(((hugs)))

Thanks!
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Tony

Thank you so much for taking the time to ready my post and consider my ideas. You are doing a great job kicking NYC in the butt to work more effectively for the people and bringing to light many factors that in the past wouldn’t even register on my radar. I hope you will consider facilitating a DOITT-led public forum for people like me, data practitioners, students, non-profit folks and other relevant parties to discuss the coming improvements to the Open Data site and work with DOITT to moderate suggests and questions from the public on the other missing pieces. I think that if you live-streamed it and invited some Occupy folks to bring their questions and suggestions, we could speed up the process of creating a valuable resource. It’s already very valuable — people just need to know about it and use it! Let me know how I can help.

Sincerely,

Daniela

Thanks for your original post that helped me to understand the bigger picture, and thank you for your comment here! I know you’re feeling skeptical and for good reason, but I think the fact that NYC’s Chief Digital Officer took the time to comment on THIS post within hours of it going live indicates that there is at least one influential person in government interested in addressing the issues you have brought up. I think that the more that everyday people advocate for change and reach out to like-minded individuals to build consensus with government officials, the faster change will come. You see the problems from a unique perspective which means you have a lot to offer. What’s important is that progress is happening — it’s just not happening as fast as we both would like. But if Rachel is willing to facilitate a public meeting/brainstorm for both data practitioners, the DOITT team, professionals like you, geeks like me and others who would benefit from more transparency,  I think we could make a difference. I’m going to follow up with Rachel about that. Cheers, Daniela

I definitely agree the city needs to be more “people-friendly” with its open data efforts.  I think it’s very important for the agencies to engage directly with the broader community of people, groups, app developers, etc who are eager to use agency data. Or at least be aware of who’s interested in the data and why. 

But here I think it’s bad if DoITT (or anyone else) is the intermediary.   Maybe a “supervising producer” as you suggest, could help.  But I think the best approach is if someone in the Dept of Finance, for example, knows how a Community Board will be using that agency’s property valuation data to analyze land use decisions – and perhaps even to advise the data users on which components of the data are most reliable/suited to that purpose and which are not. That’s how I’ve learned all the ins and outs of city data. But it’s been informal and even secretive (helpful agency staff not wanting to be seen “fraternizing with the enemy”). That needs to be out in the open and encouraged. And it needs to happen with each individual agency, since they know their data the best.  That way agencies will hopefully realize why it’s good to open up their data holdings, and users will have a better sense of best practices regarding the data.   However, from the perspective of setting the stage, the Mayor is key.  If he (or she) encourages agencies to work with NGOs to repurpose city data, then it’s so much more likely to actually happen in a meaningful way.   The current mayor has done that to some extent with app developers, but what about other communities of data users.   I think that approach facilitates a partnership between the city and other groups.   App developers feel like they have a partnership.   But I don’t know that this sense goes beyond the tech world (as your post indicates).

I guess the proof will be in the pudding.  I’m skeptical that the city will be aggressive in this regard, like they’ve done with the tech community (which supports my concern that this is all about economic development and not really about open government).  But I’ll gladly stand corrected if the city actually does a better job!

Part of my skepticism also stems from watching and participating in these debates for the last 20 years.  Even this latest round of ostensible openness on the part of the city hasn’t been an overnight development.  They’ve had several years now to “get it right” with an open data portal (starting with the first BigApps competition in 2009 and even going back to City Council debates in 2005 and 2006 over requiring 311 data to be posted online).  Lots of people have weighed in; the city can look back on decades of open data policies and practices to see what works and what doesn’t; and they’ve seen other cities do a better job (such as Chicago).  If the city truly wanted to be open with its extensive data holdings, I think we would’ve seen that already.  Hopefully this will change soon; we’ll see.