Innovator's Dilemma: How SF's Rajiv Bhatia Pioneered Open Health Data and Ruffled Feathers
BY Sam Roudman | Thursday, February 6 2014
During his fifteen-year tenure at San Francisco’s Department of Public Health, Dr. Rajiv Bhatia excelled. By measuring the health impacts of proposed laws and policies, he created powerful tools to advocate on behalf of the disadvantaged. Gentrification is innately distasteful to many: Bhatia showed how it could be harmful. His work contributed to today’s civic obsession with open data and transparency before those words began to buzz in the ears of bureaucrats, civic hackers and entrepreneurs. He looked at data politically, and searched for political fights to deploy it in. At least he did until June of last year. Read More
First POST: Obscurity
BY Micah L. Sifry | Tuesday, February 4 2014
New "transparency" reports from major tech companies on government data requests; seeing secret surveillance satellites; ElectionMall's troubled history; and much, much more. Read More
World Bank's New Website Lets Countries Compare Data on Education
BY Rebecca Chao | Thursday, January 30 2014
The data portal allows users to see what education data is available per country. (credit: screenshot, World Bank)
As our partner Engine Room’s Susannah Vila recently asked in a post, can open data improve primary education in developing countries? She points to a number of grassroots education data initiatives like Check My School in the Philippines and platforms that provide school quality data for parents in Kenya and Tanzania; but the latest education data initiative by the World Bank is aimed at policymakers. Read More
TRAC FM Stirs Debate in Uganda By Merging Radio and Data
BY Erin Byrnes | Wednesday, January 29 2014
Margaret Caroline Adong, 33, doesn’t own a smartphone or have access to the Internet where she lives in the Serere district in rural Uganda but she does participate in every TRAC FM poll that she hears over the radio or receives a text about. This SMS-based polling platform facilitates citizen engagement with interactive radio programs in Uganda through data collection and a radio broadcast of the mapped poll results. Read More
"Burying" Data Until Convenient Undermines The UK's Open Data Efforts
BY Jessica McKenzie | Monday, January 27 2014
Revelations that the UK government held back crucial information about the effects of alcohol pricing on health, until a policy decision about it had gone by, have left some questioning the United Kingdom's open data program.
Read MoreGov'ts Hoarding Data Lose Out On Potential Revenue
BY Jessica McKenzie | Tuesday, January 21 2014
Open data is all the rage these days, but many governments are still reluctant to release geospatial data, perhaps because of the impulse to try and recoup some of the high costs of collecting it. However, experts say that this is stifling innovation and damming potential revenue streams.
Read MoreFirst POST: Paranoid Liberalism
BY Micah L. Sifry | Tuesday, January 21 2014
The New Republic accuses Snowden, Greenwald and Assange of being "paranoid libertarians"; Academics think Facebook can be used to predict election results; Data-mining for marketing purposes goes really, really awry; and much, much more. Read More
New Data.Gov.Ph Site Lowers Barriers to Gov't Data in Philippines
BY Jessica McKenzie | Thursday, January 16 2014
A presidential spokesperson launched the new Open Data Philippines site on Thursday. This is a big step in the direction of transparency for the Philippines, which was chided in a Sunlight Foundation report last October for erecting unnecessary barriers to public data.
Read MoreThe Buenos Aires Net Party: Weaving a Bridge Between the Click and the Vote
BY Rebecca Chao | Monday, January 13 2014
If you had strolled past the Legislature Palace of the City of Buenos Aires some time in October of last year, you might have seen a towering Trojan horse made of wooden slats taken in tow by a SUV and a group of activists from the nascent El Partido de La Red or Net Party. Rather than housing a lethal subset of the Grecian army, the statue carried ideas from the citizens of Buenos Aires on improving their city government. The Net Party is the city’s newest party and first dabble into direct democracy. Read More
An Accidental Ally For the European Union: “Thank you, Mr. Snowden,” says European Commission VP Reding in Hangout Debate
BY Antonella Napolitano | Thursday, January 9 2014
The year 2013 was a "Year for the Citizens" in the European Union where the institution pledged itself to "encourage dialogue between all levels of government, civil society, and business." But in many countries citizens were more hostile than open to communicating with an institution often perceived as distant and intrusive. That's probably one of the reasons why the European Commission is launching a series of online initiatives to create a space for debate with the most important members of the European institutions. Last Tuesday, the Vice President of the European Commission Viviane Reding hosted an online debate on Google hangout, joined by five journalists and activists from all over Europe.
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