David Eaves writes on open data, government policy, and technology in Canada, with case studies and civic tech projects.
HN commenters cite it for open data examples, such as a spreadsheet sort that exposed $3.2 billion in fraudulent charity tax receipts, and for policy arguments.
Yeah but you've got to remember that every program has a constituency.
The fact that we're the constituency, does mean that we have to temper our vociferousness with solid arguments and evidence. This stuff is important, but remember, there are programs out there to feed impoverished children. Is data.gov more important than that? Maybe not.
The point is though, that data.gov and open government data is, given our governing system should be more efficient, and provide better results than alternatives, such as making everyone go through FOIA or scraping individual agency sites, and relying on a patchwork quilt of agency disclosure.
Killing this program is going to cost more money in the future, and one very clear argument was articulated by David Eaves a couple days ago (http://eaves.ca/2011/03/30/access-to-information-is-fatally-broken-you-just-dont-know-it-yet/ i also posted this here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2386915 ).
This is terrible policy, but we do need to understand that the budget is a complicated beast.
Why not? Don't you think local government has a stake in building the startup ecosystem in the city?
I think there's some serious opportunity for some jurisdiction to pwn Open Source startups with significant tax incentives for Open Source development.
What about tax incentives on salaries for developers who release code under an OSI license? Incentives for "soft" Open Source work like community management? Infrastructure like an accelerator space, business development aid?
Building a market helps, too. Vancouver has made it city policy to put Open Source software on an equal footing with proprietary software.
http://eaves.ca/2009/05/14/vancouver-enters-the-age-of-the-open-city/
Other governments have chosen to use OSS exclusively.
If there's not yet an established Open Source startup hub (and I think there's not), there's an opportunity for cities around the world to claim that mantle. And that's going to take the contributions of all stakeholders.
You're speaking to where we want to see all of this go.
There's no easy answers, but you might want to check out:
http://techcrunch.com/2009/11/23/flightcaster-flight-delay/
http://eaves.ca/2011/03/07/launching-an-open-data-business-recollect-net-vantrash-2-0/
http://measuringmeasures.com/blog/2010/7/2/research-driven-startups.html
I have also ordered Sarah Lacy's new book, about info entrepreneurs in the developing world:
http://www.amazon.ca/Brilliant-Crazy-Cocky-Entrepreneurs-Profit/dp/0470580097/
Sorting an excel spreadsheet to find what the "largest" charities in canada are exposed $3.2 billion in fraudulent tax receipts claimed by 100,000 Canadian tax filers https://eaves.ca/2010/04/14/case-study-open-data-and-the-public-purse/
This simply isn't as one sided as many seem to think. See, for example http://eaves.ca/2011/02/03/why-the-crtc-was-right-on-user-based-billing/ ("Why the CRTC was right on Usage-Based Billing")
Comparing Canada vs USA obesity rates shows that YES indeed eating habits seem to be very different:
http://eaves.ca/2008/07/08/fatness-index-canada-vs-united-states/