Last night, in the State of the Union Address, President Obama reminded the world why a 21st century government that’s open and competent, starts with putting information online. He said: “In the coming year, we’ll also work to rebuild people’s faith in the institution of government. Because you deserve to know exactly how and where [...]
Last month Socrata announced that we were commissioning an Open Government Data Benchmark Study to assess the state of the nascent Open Data movement. Via that announcement we also invited participation from advocacy groups who are passionate about this subject. We are honored that we have been joined in conducting this study by the Sunlight [...]
Socrata Summer Update
August 11, 2010 by Kevin Merritt
While you all have been enjoying summer, we at Socrata haven’t been “on holiday.” Quite the opposite. In addition to having a few new permanent employees and two summer interns making solid contributions, the overall pace of the company has been brisk this summer. I haven’t kept the blog as up to date as I [...]
Continue Reading →Why Do We Need an Open Data Benchmark Study?
July 15, 2010 by Kevin Merritt
Yesterday we announced that on July 21st, we will launch a broad market study to benchmark the state of Open Data in government. We believe this will be the very first time that government stakeholders, mainstream citizens and civic application developers will all be invited to share their perspectives on this nascent movement. Why are [...]
Continue Reading →NYC Open Data Hearing
June 20, 2010 by Kevin Merritt
Led by New York City Council Member Gale A. Brewer, on Monday June 21, 2010 the New York City Council Committee on Technology will hold a hearing on Open Data standards for all NYC agencies. The specifics of the hearing are as follows: The New York City Council Committee on Technology will hold an important hearing [...]
Continue Reading →Open Data – It's More Than Publishing a CSV
June 7, 2010 by Kevin Merritt
Today, the status quo for governments sharing public data is via the CSV. It’s the de facto standard by which most government organizations publish their data for consumption. The CSV is no longer an acceptable format for data publishing. It’s time to raise the bar on how government open data sites like data.gov and DataSF.org [...]
Continue Reading →Creating Maps in Socrata
May 12, 2010 by Kevin Merritt
Now anyone can create maps in Socrata. Creating a Google map, Bing map or ESRI ArcGIS map in Socrata is easy. Maps can be created by the dataset owner (i.e. the publisher) or even by a casual viewer who wants to socially enrich the data by creating a map. To create a map, follow these [...]
Continue Reading →Accessibility, Section 508, and the Open Government Movement
April 28, 2010 by Chris Metcalf
Can the government really be “open” if it’s not open for everyone? As Federal, state, and local governments put more of their data online, it is important that they take into consideration the needs of all of their constituents, including those who are disabled and use special technologies to access the Internet. This becomes especially important [...]
Continue Reading →