Open Government Data Discussion

What's the current status of the DIY Milwaukee group? I own the mkedata.org domain and am looking for a use for it.

Thanks,
Jeffrey

Working on open data policy and applications is something I'm planning to promote and do with a few friends under the auspices of Cream Citizen, an "open source think tank."

This year I think we'll take a stab at advocating for some kind of open data planning with the city, maybe partner with a related WI advocacy group. I have some ideas for application development but am not a programmer myself. The people I know who are have done a few proof-of-concept projects with city data mapping, but nobody has had time yet to really dig into this.

Sorry, I posted that reply without being logged in so it came up anonymous. The site crashed on submit, and I ended up double posting too.

Jeffrey, do you have any plans for the mkedata domain?

Jeffrey,

You used to live in Riverwest, right? My wife remembers you from RNA and the Currents. I knew your name was familiar.

I don’t know if well be "working with" anyone per se; we're just *suggesting* that the city and others start working together, in an intentional way, on open data policy with key stakeholders. Specifically, there ought to be an advisory board that has public meetings and some kind of formal role in shaping how public data in the city's possession is rendered online. I think the non-profit center, the CED and others at UWM, the Journal, and others would all be likely candidates as they have specialists in this area and a need for the data. They're all doing GIS stuff, so the interests and motivations exist right now.

The DCD is already moving in this direction, and MPD under Chief Flynn now is really into IT stuff that fits into an efficient, smart policing strategy, which means working with neighborhoods. The way they've done monthly crime analysis meetings with overheads and PDFs posted online has the right intentions, it's just not as efficient as it could be.

On the mapping application a friend built, yes it's online but not public. It just receives all the DNS enotify emails, parses them, files them in a database, and then creates KML for a google map based on queries you give it through a simple interface. You can layer the different categories of notices.

Another guy then took this and last I heard was close to having something he would take online, probably at urbanmilwaukee.com.

The plan is to use this little application to 1) give people better accesss to DNS enotify info and 2) demonstrate to the city how it would be so much better if enotify were feed-based rather than being based exclusively in email.

Dan Knauss

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/danknauss
New Local Media :: www.newlocalmedia.com

> -----Original Message-----
> From: main@diycity.org [mailto:main@diycity.org]
> Sent: Sunday, January 04, 2009 12:32 PM
> To: dan@newlocalmedia.com
> Subject: DIY Milwaukee: 'Open Government Data Discussion' at
> DIYcity #comment-130.
>
>
> comment 'Current status' by jeffreybarke
>
> Dan,
>
>
> Will you working with the city, UWM or the Nonprofit Center of
> Milwaukee?
>
>
> What are the proof-of-concept projects? Do they exist on the Web?
>
>
> I don't have any concrete plans for mkedata.org at this point, never
> really have. I always envisioned it as a kind of portal to Milwaukee
> data, with the following functions:
>
>
>
> * links to current data sets
> * archived data
> * explanations of how to use the data
> * possibly reports
> * possibly applications
>
> Currently, I was thinking of replicating the MPROP Pal [2] site using
> WordPress and seeing if Prof Huxhold wanted to use it for class
> projects, but I haven't actually reached out to him yet.
>
>
> Thanks,
> Jeffrey
>
> [2] http://webgis.uwm.edu/mproppal/
>
> View original:
> http://diycity.org/diy-milwaukee/open-government-data-discussi
on#comment-130
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What DIYcity is doing so far is based entirely on data that is already available in whatever form it is available. I'm not sure how or when open records law would come in, which is mainly about what information needs to be made public and how.

Dan Knauss

http://www.twitter.com/newlocalmedia
http://www.linkedin.com/in/danknauss
http://www.newlocalmedia.com