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Missed Us?
A lot can happen in a month. We know. And while we haven’t uploaded a new episode of the podcast in a month, we’ve been watching the developments in the domain of public governance and new media.
Today, we’re talking about data.
Data: New Shiny Toy?
Data.gov is just one of the most recent examples of public institutions becoming enamored with open structured data. But why? Why does everyone feel like releasing data will be good for their constituents? Who’s actually doing anything with that data? Does anyone really care?
This week, Darren and I take a look at how data is being used — and how it’s not — and what organizations can do to make their open data more relevant.
A few links that we mention on the show related to data:
- Data.gov
- Vancouver Enters the Age of the Open City
- Toronto.ca/Open
- World Bank API
- New York Times Open (event)
And a few links with regards to the mapping and the geo-spatial web:
We’ll surely be talking about geo-spatial web and what that has to do with public governance in a future episode. Let us know if you have any ideas about that.
In the meantime, are you using data provided by large institutions, whether public or private? How are you using the data? What would you like to see from organizations releasing data to make your participation easier and more interactive? Let us know.
The awesome music used in this episode is from the track Ventus Solaris by Revolution Void and is licensed under a Creative Commons license.
Comments 2
Don’t know if u guys listen to cbc.ca/spark. Nora Young has interesting take on “open” data and public uses for it.
Keep up the great work! Vasta - take something for that cough. ;)
Posted 03 Jun 2009 at 10:56 am ¶I’m a huge Spark fan Karim, and I’ll admit publicly that I have a massive crush on Nora Young. =)
Been enjoying her explorations of open data, but as we mention in the podcast, I think data curators need to be looped into the process as well as data users — that’s the best way for us to make it really valuable.
And I swear, I only cough when I’m podcasting. Must be the mic.
Posted 03 Jun 2009 at 11:26 pm ¶Post a Comment