Alumni Perspective

Government Open Data: Benefits, Strategies,

and Use
Bill Schrier
[email protected]
ABSTRACT
Senior Policy Advi- Governments collect and generate a wide variety of data
sor and information, ranging from census data to scientific research
Washington State to healthcare. Making such data available for use by other govern-
Office of the Chief
Information Officer
ments, citizens and businesses has many advantages:
MPA ‘03
• More citizens will engage with government to make policy
and support government services such as public safety;
• Citizen advocacy groups and researchers will analyze gov-
ernment data producing new and better insights into difficult prob-
lems such as crime and homelessness;
• New businesses will start using the government open data,
combined with information from other sources, to produce new
services and products such as smart phone applications;
• Existing government services could be significantly im-
proved as operational data becomes available to improve business
processes and shorten delivery times.

But “opening the data” can be a thorny issue for elected of-
ficials. This paper highlights both the benefits and the obstacles fac-
ing elected and senior government officials in opening the datasets
within their custody. It suggests approaches to overcoming those
obstacles, methods to harvest the benefits, and highlights how inno-
vative governments can harness open data to better engage citizens
and improve services to constituents.
The United States Congress passed the Federal govern-
ment’s Freedom of Information Act (FoIA) in 1966.1 FoIA attempts
to guarantee access by citizens to information collected and use by
federal agencies.. FoIA is mirrored in most states with similar laws,
such as the Public Records Act (PRA) in the State of Washington.2
However these are “pull” laws – citizens wanting access to infor-
mation must file a request specifying the information desired with
the specific government agency holding the information. In other
words, the individual citizen is responsible to know the data exists
and then must pursue a formal request to “pull” the information
12 THE EVANS SCHOOL REVIEW
 Schrier
from the agency. Many types of data are excluded from FoIA and PRA for a wide
variety of reasons, such as homeland security and privacy of personal information.
In approximately 2006, however, some governments began to take a differ-
ent approach, where they voluntarily began publishing datasets on public websites.
This “open data” movement has now been adopted by a number of United States cit-
ies, counties and states,3 as well as the federal government and other governments
around the world.
There are significant challenges to expanding the availability of open data.
But there are also direct, indirect and economic benefits to citizens, businesses,
governments and public officials. Informed citizens will suggest new government
policies and better improved business processes for government services. Research-
ers will comb datasets to produce new insights into problems facing government,
and how to address them. Small businesses will start-up using government data in
combination with other information to offer new services to consumers. A better-
informed, more-engaged citizenry will improve democracy.

Introduction
United States’ democracy is “of the people, by the people and for the peo-
ple.” This definition implies government should be open and transparent in how it
4

makes its decisions. Furthermore, those decisions should be logical and explainable
to constituents. Decisions must be data-driven. Data used in decision making should
be open to inspection by any constituent or member of the public who, in turn,
could suggest alternate interpretations and solutions.
“Open Data” is a relatively new concept in transparency: open data is freely
available or accessible, without license, and machine-readable, among other charac-
teristics5:
• “Freely available and accessible” means the data can be easily obtained, pref-
erably on a website or in another place on the Internet without onerous restrictions
such as login-passwords or other security measures. These terms also mean without
discrimination as to the user or reason for use.
• “Without license” means the data can be re-used and re-published without
obtaining a license or other legal contract. Some restrictions, such as attribution6 and
immutability7, are allowed.
• “Machine readable” is another way of saying usable without technological
hindrances. Data contained in a portable-document-format (PDF) is not machine-
readable – it is not easy for a computer to read and use the data. Machine readability
is extraordinarily important so that the dataset can be used in applications such as
mapping points on a handheld device such as a smart phone or tablet.

VOL 4, NO. 1, SPRING 2014 13

Government Open Data: Benefits, Strategies, and Use
The Open Data Movement
In December 2007, 30 thinkers and activists of the Internet held a meeting
in Sebastopol, north of San Francisco. Their aim was to define the concept of open
public data and have it adopted by the US presidential candidates.
Concurrently Suzanne Peck, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for the City
of Washington DC, opened one of the very first open data portals, DCStat, on the In-
ternet in June, 2006. The first feed was a dataset of calls to the District of Columbia
Mayor’s office. The DC effort really expanded under the leadership of the next DC
CTO, Vivek Kundra. He expanded the data catalog to incorporate a wider variety of
datasets, and, in concert with iStrategy Labs, launched Apps for Democracy, a con-
test to encourage private individuals and companies to use the data to produce useful
applications (apps). The contest cost the DC government $50,000, but returned 47
iPhone, Facebook and web applications worth an estimated $2,300,000.
When President Barack Obama took office on January 20, 2009, one of
his first acts was issuing an executive order on open government and transparency.
Obama declared his support not just for a transparent government, but one which is
participatory and collaborative. A number of specific initiatives followed this order.
For example, on May 21, 2009, the federal government launched www.data.gov,
an open data portal for federal agencies. The leadership in open government is now
mirrored worldwide: at least 45 counties and cities, 40 states many more govern-
ments outside the U.S. have established open data portals. A total of at least 300 such
governmental portals now exist.

Key Characteristics of the Open Data Movement

Data Types
Many requests for data under FoIA and state public records acts are for
unstructured data. Unstructured data includes electronic mail messages, scanned
memoranda and documents, images, and video of, for example, car stops performed
by a police department.
But a considerable amount of the bulk data (large datatsets) are structured.
Structured data can be placed on an open data site easily. The simplest way to visual-
ize structured data is as a table or a spreadsheet with rows and columns. Each col-
umn contains specific data, e.g. a street address or a telephone number. Each row is
another instance of the data.
A third type of data is a database. Often a database consists of many dif-
ferent tables, each of which is structured, but each of which probably makes little
sense unless joined or combined with data from another table. An example of such a
database is a human resource management system (HRMS). One table might contain
14 THE EVANS SCHOOL REVIEW
 Schrier
employee name and personal characteristics such as date of birth, social security
number, age, employee number and so forth. A second table in the database might
have names of dependents of all employees, plus their personal characteristics. A
third table might contain all the training classes and certifications the employee has
taken or earned. Databases present a special problem in open data, in that the data
to be “opened” often must come from a query or report and then may need to be
redacted to remove restricted information such as social security number.
Generally the open data movement concerns itself with structured data and
data which can be rendered as structured from a database. The term dataset refers
to a collection of data, usually in a structured and tabular format. For the purposes
of this paper, the terms structured data and dataset are interchangeable.

Cultural Obstacles
Open data movements face a wide variety of obstacles, almost all of them
internal to governments. Chris Martin, researcher at the University of Leeds, has
chronicled a number of these obstacles, including:
• The risk-averse culture of governments;
• Opening data is an extra activity, rather than day-to-day responsibility
of employees, and therefore will not occur in a consistent manner;
• Governments lack a coherent vision for funding and promoting open
data;
• Government officials feel there is little demand or value in the data
within their custody;
• Government will lose revenue by opening data, while, conversely, the
private sector will focus on exploiting the financial value while ignor-
ing the social and environmental value of the data;
• Many citizens and advocacy groups are concerned about protecting
the privacy of individuals;
• Fear that opening the data will result in criticism for incomplete or
inaccurate datasets.

Legitimate Constraints
Furthermore, there is a set of legitimate constraints as to what data may be
available to the public. Such constraints include the Criminal Justice Information
Services Policy, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, the Family
Educational Rights and Privacy Act, and others including state and local laws and
ordinances. These laws protect personal privacy. But some also protect states and the
nation from release of information which may be harmful to collective security, for
example the location of critical electric power substations or transportation hubs.
VOL 4, NO. 1, SPRING 2014 15
Government Open Data: Benefits, Strategies, and Use
Before placing data on an open portal, governments need to filter the data
based on these laws and ordinances. However, most of these rules are well under-
stood by governments because they invoke them daily in response to FoIA and PRA
records requests.

Executive Support
Given the obstacles and culture of government, all successful open data ini-
tiatives to date have required strong and explicit support from the chief executive of
the government entity involved in the effort. Examples include:
• President Barack Obama’s Executive Order and data.gov
• New York City Council law 11 of 2012, which basically says “all data which
can be opened, will be opened”, with the support of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and
the resulting open data program of the City’s Department of Information Technol-
ogy and Telecommunications
• Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s Executive Order 2012-2 on Open Data
• And a number of other examples from Oakland and San Francisco, Califor-
nia, Louisville, Kentucky and other places
Executive support is critical to open data movements because every govern-
ment and its bureaucracy resist change. Governments are, inherently, conservative,
always striving to maintain the status quo. Government officials constantly feel their
programs are underfunded and already burdened with work. Since this conservatism
is inherently a part of government, it takes extraordinary effort to overcome the
inertia through senior leadership.

A Commitment to Change the Default to “Open”

Converting existing datasets to an open data portal can be a daunting task.
Merely cataloging the thousands of datasets typically stored by a government agency
may take hundreds of hours.
Historically governments do not consider the public when building infor-
mation technology systems. The “users” of such systems are always identified as the
department or division of the government which will use the system. Ultimately,
however, all of government operations are funded by taxpayers, ratepayers or busi-
nesses. These constituencies must also be considered “users” or beneficiaries of the
technology system.
Therefore procurement processes and, in some cases, laws, should be
changed to always require a public output of data from every such system. The out-
put data must conform to the specifications of “open data” discussed above. Then, as
technology systems are updated and replaced, the amount of publicly available open
data – and the ease by which it is created – will gradually increase over time to all of
16 THE EVANS SCHOOL REVIEW
 Schrier
the permissible data.

Related Developments in Technology and Private

Businesses
At the same time the open data movement is occurring in government, pri-
vate businesses are producing and consuming vast amounts of data. And the technol-
ogies to generate and process data are improving.The techniques developed and used
by private companies to process data can also be applied to government datasets.
Governmental data can often be combined with privately collected data to develop
new insights and new economic activity. These insights, in turn, can better inform
government policy and services. Some of these related developments are:
• Generation of data from consumers and businesses who use the Inter-
net
• Generation of data from use of social media
• Generation of data by traditional bricks-and-mortar businesses
• Data analytics
• Use of data from other sources by agencies such as the National Secu-
rity Agency

Data From Use of the Internet

Google became a multi-billion dollar business based on its search engine
capabilities. Google has spawned related businesses such as Gmail for electronic mail
and Google+ for posting personal news and information.

In the process of building these businesses, Google and similar companies

have amassed considerable data on billions of internet users including names, search
preferences, ages, business locations, online purchases and much more. This trove
of data is structured but privately held. It is bought and sold on the internet by data
exchanges. Indeed, most advertisements seen on the Internet are specifically tailored
and delivered for an individual user based upon data stored about that user in such
databases.

Social Media
Social media is extensively used by consumers and businesses. Facebook, for ex-
ample, has more than a billion registered users. Other examples of social media are
Twitter, LinkedIn,YouTube, Instagram, and Google+. Each social media site collects
data on its users from personal profiles and posts. Social media users voluntarily
complete such profiles and post news and information about themselves and others

VOL 4, NO. 1, SPRING 2014 17

Government Open Data: Benefits, Strategies, and Use
(i.e. “friends”). They voluntarily make connections to other users. They even volun-
tarily identify and “tag” images of faces and objects in their posts. All of this informa-
tion goes into databases, privately held, which are bought and sold.
Such information is, again, used to tailor advertisements, email and other
messages directed at individual users. Facial identification is increasingly used by
businesses to “recognize” customers who walk in the door of a bricks-and-mortar
establishment and for other purposes.

Private Business
Private businesses collect extensive databases on their customers. That data
can be collected online, by, say Amazon or a retail website. But it is also collected in
the form of loyalty cards such as those issued by Safeway or many other retail estab-
lishment. These databases track not only personal information, but every purchase
made by a customer. Again this information is used to tailor and target advertise-
ments, email, postal mail and other messages directed at individuals.

Big Data
Big Data is the term for a collection of data sets so large and complex that it
becomes difficult to process using on-hand database management tools or traditional
data processing applications. Processing such datasets requires specialized software
such as Hadoop and from firms such as Splunk and Tableau. More and more govern-
ment datasets fall into the category of “big data”. These include meteorological, data
obtained from traffic sensors and license plate reader datasets. Furthermore, as gov-
ernment datasets are combined with a wide variety of external sources (also called a
mash-up ), the processing techniques will require Big Data analytics and techniques.

National Security Agency

In 2013 the data collected, analyzed and used by the National Security Agen-
cy (NSA) came to the public attention due to the revelations of former NSA contract
employee Edward Snowden. These revelations raised significant concern among
elected officials, citizens, foreign nations and private businesses. The information
about data collected by the NSA, and how it is used, may give a negative connotation
to open data and the efforts of other governments to collect and use data. The open
data movement, however, can counteract that skepticism by voluntarily revealing
data collected by governments for all to see.

Summary: Related Developments

Data is collected by governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs)
and private companies. Such data from different sources can be combined or “mashed
18 THE EVANS SCHOOL REVIEW
 Schrier
up” to produce new insights and new businesses. The new insights can inform both
better government decisions and improved or new private sector services.

Benefits of Open Data

Cross-Department Data Sharing
The first and primary beneficiaries of the open data movement are other
governments and other departments within the same government.
Prior to the open data movement, a difficult and complicated protocol
evolved for data sharing between agencies. One common example is addresses. The
geographic location specified by an address is a common piece of data shared by
many government agencies. But addresses come in many different formats, e.g. 1917
46th Avenue Southwest or 1917 46 Ave SW or 1917 Forty-Sixth Avenue SW are
all the same location. Initially each department had its own protocol for specifying
addresses. While the assignment of addresses is often now left to an agreed upon
specific agency, e.g. the postal service or the land use department, the format of the
address can still vary from system to system and agency to agency.
Today, agencies tend to electronically transfer datasets of addresses to each
other, which are often automatically reformatted by computer programs into the
receiving agency’s specific format.
In an open data environment, however, address datasets are placed on open
data portals for other agencies, other governments and the general public to use. The
datasets can be updated rapidly whenever a new address is assigned.
Even more profound benefits accrue from internal-to-government open
data portals which contain sensitive information. One example is a child protective
services social worker who is dispatched to investigate a complaint of child abuse at
a specific address. Ideally, she would have a wide variety of data about that address
available prior to arriving on the scene Such data could include previous calls to the
same address, photographs of individuals known to live at that address, data about
crimes recently committed at the address, especially crimes of violence or involving
guns, building and zoning code violations at the premise and much more.

Improved Constituent Engagement

By far the largest reaction by most citizens to their government is apathy or
indifference, until an incident or event occurs which affects their personal quality of
life or safety. Residents may pay little attention to crosswalks or traffic in their neigh-
borhood until a child is injured by a speeding car while crossing the street. Citizens
may be indifferent to crime until their home is burglarized or a neighbor is hurt by
a crime-in-progress. After the incidents, individual residents may become enraged
VOL 4, NO. 1, SPRING 2014 19
Government Open Data: Benefits, Strategies, and Use
and organize their friends and neighbors to storm city hall to demand changes such
as better crosswalk lighting or more police protection.
Open data provides new methods to engage citizens. It is now common
practice to put datasets of crimes on an open data portal. Some cities even go so far
as to put police 911 calls on the portal. This open data, in turn, allows block watches
to see what is occurring in their neighborhoods, and to take appropriate actions to
protect themselves and their neighbors. A premier example of such an app is the City
of Seattle’s My Neighborhood Map, which shows 911 calls, crime incidents, building
permits, public art and other information about what is happening in a neighbor-
hood or near a specific address.

Improved Government Performance

Governments have long used data to track performance of their operations.
Baltimore Mayor (now Maryland Governor) Martin O’Malley launched CitiStat to
collect datasets on how well city departments operated. Baltimore tracked every-
thing from employee absenteeism to speed of fixing potholes. Many other govern-
ments have replicated the CitiStat model.
Boston improved the model by establishing a 311 center and mobile app,
Citizens Connect, to accept service calls from constituents. Eighty percent of the
calls are handled in the 311 center. All others are dispatched to City departments.
Boston City departments use the mobile app City Worker to receive such calls and
fix the reported issues. This program is so successful it is now extended to a number
of other Massachusetts cities using Commonwealth Connect.
A number of other cities also have 311 systems for reporting non-emergen-
cy problems and have developed associated mobile and web-based apps to support
such reporting.

Business and Economic Development

The Govlab at New York University, with support from the Knight Founda-
tion, is studying 500 private companies which use public data. These 500 compa-
nies use a variety of open data from the government including healthcare, building
permits, finance, mapping, weather, agriculture and energy. Clearly many startup
companies are founded upon or use government data including Yelp for food inspec-
tions and restaurant reviews, Zillow for real estate and property valuations. Seattle’s
Socrata is the foundation for many government open data sites around the world,
including the United States’ Federal Government’s www.data.gov.
In addition to the businesses, a number of useful applications use open data.
San Francisco’s open data site has an extensive apps gallery showcasing apps built
with San Francisco’s open datasets. Seattle Emergency Management is an app devel-
20 THE EVANS SCHOOL REVIEW
 Schrier
oped not just with open data from Seattle’s Fire 911 calls, but also from public safety
radio dispatch channels – users can listen to radio calls as they are dispatched. The
United States Federal open data site showcases a number of such applications.
The McKinsey Institute estimates the value of open data at $3 trillion or
more a year, an enormous sum. McKinsey finds such value in efficiency, new prod-
ucts and services, improving quality, savings and convenience.

A Political “Win”
FoIA and similar laws are often seen as liabilities by elected officials. Un-
der FoIA, email messages, memoranda and even text messages created by elected
(and other) officials must be exposed to public scrutiny. But open data can be assets
to politicians and elected officials as well. Making a government more transparent,
exposing its data for use by others, and allowing private enterprise to create useful
applications all are accomplishments that an official can trumpet when running for
election.
The Open Knowledge Foundation has created an index of openness for 84
different kinds of open data across 70 countries. Such scorecards or dashboards give
elected officials “bragging rights” for their transparency of their governments.

Future Trends: Government Open Data

Open Data as Just Part of Transparency
Open Data is just part of having an open, transparent government. Govern-
ments should strive to place all allowable and available data on an open data portal.
But many documents in proprietary formats (Microsoft Office formats, portable
document format – PDF, electronic mail messages, and so forth) are not conducive
to being formatted and placed on such a portal. Elected officials and their govern-
ments must remain committed to transparency in all its forms.

The Chief Data Officer

Several cities and a few states have established the role of the Chief Data
Officer (CDO).This officer is responsible to evangelize open data within the govern-
ment, and to carry out the executive orders or laws which mandate placing informa-
tion on an open data platform. A CDO is not required in every government, but an
open data evangelist is required. This individual is the chief executive’s point person,
passionate about delivering on the promise of the open data movement within a par-
ticular government or private company.

VOL 4, NO. 1, SPRING 2014 21

Government Open Data: Benefits, Strategies, and Use
Standards
Yelp and the City of San Francisco have developed and are promoting the
Local Inspection Value-Entry Specification (LIVES) to try and standardize restaurant
and food inspection scores. The Generalized Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) is
used by hundreds of public transit agencies around the world; ridership on such
transit systems is facilitated by apps such as One Bus Away which gives riders not just
transit schedule information but also the current location expected arrival of their
desired bus or train.
But very few similar standards exist. Or, more correctly, many such data
standards exist, but almost none are widely accepted or implemented on multiple
open data portals.
In some cases private companies have overcome this lack of standardization
by reformatting the data themselves. Crime Reports is one example where basic
crime incident data from more than 2,500 places is now on the web. BuildingEye
created its own standard for building permit data. That standard is now widely ac-
cepted and used in Ireland in civic open data portals. BuildingEye is working with
some cities in the United States and Accela, a leading provider of cloud-based build-
ing permit software for government to establish a defacto standard for building per-
mits in the U.S.
But additional standards need to be embraced by a significant number of
governments for a large number of different data types, e.g. public health, municipal
codes, legislation, zoning, permitting and licensing, etc. There is no clear path for-
ward – no single data standardization organization – for this to happen, however.

Engagement
Citizen engagement is a holy grail for elected officials. Or, rather, usable
citizen engagement is the Holy Grail. Getting widespread engagement is difficult,
however, unless the issue is either a “hot button” or NIMBY (“not in my backyard”)
issue. Any example of “hot button” issues are those relating to schools and students.
NIMBY issues include siting of public facilities such as a jail or freeway.
Open data and associated apps provide a way for citizens to become engaged
with their governments in a set of more “normal” circumstances, like budget devel-
opment using open data and mobile apps. Another example of potential engagement
is Living Voters’ Guide, an app with which constituents can discuss and rate argu-
ments for and against initiatives and referenda. A Seattle company, Ideascale, has
built an entire business around citizen engagement.

The “Fed Ex” Model for Government

Federal Express has created a whole business around not just shipping packages, but
22 THE EVANS SCHOOL REVIEW
 Schrier
tracking them. A Federal Express customer can see, at each major milestone along
the way, how a package is picked up by Federal Express and when it is transferred
between trucks or modes of transportation right up until its delivery time.
With 311 applications and tracking, described above, government could
adopt a similar model. Take, for example, graffiti. A citizen might use a 311 app to
take a photograph of obnoxious graffiti, asking a city government to remove it. The
311 center would receive the report and the photo, and perhaps dispatch it to the
gang unit at the police department which may want to have the gang unit investi-
gate the particular location and meaning of the graffiti before it is obliterated. Next
the 311 center will have to determine which agency is responsible for cleaning and
removing the graffiti. The offensive marks could be on transportation bridges or
streets, parks department property, another government (e.g. federal or state build-
ing) or even private property. Next the appropriate crew is dispatched to paint it
over or remove it, and finally the requestor is notified of the elimination of the graf-
fiti and the completion of the service request. And perhaps the requestor is asked to
rate the service rendered on this particular request.
Each of the mileposts in this work can be tracked, and can be displayed so
the requestor can see the progress. In fact, the government can also watch progress
and learn from the process, perhaps re-engineering it to be more efficient.

Conclusion
Through their legitimate business processes governments generate signifi-
cant amounts of data about people, property, licenses, crimes, public health and a
wide variety of other entities. This data is used by elected and senior officials to make
laws, set policies and operate government services. In a democracy like the United
States, citizens must be engaged and involved in the processes of law and policy mak-
ing, and even in service provision.
The government open data movement endeavors to open as much of this
data as possible for use by citizens, advocacy groups, researchers and private busi-
nesses, within the constraints of protection of privacy and security. A small but sig-
nificant number of governments embrace the concept of open data and have estab-
lished open data portals on the Internet.
At the same time, the Internet is widely used by consumers, citizens and
businesses for social media, financial transactions, purchases and simply to find in-
formation. Businesses, especially Internet-based ones such as Amazon and Google,
are collecting vast amounts of data about their users. Some of this data is open, and
most of it is bought-and-sold on private exchanges.
A number of new businesses have started using government open data along
with other publicly and privately available information. These businesses improve
VOL 4, NO. 1, SPRING 2014 23
Government Open Data: Benefits, Strategies, and Use
quality of life by producing new products and services. Citizen advocacy groups
use open data to produce new insights into public policy problems. These insights
improve the process of creating laws and public policy, and improve the delivery of
government services.
Most governments, however, are slow to embrace open data due to bud-
getary and cultural constraints. Senior elected officials – Mayors, County Execu-
tives and Governors, can follow a playbook with specific actions to overcome the
obstacles and open their government data for use by citizens, academics and private
businesses. The result will be improved and wider citizen engagement with govern-
ment, and new services such as 311 which improve quality of life for constituents.

End Notes
1. FOIA: https://www.eff.org/issues/transparency/history-of-foia, Public Law
5 USC § 552 at http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/5/552
2. Chapter 42.56, Revised Code of Washington, http://apps.leg.wa.gov/rcw/
default.aspx?cite=42.56
3. http://www.data.gov/open-gov/
4. Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Get-
tysburg_Address
5. A more complete definition of open data: http://opendefinition.org/od/
6. Attribution means any public use of the data must reference the source under
the terms of the license to use the data. See also http://opendatacommons.
org/licenses/by/summary/
7. Immutability refers to keeping the original data intact, i.e. not changing the
original data except as explicitly allowed by a license or explicitly noted when
the data is used.
8. Paris Tech Review, “A Brief History of Open Data”, March, 2013. http://
www.paristechreview.com/2013/03/29/brief-history-open-data/
9. DCStat is now the D.C. “data catalog”: http://data.octo.dc.gov/
10. District of Columbia Open Data catalog’s history: http://www.infoworld.
com/d/developer-world/open-government-meets-it-161
11. Apps for Democracy: http://istrategylabs.com/work/apps-for-democracy-
contest/
12. Value of the Apps for Democracy results: http://istrategylabs.com/2008/11/
apps-for-democracy-yeilds-4000-roi-in-30-days-for-dcgov/
13. Obama’s Executive Order Open Government: http://www.whitehouse.gov/
the_press_office/TransparencyandOpenGovernment
14. Launch of data.gov: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivek_Kundra
15. Open data portals: https://www.data.gov/open-gov/
24 THE EVANS SCHOOL REVIEW
 Schrier
16. List of open data portals: https://www.data.gov/media/2013/11/opendata-
sites.xls
17. For definitions and examples of structured and unstructured data, see: http://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unstructured_data
18. Obstacles to the Open Data Movement: http://blog.okfn.org/2013/06/26/
understanding-barriers-to-open-government-data/
19. CJIS, which restricts how criminal and arrest data may be used and disclosed
by state and local governments: http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/cjis-secu-
rity-policy-resource-center/at_download/file
20. HIPPA which restricts access to healthcare records: http://www.hhs.gov/
ocr/privacy/
21. FERPA limits access to student and educational records: http://www.ed.gov/
policy/gen/guid/fpco/ferpa/index.html
22. Obama’s Executive Order Open Government: http://www.whitehouse.gov/
the_press_office/TransparencyandOpenGovernment
23. New York City Open Data Law 11 of 2012: http://www.nyc.gov/html/
doitt/html/open/local_law_11_2012.shtml
24. New York City’s Open Data Program: http://www.nyc.gov/html/doitt/
html/open/data.shtml
25. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s Open Data Order: http://www.cityofchi-
cago.org/city/en/narr/foia/open_data_executiveorder.html
26. More examples of executive support of open data: http://sunlightfoundation.
com/
27. The United States Constitution created three branches of government and en-
shrined the notion of the separation of powers, an example of inherent conser-
vatism and resistance to change.
28. A Stock Exchange for Your Personal Data, Jessica Leber, MIT Technology Re-
view, May 1, 2012
29. This definition of Big Data comes from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/Big_data
30. Mash-up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mashup
31. See, for example, a timeline of Snowden’s revelations here: http://america.al-
jazeera.com/articles/multimedia/timeline-edward-snowden-revelations.html
32. My Neighborhood Map: http://web6.seattle.gov/mnm/policereports.aspx
33. The CitiStat Model: How Data-Driven Government Can Increase Ef-
ficiency and Effectiveness, Teresita Perez and Reece Rushing, April,
2007: http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/open-government/re-
port/2007/04/23/2911/the-citistat-model-how-data-driven-government-
can-increase-efficiency-and-effectiveness/

VOL 4, NO. 1, SPRING 2014 25

Government Open Data: Benefits, Strategies, and Use
34. Boston Does Digital: What we can learn from a City doing it right, Hana
Schank, Fast Company, April, 2013: http://www.fastcoexist.com/1679644/
boston-does-digital-what-we-can-learn-from-a-city-that-is-getting-it-right
35. Is the Cost of 311 Systems worth the Price of Knowing?, Tod Newcombe,
Governing Managzine, February, 2014: http://www.governing.com/topics/
urban/gov-311-systems-cost.html
36. Press release, State of Massachusetts, December, 2012: http://www.mass.
gov/anf/press-releases/fy2013/patrick-murray-administration-and-city-of-
boston.html
37. A partial list of cities with 311 is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3-1-1
38. Preview of the Open Data 500, GovLab at New York University: http://www.
opendata500.com/preview/
39. Now on Yelp: Restaurant Inspection Scores, January, 2013: http://officialblog.
yelp.com/2013/01/introducing-lives.html
40. www.zillow.com
41. San Francisco Apps Showcase: http://apps.sfgov.org/showcase/
42. Seattle Emergency Radio: http://appcomm.org/seattle-emergency-radio/
43. Apps on www.data.gov: https://www.data.gov/applications
44. Open Data: Unlocking Innovation and Performance with Liquid Information,
James Manyika et al, McKinsey, October, 2013: http://www.mckinsey.com/
insights/business_technology/open_data_unlocking_innovation_and_perfor-
mance_with_liquid_information?cid=other-eml-alt-mgi-mck-oth-2910/
45. Open Knowledge Foundation Index: https://index.okfn.org/country
46. See “Legitimate Constraints” earlier in this paper.
47. San Francisco Looks to Tap Into the Open Data Economy, Alex Howard,
O’Reilly Radar, October, 2012: http://radar.oreilly.com/2012/10/san-fran-
cisco-open-data-economy.html
48. Open Data Evangelist is a term used in some businesses and governments.
See, for example, the evangelist definition for the World Bank here: https://
docs.google.com/document/d/1ti36mY_zlgQUCr-c0wuwuWLJPCnQM-
BERaQX-l9es2fs/mobilebasic?pli=1&hl=en
49. The Role of the Chief Data Officer, Jane Griffin, Deloitte, 2008: https://
www.deloitte.com/assets/Dcom-UnitedStates/Local%20Assets/Documents/
us_consulting_ti_roleofchiefdataofficer_250108.pdf
50. LIVES specification: http://www.yelp.com/healthscores
51. GTFS: https://developers.google.com/transit/gtfs/
52. One Bus Away is available in four metro areas: http://onebusaway.org/
53. Crime Reports: https://www.crimereports.com/
54. BuildingEye: www.buildingeye.com

26 THE EVANS SCHOOL REVIEW

 Schrier
55. Accela: www.accela.com
56. Budget engagement: See, for example, California’s Institute for Local Govern-
ment at http://www.ca-ilg.org/open-data-mobile-engagement .
57. Living Voters’ Guide: https://livingvotersguide.org/
58. Ideascale: https://ideascale.com

VOL 4, NO. 1, SPRING 2014 27