Earlier quoted context omitted.
"open but not free-for-all" What would this mean in practice?
Available to us citizens only
Waste of time, easy to get around by asking an American friend to forward the data.
Congress votes to make open government data the default in the United States
131–140 of 161 posts
Re: Congress votes to make open government data the default in the United States
#132All I want for this Christmass is an authoritative list of all US federal agencies. I kid you not, there is no such list and the number of federal agencies is uncertain. From Wikipedia: >Legislative definitions of a federal agency are varied, and even contradictory, and the official United States Government Manual offers no definition. While the Administrative Procedure Act definition of "agency" applies to most exec…
It seems like the solution here would be to have a government agency that counts how many government agencies there are. I believe that could be done with an executive order but correct me if I'm wrong.
Re: Congress votes to make open government data the default in the United States
#133Making 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…
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.
nih.gov is also quite good for health data.
Re: Congress votes to make open government data the default in the United States
#134All I want for this Christmass is an authoritative list of all US federal agencies. I kid you not, there is no such list and the number of federal agencies is uncertain. From Wikipedia: >Legislative definitions of a federal agency are varied, and even contradictory, and the official United States Government Manual offers no definition. While the Administrative Procedure Act definition of "agency" applies to most exec…
We're working on it, but it's not a data transparency problem, it's a governance problem
Re: Congress votes to make open government data the default in the United States
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
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...
I disagree - that's not a link to a paper by the Sunlight Foundation. It's a link to a site that wants you to agree to try a monthly subscription before you can download anything at all. Especially in the context of a discussion about public data, that's an important distinction. If you can, please provide an URL to the actual content?
The article linked above, hosted on Scribd, is actually one of the official distributions provided by the Sunlight Foundation. The Scribd user who uploaded it was one of the paper's authors.
Having said that, here's a link to the version hosted on the Sunlight Foundation's domain: http://assets.sunlightfoundation.com.s3.amazonaws.com/policy...
You can also verify what I said about the Scribd version by checking out the original press release/announcement here: https://sunlightfoundation.com/2015/05/05/a-new-approach-to-...
Re: Congress votes to make open government data the default in the United States
#136Has anyone read any good analysis about Title I of HR4174 requiring evidence when making public policy? Skimming the bill, I don't have a clue what the implications are other than requiring agencies to make some reports. It sounds like a good thing on the surface, but it has been a talking point of the Trump administration, and put into practice in a rather Orwellian fashion.
Basically, the implied subtext is that regulators should not put any restrictions on industry unless the evidence is completely unambiguously in favor of the regulation. However, science is never 100% certain even at its best. And you can always drag up some study that contradicts the strong consensus of the field, whether by fluke or intentional design of the study. In other words "evidence based policymaking" has been euphemism for "must give alternative facts equal weight".
Re: Congress votes to make open government data the default in the United States
#137Cool! And they should also adopt UK-like government web design principles.
Re: Congress votes to make open government data the default in the United States
#138Interesting that the Federal Reserve was exempted from this legislation.
You can access the Reserve's information online as part of the Federal Reserve System's Open Government webpage implementing the Open Government Directive from 2009: https://www.federalreserve.gov/open/open.htm
Despite all that, the Federal Reserve is not a government institution, so such legislation would be similar to singling out your business to post all information in machine readable format online.
Re: Congress votes to make open government data the default in the United States
#139Interesting that the Federal Reserve was exempted from this legislation.
Is it? My understanding is that although the board is appointed by the President and Congress, once appointed they don't answer to the government, so their data isn't really "government data". But I'll be the first to admit I know very little about how the Federal Reserve works.
That's a real shame, because we wouldn't have a federal debt if we didn't have the Federal Reserve. More people should actually know how it works.
Re: Congress votes to make open government data the default in the United States
#140Does anybody know a public source of
net worth + annual earnings+ board positions
of US Senator/congressman spouses+children ?