Austin Data Portal

[Jace Deloney]

Is anyone else disappointed in the limited amount of datasets that are currently available through the City of Austin Data Portal? http://data.austintexas.gov/ 

Also, I thought the tab at the top right of the website was going to be titled "Open Austin"? It is now titled "Open Government". Any news on why it has changed? http://austintexas.gov/ 

Jace Deloney

Mobile | 409.289.2447
Email | jaced...@gmail.com
Twitter | @JaceDeloney

[Mateo]

Jace,

We are working daily to get more data sets up on the site. The latest set being added is related to animal services. Please send any requests for specific data through the data.austintexas.gov site and we will try and make it available ASAP.

We changed from open Austin to open government simply because the name was actively in use by the community group. Also, it became obvious that what we wanted to communicate through that portal extended towards the city's open government initiative.

[Julio Gonzalez Altamirano]

Jace,

1. Data sets. Maybe it's time to do our own scorecard on which
departments are dragging their feet. At some point, the web dev folks
can only put up what each department's public servants release. The
DataSF departmental scorecard was a recommendation in one of our
position papers. We should check in to see where on the development
backlog said scorecard is; perhaps Matt knows if the Socrata software
platform that powers the portal might be able do due this if a
configuration 'switch' is turned on.

We should also have a strong question about this in this season's
candidate questionnaire.

We also need to do a better job as OpenAustin (or at least I feel I
personally do!) of conveying to the non-tech City staff that we can't
build the Austin civic hacker community if there's no data and no
urgent problems they want to collaboratively solve through the types
of tools open data-powered software can build. I think the CfA
hackathon will be inspiring and move us forward, but we've got to as
an organization keep advocating for things that will institutionalize
open data and open government moving forward. The resolution and
empowering of CTTC are good steps. Perhaps we need an Innovation
Officer/Urban Mechanics initiative/Chief Digital Officer that is
closer to the City Manager and empowered to internally advocate these
priorities as their no.1 responsibility.

On a related track, we need to push collaboration between the City and
CapMetro if we are going to catch up to other towns on transit tech.
You are muck more knowledgeable about transit than myself, so I look
to your leadership on this.

2. Open Austin to Open Government. I think I raised this either in
the facebook group back in the day before the google group or on this
one and the limited feedback I got agreed that having the CoA portal
have our group name would be confuse our different missions. I agree
with that reasoning but have an open mind if you think this was the
wrong way to go...

JGA

[Jace Deloney]

Thanks for the quick response,Mateo.

I will compile a list of (mainly transportation-related) datasets that I would like to see added to the portal.

[Julio Gonzalez Altamirano]

Matt,

Thanks for the quick response. Would you know if there's a Socrata
person that might know if one of there client's out there has already
utilized the SODA API to build an web app that reports a department by
department count of data sets? I am looking for a civic app project
that's simple and has quick impact and this one seems right up my
alley!

Julio

[Jace Deloney]

Julio,

Tomorrow morning, I will begin asking @austinmobility & the transit community for ways that we can help staff get important datasets onto the portal. Jacob has always been more than helpful in gathering and sharing any information requested; way more than other dept staff, IMHO. I will also try to contact CapMetro to get the ball rolling on that side. I'm not sure how it's going to work with CapMetro, as they're not directly under the City of Austin.

I completely agree w the decision to change the tab name, just wanted clarification.

Thanks

[Julio Gonzalez Altamirano]

That sounds great. Please let me and the OpenAustin crew how we can
help. One thing we should think about is getting CapMetro to adopt an
open gov/open data resolution as well. Do we know which Board of
Directors subcommittee does oversight over their tech? Is it
Operations or Finance...that's probably whom we want to write to
first..(?)

[Jace Deloney]

I agree. As Vice Chair of the CapMetro Customer Satisfaction Advisory Committee, I can work to convince the other members to pass a resolution advising the Board to adopt similar policies. This, in conjunction with contacting the particular subcommittee, should help move us forward.

[Matt Esquibel]

I also wanted to remind everyone about the Code for America code-a-
thon this weekend. (Sat. Feb 25 at Conjunctured) http://codeforamerica.org/austin/

We have been working with departments to rally around this event to
provide more data--yet, it has been a little slow in coming. The CfA
fellows have been meeting with nearly every department and are making
traction with them and d how they think of data--I am hoping that
their influence will help open more dept. data.

I think a scorecard will be great--I will follow up with Cam Caldwell
from Socrata to see what others have done in this area. We definitely
welcome your help in identifying the departments with high value data--
Stephen Elkins and I are planning to meet with individual directors
who have yet to participate or have released limited amounts of data.

And lastly, just received this cool link from CfA - haven't had time
to look at it yet but am optimistic there will be some good
information in there. http://opendatahandbook.org/

[Julio Gonzalez Altamirano]

Matt,

I played around with the SODA API doing GETs for view metadata from Austin's data portal. Very spiffy.

It seems that there are a few places where the metadata for a data set ( data sets are View types) could capture the department info, but presently does not. The 'category' field under the metadata, a custom field within 'custom data', or in the name string for the view's User object are just some of the places. Right now, Jamie Phillips appears to be the author for a lot of the data sets.  So, it seems that there needs to be some data governance decision here about how the source department will be incorporated into the API accessible metadata.

Julio

[Matt Esquibel]

Yeah it is pretty cool--with some nice options.

Chicago has some interesting uses -- not sure if you saw this webinar
but it is now available online:
http://www.socrata.com/events/customer-success-webinar-feb-14th-2012/
And some samples:
https://github.com/socrata/Metro-Chicago-Open-Data-Examples

Jamie is on the Web team and is administering the uploads for the
departments currently. We are working on an automated process and also
opening up Socrata accounts to department Liaisons who are ready to
manage their data accounts. I have copied him so he can join in the
discussion. I think you both may be attending the CfA Code-a-thon this
weekend--maybe a good time to meet.


On Feb 23, 1:09 am, Julio Gonzalez Altamirano <jga...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> > information in there.http://opendatahandbook.org/
>
> > On Feb 21, 11:48 pm, Jace Deloney <jacedelo...@gmail.com <javascript:;>>