Resources
Government, technology, and policy resources organized
CITIES:
Our partner, the Sunlight Foundation, has been working on city open data for years, so there are many references to their resources here. This is a scaled down, stepwise version of the open data resources available from many sources. Find the full Sunlight Foundation Open Data Policy Guidelines here and Public Policy for Public Data Checklist here.
- Why do you need policy for government open data
- What is an open data policy for a city?
- How to make an open data policy into a city resolution?
- Implementing an open data policy in a city
- Index of existing city resolutions
- Government financial transparency tools
- Best practices for operating government financial transparency tools
STATES:
State support of government financial transparency is critical for the success of the cities’ open data implementations. Every city has financial reporting responsiblities to their state and likely to the Governmental Accounting Standards Board. This makes working with these critical oversight organziations an important part of every city’s repsonsibilities. Each state’s success with their own open data portals directly impacts their cities through standards, audits, reporting, and collaboration. The Open Data Initiative is working to bridge the gaps in government financial transparency implementations between the city, state, and federal levels.
- Why do you need policy for government open data
- What is an open data policy for a state? (First revision to be published in early March 2018)
- How to make an open data policy into state legislation? (First revision to be published in March 2018)
- Implementing an open data policy in a state (First revision to be published in March 2018)
- Scored Index of existing state legislation
- Report and Scored index of existing state open data portals
- Government financial transparency tools
- Best practices for operating government financial transparency tools
US-FEDERAL:
Our partner, the Data Coalition, has been working to implement open data at the Federal level for years, so there are many references to their resources here. The people of the Data Coalition helped to pass the The Digital Accountability and Transparency Act of 2014 (DATA Act) (PL 113-101) which provided a example to the nation of the United States how government transparency could work on a large scale. This is a scaled down, stepwise version of the open data resources available from many sources.
- Why do you need policy for government open data
- What is an open data policy for the US Federal government?
- How to make an open data policy into federal legislation? It takes an open government advocate Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
- Implementing an open data policy at the federal level
- Index of existing federal legislation. There are a few new federal open data laws in the works, but the DATA Act is it right now.
- Government financial transparency tools
- Best practices for operating government financial transparency tools
OPEN-DATA-PLATFORMS:
This is a first generation list of open data sources and tools. As this list gets refined, it will become a checklist for the average constituent to utilize open data sources to publish reports and charts that explain problems and/or solutions.
- Data.World
- Kaggle
- Federal Data.gov
- Gapminder
- US Census
- US Federal agency’s spending online
- California High Speed Rail project. There are many billions of $ in cost overruns in this project. The data to analyze the project is published. It is just waiting for someone to filter through the PDFs and publish.
- Socrata
- Forbes 2016 data sources list
- Global Open Data Index
- GoodTables is part of the Frictionless Data project from Open Knowledge International. Set metadata header standards and GoodTables will alert you when new data deviates from the standard.
- Open Spending is a free, open and global platform to search, visualise and analyse fiscal data.
- The Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network (CKAN) is an open source open data management system. CKAN is used heavily in Europe and in US Federal agencies.
POLICY-ORGANIZATIONS:
Supporting open data and government financial transparency. We want to advance their policy and project goals.
- Sunlight Foundation, Open Cities project. This project is supported by What Works Cities, funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies
- US Public Interest Research Groups’ Annual Government Spending Data report. PIRG puts out this annual report that many state treasury offices follow as their transparency grade. In 2011, this report motivated Ohio to develop open data systems that have made Ohio a national government financial transparency leader.
- Buckeye Institute Ohio Government Salary site
- California Policy Center California Civic Performance Profiles site
- GovWiki US Government CAFRs and Audits. Find many government financial reporting PDFs here. Meticulously gathered and maintained.
- Open Knowledge International is an European based non-profit dedicated to open data in government.
- The Frictionless Data Package is an OKI sponsored financial reporting project. The work in progress can be tracked here ProPublica OpenGov Foundaton
UNIVERSITIES:
Active university sponsored projects and available work for university students.
- Open Data Initiative’s projects with help wanted
- US Federal agency’s reporting community pages. The ideas and comments here represent many possible new development project. This is an excellent place for university students to discuss and find new project ideas and work.
- GovEx is a city government open data policy organization managed by Johns Hopkins University, in partership with What Works Cities. They also mantain the open data standards site that presents all they have been able to find online.
- USC Civic Tech, LA Open Data project. This is a bit stale, but an good example of university project work.
COMMERCIAL-COMPANIES:
Government focused open data commercial companies. We want to support and better understand their software, implementation, and operations.