Comments on: An Open Letter to the City of Austin

By: public records

public records — Mon, 10 May 2010 11:41:28 +0000

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By: jeanrose

jeanrose — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 13:50:27 +0000

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By: ATX Tech Women Happy Hour This Thursday | AustinStartup

ATX Tech Women Happy Hour This Thursday | AustinStartup — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 19:28:38 +0000

[...] a philosophy around its data. (If you want to know more about this idea, check out Juan Sequeda’s recent post on this blog.) It was an excellent discussion and I was fortunate to connect with some of the [...]

By: Chip Rosenthal

Chip Rosenthal — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 22:23:50 +0000

It's great that the City's Chief Communications Director Doug Matthews responded here. As you can see, the City is pretty much committed to doing exactly what you're suggesting.

The place to stay informed of City of Austin activity is the AustinGO (Austin Government Online) web site (www.austingo.org). It was quiet through the winter, but that's because the City was in procurement for services. I'm expecting a lot more activity (public activity) in the coming months.

At the Dec 9 meeting of the Community Technology and Telecommunications Commission, the City's Chief Communications Director Doug Matthews specifically addressed the question of providing datasets.

Presentation here:
http://austintx.swagit.com/play/12092009-44/4/

The discussion comes at 18:20 in the presentation.

In that presentation, Doug mentions that the City will be engaging in an agreement with Open Austin (www.openaustin.org) to provide public/crowdsourced participation. I ran into whurley moments ago and he agreed that's on track to be a reality. So if you'd like to help in the effort, I'd urge you to get involved with Open Austin.

By: sguengerich

sguengerich — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 13:04:38 +0000

Everyone that is interested in learning more or sharing what you know about open data, open government initiatives, "government as a platform," etc. please join us in organizing an unconference event later this Spring. See: http://barcamp.pbworks.com/txgov20

By: Juan Sequeda

Juan Sequeda — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 18:32:33 +0000

I am planning to organize the next Semantic Web Austin meetup in mid February and host a panel discussion on this topic. We will announce this shortly

By: juliogonzalez

juliogonzalez — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 03:26:35 +0000

@Juan: I completely agree. Are you organizing an advocacy org?

@Doug: How does one get involved in the City's process?

I am an end-user of the data. I've advocated for open government data in person to different local candidates I have supported and in the discussion of Austin Energy's new manager, but we need to get organized to make it happen. I've also written about the topic on Keep Austin Wonky at:

http://wp.me/py8JD-32

By: Jason Kiesel

Jason Kiesel — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 23:30:11 +0000

Thanks for the shout out Jon (and the great blog post Juan!). CitySourced is all about opening up data to the masses. We have APIs that allow pretty much anyone to pull down (and even push in) data through a variety of REST calls. Juan, if you know of anyone in the city government that would be interested in our product, be sure to reach out to me – jason(at)citysourced(dot)com

Thanks!

By: Juan Sequeda

Juan Sequeda — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 23:29:19 +0000

Thanks for all the awesome comments!

It's great to know that we can count on awesome people and companies in Austin.

Doug, thanks for responding. I am glad to hear that the web redesign is kicking off. And more importantly that you will be releasing data sets. However, I would like to advocate the use of semantic web and linked data technologies when releasing the data. It is my belief that this will put the City of Austin in a pioneer position. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has published two important notes that recommend the use of Linked Data when publishing Government Open Data.

http://www.w3.org/TR/gov-data/
http://www.w3.org/TR/egov-improving/

I look forward to continue this conversation with you and everybody interested.

By: Doug Matthews

Doug Matthews — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 23:11:27 +0000

Hi, Juan. We're actually kicking off Phase I of our Web redesign next Friday, and would love to have you involved when we begin the public input process. In fact, we should have a signed Charter agreement with OpenAustin at that point, and have the redesign team meeting with them next week, so if you're involved with that group you should be hearing more from them in the next few weeks.

In reference to your question about data, believe me when I say that we've already been working on it, and have a limited set of data ready to go...we're now working with our departments to flush out that catalogue of data so that it will be meaningful once released. In fact, part of our Charter with OpenAustin will include enlisting their help in identifying existing and potential data feeds for a fully-functional portal for the community.

Give me a call (or e-mail) and we can talk more about Semantic's potential to help us in the effort.

Doug Matthews
Chief Communications Director
City of Austin
974-2231
douglas.matthews@ci.austin.tx.us