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Invited to a 'hackathon' by the BC gov't, they turn digital info into usable tools for citizens.
Open data geeks crank out digital solutions Saturday, using files released by the B.C. government. Photo: BC Government.
The transparency push is a year old and working, but you can't call it wide open, yet.
Compared to US and others, our government drags its feet on open data initiatives.
Call it the open data movement. Led by a volunteer group of independent computer programmers, data management experts and analysts, and motivated by caffeine and citizen engagement alone, they can turn raw numbers into usable tools.
And at the OpenDataBC hackathon on Saturday, they accomplished projects in a few hours that the B.C. government has been working on for months, Bowen Moran said, who wrote his twitter name (@bxmx) on his name tag.
Take VanShelter, an app (still in progress) that displays which shelters in the Downtown Eastside have available beds, in real time. The idea is that the shelters update the numbers on twitter, and if you are a subscriber to the service, get free text messages on your phone.
"People in the Ministry of Social Development are going to freak out -- but in a good way," said David Hume about the app, who is executive director of citizen engagement for the provincial government. "There are some big problems that have gotten solved today," he added.
On July 19, the province created the department Data BC and released 2,500 sets of data into the public domain. After retyping PDFs onto machine-readable formats, and clearing copyright restrictions, the flood gates were open, said David Wrate, who is part of Data BC. Now they add about one data set a day.
By releasing the data, the provincial government officials hope to spur social and commercial innovation. They also hope to create projects that can serve the public good.
That's where the OpenDataBC hackathon comes in. There's a lot of public information out there, but it's not very user friendly.
Most of the data so far comes from the Ministries of Health, Environment and Education, with information ranging from vital health statistics to caribou herd locations to B.C. schools' Grade 10 exam results.
Stephanie Cadieux, minister of Labour, Citizens' Services and Open Government, said that she hopes this event will help improve the data that the province is collecting and releasing. "If we don't have the data to answer a certain question, then we need to know that so that we can go get it."
"That's the whole point of opening up government," she said, "it's up to society and to British Columbians to have a say in what we want from the Province."
The next hackathon event has yet to be announced, but organizers say expect at least three more this year. ![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
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CalvinS
1 year ago
Fantastic. When is this
Fantastic. When is this coming to Ontario?
Dan the socialist
1 year ago
"That's the whole point of
"That's the whole point of opening up government," she said
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Excuse me? She sounds like a true fascist.
The government should not have to be opened up to the people period.
redline22
1 year ago
Really?
Wow an app that sends emails to your smartphone to let you know where the free meals are at!
A better idea would be asking why do homeless people have 500 dollar phones and 60 dollar a month cell bills when they can't figure out how to budget for the necessities first.
redline22
1 year ago
and if these people really
[OFFENSIVE COMMENT REMOVED.]
OwlRol
1 year ago
Knowledge requires worthwhile purposes
"at the OpenData BC hackathon on Saturday, they accomplished projects in a few hours that the B.C. government has been working on for months"
Perhaps the Open Data folks should open a school to train these high tech government workers to produce such work in hours instead of months. Of course it could morph into one of those dang P3s.
As Dan points out government should be open to begin with, not having the public "opening up government," like a sardine can, as Minister Cadieux sort of suggests.
Finally, who decides the purpose and value of "data that the province is collecting and releasing."
For example "statistics to caribou herd locations" can surely help if the Ministry of the Environment has resources to implement conservation plans and the power to prevent the building of forestry and mining roads in those sensitive regions.
As to "B.C. schools' Grade 10 exam results", these are really only useful to those, such as the Fraser Institute, who consider such results central to grade 10 aggregate student evaluation. They mean very little to those who value more specific or holistic evaluation methods.
Perhaps citizens need to "open up government" to make sure such freely given knowledge is used to benefit society with truly needed and worthwhile tasks.