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Congress Approves Act that Opens US Government Data To the Public; Requires Federal Agencies To Publish 'Non-Sensitive' Info in 'Machine-Readable' Format (engadget.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Congress has passed a bill that could make it easier for you to access public data released by the government. The House approved the OPEN Government Data Act on Saturday, while all eyes were on the shutdown, as part of a larger bill to support evidence-based policymaking. It requires that federal agencies must publish any "non-sensitive" info in a "machine-readable" format (essentially in a way that's legible on your smartphone or laptop). The act also insists that agencies appoint a chief data officer to oversee all open data efforts. Having passed the Senate last Wednesday, the bill is next headed to the President's desk.
Good point. Can you look it over and get back to us?
https://www.congress.gov/bill/...
When the Republicans took office, one of the first things the thugs did was remove all of the EPA's climate data from the internet. The EPA had massive volumes of data accessible to anyone, and Republican thugs removed it all. Immediately.
Does this new law require them to put it all back?
You'll never see his tax returns because you would see that a) he did nothing illegal, and b) it would point out all the loop holes in the tax code to make everything he did legal that congress refuses to patch because they use them too.
The biggest problem with useful idiots such as yourself is to think "your guy" is in any way better than "the other guy".
Firstly, I don't have a 'my guy' I'm a very fair minded person in that I despise all politicians equally regardless of where on the left-right scale they are. I only make a handful of exceptions for a few left and right who proved themselves to be relatively un-scumbaggy (as politicians go). Secondly, the tax loopholes are thoroughly documented and well known to most of the public, that is one of the major reasons that congress' approval rating stands at ~20%. Thirdly, if you think that your biblically prophesied dear leader, a veteran New York real estate developer who's dealt extensively in the countries of the former Soviet Union (which is basically a bag of the most corrupt countries on earth) has never done anything illegal you are dumber than a bag of hammers.
That's odd, it only turns up pics of the President's hair.
Table-ized A.I.
A lot of government sites currently publish data that can be easily downloaded, but the average user has trouble making sense of it. For example, the city of Chicago has a website where you can download crime data https://data.cityofchicago.org... for the last 18 years. You can pick from formats like CSV or XML (but they don't have Json yet) to download. Their website visualization tools are getting better, but I wish they were much more flexible.
I am building an analytic tool that makes it really easy to create relational tables from CSV or Json files and do all kinds of analytics using it. See a quick 4 minute demo video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?... to see a few things we can do with that Chicago data. It is just as easy to do similar things against any data you can download. In this instance, trying to load the 6.5 million row table into Excel is not very practical.
Nothing like a show of across-the-aisle holiday unity on a straightforward public interest bill right? And we've got a whole bunch of non-traditional new congressfolk incoming, maybe not as loyal to the existing power structures, and looking like they intend to try to shake things up.
If I'm being cynical, the biggest poison pill that springs to mind, without even looking at the bill, is the straightforward (un?)intended consequences when this bill hits bureaucratic inertia.
It seems to me like a great way to make the day-to-day bureaucracy encourage secrecy, with no ill-will by anyone making the choice. If you've got a report that needs to be either stamped sensitive and filed away, or published online through the appropriate bureaucratic channels, how much more tempting will it be to just reach for/recommend the stamp? What's the penalty for "accidentally" stamping something that shouldn't have been? For publishing something sensitive? What are the odds of getting caught in either case? It's probably better just to use the stamp, if there's the slightest hint of a doubt.
And just like that, a vast swath of inconveniently useful data is kept out of the public's hands, firmly beyond the reach of a straightforward FOIA request. All in the name of government transparency.
Worse, how do you fight that in the court of public opinion? You seriously want to try to get people united behind promoting open government, by repealing the open government act? Think of the soundbites just waiting to be harvested from any representative trying to arguing for that.
I hope I'm just being too cynical.
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