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

Sun Mar 10 22:13:29 UTC 2013

Hi Adam,

This sounds great. My responses below inline.

On 9 March 2013 20:10, Adam Stiles <adam.d.stiles at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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 (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.

As a starting point I would say that being in touch directly with the
budget office, is great and something you should try to make use of.

If possible I'd suggest that get a talk with them about how their data
architecture for budget and spending data is set up:
- What relevant databases are available and what are the formats?
Getting these details will help you explain to them what you would
like from them.
- Be specific when you ask: Go through the variables, columns and
budget hierarchies. you are looking for. (ie. "Can I get the budget
with four levels of hierarchy")
- Can the data be easily exported from their databases to CSV files?

It's also important to note that releasing detailed budget and
transactional spending data as a CSV-dump on a regular basis, does not
need to be time consuming for a city. The time consumption kicks in
when the city decide to develop fancy info-graphics and websites. So
asking cities simply for basic CSV files of budget and spending data
is a useful way to show that open data doesn't cost a lot of time or
money.

We have some more advice on how to get data from authorities here, and
are obviously interested to hear your experiences:
http://openspending.org/resources/handbook/ch007_getting-cleaning.html

> 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.

Hope this works as a start. Look forward to hear more.

Best,
Anders

>
> 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
>> *******************************************
>
>
>
>
> --
> 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