#ThisWeekInData
This weekend, the National Day of Civic Hacking will take place in cities across the country. 95 different local events will encourage participants to use open government data to solve civic problems....
View ArticleData-Smart Cities and the Sharing Economy
Much digital ink has been spilled about the rise of the “sharing economy.” One of the most recent articles can be found here from Boston Magazine’s Janelle Nanos. There’s plenty of fertile ground to...
View ArticleBrett Goldstein departs as Chicago’s CIO & CDO
Brett Goldstein, Chicago’s Chief Information Officer (CIO) and Chief Data Officer (CDO), has left the City after seven years of public service. His tenure marks two years of charting a significantly...
View ArticleCivic Innovation: An Ecosystem Bigger Than Tech Tools and Expertise
Chances are that if you’re reading this you’re engaged in the civic innovation space, even if you don’t use that term explicitly. Perhaps you’re a technologist who hopes to create civic tools based...
View ArticleOpen Data Policy Guidelines, Updated for a Changing Technology Landscape
Technology changes, and so too must policy. From the White House to Hawaii, governments all over the country are making concerted efforts to bring their policies up to date with the quickly changing...
View ArticleOpen Data’s Road to Better Transit
Data is everywhere. It now costs less to capture, store and process data than ever before, thanks to better technology and economies of scale. And more than ever, the public expects government to use...
View ArticleThe Chicago Tech Plan: Building a Model for Cities and Technology
The City of Chicago just released its first-ever comprehensive technology plan to provide long-term strategies to enable communities with technology in order to enhance social and economic...
View ArticleOpen Data in Chicago
In only a few years’ time, municipal initiatives to open up public data have gone from drawing-board ideas to tech policy fixtures. According to data.gov, 39 U.S. cities now have their own data...
View ArticleThe Next Phase of Transparency
Right now, the City of Chicago is working on documenting all of its data. That’s right: all of Chicago’s public data, across all databases, in all its departments and sister agencies. The project,...
View ArticleEmpowering the Open Data Dialogue
The first question most open data advocates hear is, “Why?” Whether you’re trying to make the case within government or coming in from the outside, many, many advocates in our space spend a lot of...
View ArticleDoes the World Really Need Another PDF Report?
If you’re in government or academia you have surely seen reports that sit on shelves and do nothing once they’ve been compiled. You may even have helped to produce them. They often cost a lot yet...
View Article#DataReads: Building Open Data
Open data has emerged as a key theme as citizens push governments to become more transparent and efficient. If your city or department is considering new ways to make its data available, this resource...
View ArticleThe Smart Chicago Collaborative: A New Model for Civic Innovation in Cities
In many places, civic innovation is thriving—people are strengthening their relationships with governments to improve their lives in unprecedented ways. Individuals and groups at the local level are...
View ArticleIs It Time to Open-Source Predictive Policing?
Predictive Policing — the use of sophisticated data analytics to prevent criminal activity — is gaining traction in cities across the country. Just yesterday, The Atlantic Cities published a piece on...
View ArticleBuilding Data Standards
Civic data standards have become an increasingly hot topic in the world of data-driven governance, heralded as a way to bring clarity to what has quickly become a crowded and ultimately chaotic area....
View ArticleChicago: A Look Back at a Landmark Year
In the past few years, cities have been challenging government norms by adopting new and data-driven ideas, projects and initiatives. In the spring of 2013, Data-Smart City Solutions was launched to...
View ArticleTechnology Dissemination with Government
The purpose of this document is to provide background and reference material for the City of Chicago’s SmartData analytics platform project. Specifically, this document addresses lessons for sharing...
View ArticleGuiding Strong Open Data Policies
Open data policies are quickly spreading across the country as a way for state and local governments to increase transparency, enhance efficiencies, improve service quality, and boost public...
View ArticleGetting Your Open Data Questions Answered
At the Sunlight Foundation we aim to help all governments achieve improved openness, especially where openness can be increased through putting government information online. Our work on...
View ArticleBringing Budgets to Life in Palo Alto
A few years ago, Palo Alto’s mayor and City Council might have turned to the city’s budget director and asked what seems like a simple question — “how much have we spent on police pensions in the last...
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