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Congress votes to make open government data the default in the United States

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Re: Congress votes to make open government data the default in the United States

#101

Post by knodi123 »

koboll wrote: post #99
newleaf wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In case you haven't seen it, I think https://www.data.gov/ is an attempt to answer your point about making it "accessible and useful to people." There's room for improvement, but it's a start.

USDS/18F have done such incredible work and I'm glad the Trump admin hasn't killed them off completely. Given Trump's total-war attitude toward all Obama initiatives I'm somewhat surprised they still exist and haven't been gutted like CFPB.

honestly, with this administration's turnover and record number of still-unfilled positions, I'd bet there's a very real chance that it still exists because it hasn't been noticed yet. because it sounds exactly like the kind of thing the Trump admin would hate, seeing as how they've already pulled a lot of data out of the public eye like climate change reports, white house visitor logs, etc.

Re: Congress votes to make open government data the default in the United States

#102

Post by bobwaycott »

alpyne wrote: post #76
bobwaycott wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Making public data open by default can arguable be an imporant step towards fostering societal equity. Out of curiosity, what’s the argument here for how public data being open by default is an important step toward fostering societal equity?

Here's a paper by the Sunlight Foundation that goes into this a bit: https://www.scribd.com/doc/263776138/The-Social-Impact-of-Op...

Thanks!

Re: Congress votes to make open government data the default in the United States

#103

Post by justin_oaks »

dgellow wrote: post #85

As a next step I would love to see an exploration of a legal system where a change of a law or regulation is backed by both data (data and methodology directly referenced by the law) and a description of the expected impact. Something such as: > By changing law A related to B, we expect the increase of C to be at least D in the next E months. If not achieved, the change is reversed/reduced. Hopefully that would allow…

I've dreamed the same thing.

Since every law is a trade-off, having both positive and negative effects, I wish each law would enumerate the expected/possible positive and negative effects. In other words, I want the trade-off to be explicit and for the lawmakers to express why they believe the positive effects outweigh the negatives ones.

Re: Congress votes to make open government data the default in the United States

#104

Post by n-exploit »

jcriddle4 wrote: post #8

Interesting that the Federal Reserve was exempted from this legislation.

Or course, some of the most important economic data sets won't be shared.

It's almost like they want to cover up the systemic disempowerment of the American electorate.

Re: Congress votes to make open government data the default in the United States

#106

Post by FPGAhacker »

org3432 wrote: post #75
newleaf wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In case you haven't seen it, I think https://www.data.gov/ is an attempt to answer your point about making it "accessible and useful to people." There's room for improvement, but it's a start.

I thought there would be a flood of projects analysing the data when it came out, but it seems like the idea everyone applauded but not much came out of it. Steve Ballmer's http://usafacts.org seems like the first real attempt though.

That's pretty interesting, thanks for mentioning it.

Re: Congress votes to make open government data the default in the United States

#107

Post by [deleted] »

todipa wrote: post #5

Open data is the first step. I wish I could do more business with my gov't (State and Local) through the internet. "Copies of documents cannot be ordered through this website, by email or over the telephone." Only fax and snail mail... https://www.dos.ny.gov/corps/faq_copies.page.asp

[deleted]

Re: Congress votes to make open government data the default in the United States

#108

Post by mancerayder »

compute_me wrote: post #23

Making public data open by default can arguable be an imporant step towards fostering societal equity. However, it needs to be not only "open", which typically means stashed away in some corner as a spreadsheet or database file, but accessible and useful to people. The UK has been pushing open data for years now and more and more institutions are now realizing this. Shameless plug for a research project that is aimin…

Making public data open by default can arguable be an imporant step towards fostering societal equity.

Define equity here?

Re: Congress votes to make open government data the default in the United States

#109

Post by akudha »

wilde wrote: post #21
pratheekrebala wrote: post #3

FOIA officers will still find a way to send me scanned PDFs of spreadsheets.

I’ll defend this practice. It’s the only way of knowing for sure that you’re transmitting exactly the information you intend to send. Even copy/paste often picks up other stuff you don’t intend.

There are other ways to ensure this. Even with your own logic, it would make sense then to send both the Excel sheets and scanned PDFs of the Excel sheets, isn't it? It would be super comical though

Re: Congress votes to make open government data the default in the United States

#110

Post by erentz »

"The Open, Public, Electronic, and Necessary Government Data Act (AKA the OPEN Government Data Act)"

Please, could we end this obsession with backronyms in congress. Perhaps some congressperson could create a suitably titled backronym act to rid us of backronym acts. This should just be the one singular "Government Data Act" and it should be amended as needed to cover any law changes around "Government Data".

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