timothy vollmer

  • endorsed 2011-12-07 12:25:46 -0500

    Structured Open Data Campaign - Sign On!

    Update May 31, 2012:

    This bill, SB 1002, passsed 34-0 out of the California Senate today! Here is the statement from Sen. Leland Yee, the bill's author.
    "The Senate Appropriations committee today recognized the need for government agencies to deliver information to the public in an efficient, modern format," said Jim Ewert, General Counsel for the California Newspaper Publishers Association. "SB 1002 will set the benchmark for transparency and government oversight in the 21st century."

    UPDATE Feb. 7, 2012:

    Sen. Yee's office is working on SB 1002 and the language is still in draft. Open government and open data advocates are encouraged to comment, and I am helping organizing a meeting with the Senator for the week of Feb. 20 in San Francisco.

    Here's the FAQ on SB 1002 (pdf)

    And here's the draft bill text for SB 1002 (pdf)


    Comments meant for official consideration should be directed to Alicia Lewis, 

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    Open data in San Francisco, the state of California, and throughout much of the U.S. and the world remains hobbled by a lack of legal definition. San Francisco's own open data law, for example, is posted online by the Board of Supervisors as a non-searchable PDF. On December 10-11, at the winter CityCampSF Hackathon, Gov 2.0 advocates will publicly launch an advocacy campaign to institute an open data standard in San Francisco municipal and California state law. The primary goal of this advocacy will be to achieve a clear and reasonable definition of open data for all materials required by law to be published online.

    Please join us in endorsing this advocacy campaign, and encourage your friends and legislators to sign on as well.

    Use our recruiting tools to rally your friends to this important cause.

    For more backgound on open data laws, check out Civic Commons - Data Policy Policy; and Open Standards Policy.

    For another definition of open data online that we will consider, see the CityCamp model Open Government directive, which describes open data as being published online in an "open format that can be retrieved, downloaded, indexed, sorted, searched, and reused by commonly used Web search applications and commonly used software."

    This legislation should also encompass the goals of increased transparency in responses to SF Sunshine Ordinance requests and California Public Records Act requests - documents released in an electronic format after implementation of this ordinance would have to follow its standards of accessibility.

    Machine-readability: Data should be published in structured formats easily processed by machines/software.

    Endorse

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