April 26, 2011
OpenDataPhilly launches: More government transparency for Phila. region
People living in and around Philadelphia now have a key tool to stay informed about local government and issues. The newly launched OpenDataPhilly site offers access to over 100 data sets, applications, and application programming interfaces (APIs, a tool for developers) about the Philadelphia region…
This site includes includes municipal and non-municipal data. Users can find data sets by keyword or category—and learn where each data set came from, how often it’s updated, and other important context.
The site was built by Azavea, a Philadelphia-based Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software firm. According to the site’s about page, the goal is to support further development, to make this data even more useful:
“By connecting people with data, we’re hoping to encourage users to take the data and transform it into creative applications, projects, and visualizations that demonstrate the power that data can have in understanding and shaping our communities. These public uses of data are featured in the OpenDataPhilly Idea Gallery. Each data set, application, or API can also be rated and commented upon in order to provide feedback on the possible uses of a data source.”
In a recent blog post, Azavea president Robert Cheetham noted that Philadelphia was an early leader in open data and government transparency—but then fell behind.
“The [Philadelphia] municipal government made its GIS data available to the public at no charge almost 10 years ago—and, at the time, was one of the first and largest municipalities in the world to do so. ...In the past few years, many municipal governments have been making a public and concerted effort to improve the transparency of their government operations by releasing significant and useful data sets. ...Philadelphia has been missing from the list. ...There is no Philadelphia Open Data web site. But there are a lot of people who want to see that change.”
Until the City of Philadelphia gets its act together on open data, OpenDataPhilly allows the community—as well as the vibrant Philly grassroots news/data scene—to help itself.
This emerging local media ecosystem will be nurtured by the new Philadelphia Public Interest Information Network (PPIIN), a networked journalism collaborative project of Temple University’s new Center for Public Interest Journalism with funding from the William Penn Foundation.
More about OpenDataPhilly from TechnicallyPhilly.
The News for Digital Journalists blog is made possible by a grant to USC Annenberg from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
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