem for a blighted neighborhood that has suffered for decades” by Chicago Tribune reporters David Jackson and Gary Marx. I was struck by two things: the complexity of the issue of economic development in an area that…
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On the Use of Private Data to Improve Lives (Five Data Sources You Can Use Now to Make a New Business)
I have long been been a proponent of open government data, and I’ve made a lot of products that use it. I’ve helped a number of cities, including my own, in publishing data and coming up with good policies. Over the last couple years, however, I’ve turned my attention to the vast troves of private data that…
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Stitching Together Disparate Building Info To Tell Compelling Stories
If written about creating a generic context engine for civic data, and also delved into the fact that private data is critical to understanding the world around us. in prep for the Knight-Mozilla-MIT “Story & Algorithm” Hack Day on Saturday, I wanted to lay out some specific manifestations of a general method developers could use to tell…
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President Obama’s Open Government Imperatives Must Trickle Down to Cities
Today President Obama issued two eloquent orders with the following subject lines: “Freedom of Information Act” and “Transparency and Open Government”. Published on the first full day of his presidency, they constitute a sweeping manifesto about how he wants to govern at the Federal level. Those leading municipal government in this country — mayors, commissioners,…