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

e-pluribusunum.org

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

#4

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

You obviously did not read the article.

> public information should be open by default to the public in a machine-readable format, where such publication doesn’t harm privacy or security

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

#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

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

#6
post #2

Can someone who is more familiar with the actual policy shed some light on this?

FWIW, the author, Alex Howard (who I'm friends-via-Twitter with), is as familiar with this as anyone. He was previously a senior analyst at the Sunlight Foundation, which is a prominent open-government organization: https://sunlightfoundation.com/author/ahoward/

The submitted post includes a link [0] to an article he wrote a couple days back, which provides more context on "How did open government data get into the US Code?", including the nitty-gritty of how the original bill was proposed in the last session but ultimately left out of legislation. Howard writes that the legislation was "one of the primary legislative priorities for me during my years as a senior analyst and then deputy director at the Sunlight Foundation"

[0] https://e-pluribusunum.org/2018/12/20/senate-passes-evidence...

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

#7
> there was a carve out “for data that does not concern monetary policy,” which relates to the Federal Reserve, among others.

Does that mean they won't open data that affects monetary policy or that they will only open data that affects monetary policy?

Either way that seems huge.

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

#9
post #4

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

You obviously did not read the article. > public information should be open by default to the public in a machine-readable format, where such publication doesn’t harm privacy or security

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> Please don't insinuate that someone hasn't read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."

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

#10
post #6
post #2

Can someone who is more familiar with the actual policy shed some light on this?

FWIW, the author, Alex Howard (who I'm friends-via-Twitter with), is as familiar with this as anyone. He was previously a senior analyst at the Sunlight Foundation, which is a prominent open-government organization: https://sunlightfoundation.com/author/ahoward/ The submitted post includes a link [0] to an article he wrote a couple days back, which provides more context on "How did open government data get into the U…

> (who I'm friends-via-Twitter with)

Full disclosure? Odd brag?

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