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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

#31

Post by todipa »

rjf72 wrote: post #30
astazangasta wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not convinced there are really any important national security secrets other than passcodes and so on. The rest seems to be excuses for hiding corruption of various kinds. Secrecy in government is incompatible with democracy by definition.

You have to think about how people respond to things. Social media in its current state has basically turned into a system that takes an event, removes all context, spins it in the most negative way imaginable, and then dogpiles on it to no end -- virtue signaling for imaginary points. There are often lots of things in government, and in life in general, where you must choose between two very negative choices. And th…

"...incredibly easy way score those imaginary points and followers which are the hottest commodity since sliced bread." This made me laugh - sadly true

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

#32

Post by tobylane »

yohann305 wrote: post #18

I wonder if this open data can be (will be?) used by a foreign entity and be turned against the american people? It should be open but not free-for-all

An earlier commentator linked to the UK's effort: https://data-in.place/. Can you give an example of the misuse? Even if there was, surely the benefits outweigh? Transparency is often underrated.

Another angle: Maria Butina's husband is a Republican from South Dakota.

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

#33

Post by kerkeslager »

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…

As long as those spreadsheets/database files are accessible to someone with technical skill, people can pull in the data and use tools to make it more accessible and useful. Ideally, yes, the data is useful to begin with, but as long as it's available, there's nothing stopping individuals with the skills from making it useful.

Of course, there are exceptions: the PDFs that are often provided by the prosecution as part of the discovery process are prohibitively difficult to deal with, and should be considered a violation of Brady vs. Maryland, IMO.

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

#36

Post by crankylinuxuser »

The first problem here is the data formats state and federal governments use. You'll see a hodgepodge, but primarily MS Office $version .

The biggest problem with this terrible binary format is that metadata can leak a great deal that should have not been released. So this leads to PDF output of word/excel.

The next area is that especially local government offices have no way of setting up a data portal. I'm working on this right now, where the only way to get data out of Bloomington,IN is to do FOIA requests every week/month over the data you want. This absolutely should be available via a portal, and not locked behind "in person, mail, fax at cost of .10$ a page".

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

#37

Post by newleaf »

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…

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.

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

#38

Post by crankylinuxuser »

todipa wrote: post #31
rjf72 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to think about how people respond to things. Social media in its current state has basically turned into a system that takes an event, removes all context, spins it in the most negative way imaginable, and then dogpiles on it to no end -- virtue signaling for imaginary points. There are often lots of things in government, and in life in general, where you must choose between two very negative choices. And th…

"...incredibly easy way score those imaginary points and followers which are the hottest commodity since sliced bread." This made me laugh - sadly true

Yet these imaginary points are a source of influential power.

That can lead to money, but doesn't have to. Wielding power is its own ability.

Look no further than HN. Power is granted by how many "imaginary points" you have. Downvote, flag, vouch, and I'm sure more - there's power wrapped up in imaginary points.

And I'm sure someone would also argue that money is also imaginary points, that everyone accepts as 'monetary power's. Of course, this is orthogonal to 'karma', 'likes', or other names of the same thing.

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

#39

Post by zrail »

lykr0n wrote: post #12
jcriddle4 wrote: post #8

Interesting that the Federal Reserve was exempted from this legislation.

The Federal Reserve [board] bases its data on data from the Reserve Banks (think Federal Reserve of New York)- which are private and get data from banks chartered in the region (so the New York Fed is partially owned by JP Morgan). Requiring the Federal Reserve [board] to release underlying data could get sticky and be a legal minefield.

Also the St Louis Fed provides provides FRED, which is pretty open for most purposes.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/

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