[OpenSpending] Launching OS for Oakland, Calif. (Anders Pedersen)

Sat Mar 9 19:10:25 UTC 2013

Hi Anders,

Now that we've made a final decision to build off of OS, we'll definitely
keep you posted. Our progress has been slower than I'd hoped since this is
an all-volunteer effort mostly led by myself :)

We're affiliated with OpenOakland <http://openoakland.org/> (a Code for
America brigade) which runs data.openoakland.org a CKAN portal where we are
hosting our data sets. And a few weeks ago, the city launched its official
Socrata-based portal here: https://data.oaklandnet.com

Yes, more Oakland budget data is forthcoming. Our group is now
collaborating directly with budget office staff, the first effort of its
kind in Oakland, so it's a big learning process. There is a general
receptiveness to open data; the challenge is more of data literacy
(understanding how/why the public would use budget data), and creating
standards and a routine for how data is released. Any advice here is
welcome: examples to communicate use cases for budget data to officials;
"templates" for data releases; etc.

So yes, I think there's potential for Oakland to release data like NYC
does, eventually. The main challenge I think is demonstrating to officials
the net benefit to the city, and securing the resources to build/maintain
tools. The concepts of open data/government are becoming quite trendy among
officials, but there's a big gap between this enthusiasm (mostly verbal,
symbolic) and knowledge of how/why to put it into concrete action.

Adam

----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Fri, 8 Mar 2013 17:45:23 +0100
> From: Anders Pedersen <anders.pedersen at okfn.org>
> Subject: Re: [OpenSpending] Launching OS for Oakland, Calif.
> To: OpenSpending Discussion List <openspending at lists.okfn.org>
> Message-ID:
>         <
> CAKQ1VfaQ-fTf1FZQ8eD_vCpb1uQKS19WWm-5hm8Fw01qojLC1A at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> Hi Adam,
>
> Sounds great that you'll visualising budgets for Oakland. I'd be
> really interested to hear how the project develops.
>
> Do you know if the City of Oakland is planning to release more
> detailed transactional spending data as well? Cities like NYC [1]
> seems to doing regular releases of transactional spending data. It
> would be interesting to hear if Oakland is doing similar releases.
>
> Best,
> Anders
>
> [1] The NYC comptroller: http://www.checkbooknyc.com/data-feeds
>
> On 8 March 2013 05:33, Adam Stiles <adam.d.stiles at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > I sent the message below to the openspending-dev list, but no replies, so
> > I'm trying here.
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Adam
> >
> >
> > As I mentioned on the main OpenSpending list, I'm part of a group in
> > Oakland, CA, USA, developing a project called Open Budget to visualize
> our
> > city budget.
> >
> > I have considered forking the Cameroon or Slovakia sites, though they
> have
> > many more features than we currently have the data to take advantage of,
> so
> > I'm thinking it may make more sense to start with just the features we
> need.
> >
> > For our first iteration, we basically want the features visible on this
> > page: visualization (with unique URLs on each click), commenting,
> buttons to
> > switch years, budget/actual, rev/expenditure, etc. Would also want to be
> > able to toggle between TreeMap and BubbleTree visuals. On other pages
> we'd
> > have other resources, but these features would be our beta app. In terms
> of
> > design/CSS, we'd like to start with something like Cameroon and modify
> from
> > there.
> >
> > Can someone please point me to the resources needed to set this up? Not
> > clear to me if it's more efficient to fork Cameroon and adapt it, or
> start
> > from scratch. (I'm a coding novice that's relying on others for help,
> hence
> > the naive questions.)
> >
> > Thanks for any guidance!
> >
> > Adam
> >
> > --
> > Adam Stiles
> > 510.280.4862
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Adam Stiles
> > 510.280.4862
> > _______________________________________________
> > openspending mailing list
> > openspending at lists.okfn.org
> > http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/openspending
> > Unsubscribe: http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/options/openspending
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Anders Pedersen
> Community Coordinator
> OpenSpending
> Open Knowledge Foundation
> Twitter: @anpe
> Skype: anpehej
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Fri, 8 Mar 2013 19:21:31 -0600
> From: James McKinney <james at opennorth.ca>
> Subject: [OpenSpending] Transactions data specification
> To: OpenSpending Discussion List <openspending at lists.okfn.org>
> Message-ID: <92D39F5F-2F8E-471E-B560-4184EF2D978A at opennorth.ca>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
> FYI, see discussion on the W3C public-lod list starting at
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-lod/2013Feb/0047.html
>
> You may prefer to go through the thread via
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-lod/2013Feb/thread.html
>
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> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 3
> Date: Sat, 9 Mar 2013 02:39:57 +0000
> From: David Durant <dave at bowsy.co.uk>
> Subject: [OpenSpending] Question - wikileaks type data dump
> To: openspending at lists.okfn.org
> Message-ID:
>         <CAHw=
> zXKyYmOdHH9yqOVPWF51kmheGvFc5uDNritxHo5EFD_FBg at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> Hi folks,
>
> I heard Rufus speak at the last Hacks and Hackers event and was pleased
> when he replied to the email I sent him afterwards. In that I asked him
> what would happen if something like a wikileaks-style large drop of
> government (or other group's) spending data was anonymously supplied to
> Open Spending (assuming it contained enough information to show it was
> real).
>
> His suggestion was to post on this list and ask what the community thinks.
>
> Dave Durant
>
> --
> Omnes homines natura scire desiderant
> Twitter : @cholten99
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> End of openspending Digest, Vol 39, Issue 8
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>

-- 
Adam Stiles
510.280.4862
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