Federal government Web sites promise more transparency

The White House unveiled two Web initiatives to support President Obama's call for a more transparent government, the Washington Post reported. Data.gov will serve as a depository of raw data from various agencies. WhiteHouse.gov will provide an opportunity for citizens to suggest and discuss new open-government policies. The White House Web site will also feature "Innovation Gallery," which will serve as a showcase of government agencies' efforts to be more transparent and include "a timeline to display open-government milestones as they are reached."

On his first full day in office, President Obama issued his first executive order directing federal officials to come up with ideas for making government information more visible and accessible to the public within 120 days.

Today -- the 120th day since the edict -- the White House is rolling out a host of online initiatives intended to foster more dialogue and collaboration between citizens and bureaucrats.

The launch includes the debut of a site called Data.gov, where agencies will post data that can be culled by Web developers to make new Web and cellphone applications. Also starting today, the WhiteHouse.gov homepage will become a repository for citizen suggestions and discussion regarding new open-government policies.

More here.

CAR Boot Camp helps reporter tell stories with raw data

In this column, Gregg Hennigan of The (Cedar Rapids, Iowa) Gazette details how he used Computer-Assisted Reporting to turn raw data on public money distributed to Iowa communities into a story. He learned that 79 percent of the $395 million in statewide disaster funds went to Cedar Rapids and the University of Iowa.

I was warned prior to IRE and NICAR’s CAR Boot Camp that many attendees leave feeling overwhelmed.

And at the end of the five-day class in Minneapolis in early October, I felt … overwhelmed.

But with my employer, The Gazette newspaper in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, having spent a decent amount of money sending me to the camp, I was not in a position to return home and not produce.

More here.

Congressional data mining could be on its way

A provision that would Congress and its bodies to release data in raw form was slipped into a spending bill passed by the House of Representatives, Mother Jones reported. If the Senate doesn't edit out the three-sentence statement, the public will no longer have to rely on government Web sites, which filter the data they provide. Some Web sites already use remix raw data to create databases and charts, but they must "scrape" government sites to obtain this data -- a process that is cumbersome and not perfect.

By slipping a simple, three-sentence provision into the gargantuan spending bill passed by the House of Representatives last week, a congressman from Silicon Valley is trying to nudge Congress into the 21st Century. Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.) placed a measure in the bill directing Congress and its affiliated organs—including the Library of Congress and the Government Printing Office—to make its data available to the public in raw form. This will enable members of the public and watchdog groups to craft websites and databases showcasing government data that are more user-friendly than the government's own.

If the Senate passes the bill with the provision intact, citizens seeking information about Congress' activities—such as bill names and numbers, amendments, votes, and committee reports—won't have to rely on government websites, which often filter information, are incomplete, or are difficult to use. Instead, the underlying data will be available to anyone who wants to build a superior site or tool to sift through it. "The language is groundbreaking in that it supports providing unfiltered legislative information to the public," says Honda's online communications director, Rob Pierson. "Instead of silo-ing the information, and only allowing access through a limited web form, access to the raw data will make it easier for people to learn what their government is doing."

More here.