City of Portland, Oregon Officially Backs Open, Structured Data
The City Council of Portland, Oregon unanimously approved a resolution today that directs the city government to open data to outside developers and encourages adoption of open source solutions in technology procurement.
Like the creation of railroads and highways fostered economic development in the past, giving software developers access to a landscape of municipal data could be the beginning of a foundation for a new era of innovation.
"This [resolution] will increase efficiency in local government... democratize public data itself... and it will foster innovation among Portland's world class software community," said Skip Newberry with the Mayor's Office in his testimony according to a report on the local tech blog Silicon Florist.
The full text of the resolution has been posted as text (from a PDF) on the same blog.
Portland joins San Francisco, Chicago and Vancouver, British Columbia as cities with major initiatives to offer municipal data in formats that will enable independent developers to build new applications leveraging that data. Making municipal data openly available for developers could be the contemporary economic equivalent of paving roads and installing electricity that can be used to open new businesses and better serve the people living in that city.
Portland, Oregon isn't new to tech innovation, of course. It's a place where the city bus system has its own app store, it's home to red-hot mobile development shops like Small Society (built iPhone apps for Starbucks, WholeFoods etc.) and Urban Airship (iPhone push infrastructure) and it's the home of Linux creator Linus Torvalds, wiki inventor Ward Cunningham and one third of the staff of ReadWriteWeb - amongst other geekery.
What could come next? How about more cities getting on board, a national or international standard for municipal data and delivery of that data in real time? One Prefecture in Japan has announced that it will promote the mobile Augmented Reality app Sekai Camera to display historical data about locations in the area. Seeing individual cities move in this direction is a great start.
What US city will move in favor of open source and open, structured data next? Seattle? New York? Someplace in the Mid West? Place your bets now as these are unlikely to be isolated developments.
Photo: "Max" Creative Commons by Stu Seeger.
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Can't forgot about DC and their open data catalog. They also sponsored the Apps for Democracy which had local developers build apps based off the city's data feeds. Was a great project and has since expanded -- soon going to NY.
A random pick for possible city to do this would be Madison, Wisconsin. Great city, smart people, and totally in line with the this type of thing.
Very cool. Along these lines, you might want to check out http://open311.org/ which is attempting to create a standardized/open model for cities to do this sort of thing.
I have very mixed feelings about this. I believe that business and IT decision makers should be empowered to make the best purchasing decision possible that align with business goals and empower their users to be more productive and to innovate. However, I don’t believe in arbitrary constraints; I think IT should be free to choose what the best answer is vs. being told what that answer is. Don’t get me wrong–we leverage dozens of open source libraries (non of which are copy-left) and am a big fan. That said as a commercial software vendor and SaaS provider I also value my IP and like my customers we do exist for an economic purpose. On a personal note I would hate to have a resolution or law in place that dictates the technology choices that I make every day; I am glad that I enjoy the freedom to pick and choose what makes the most sense for my business and my customers. In that regard, based on the problem at hand, I have had the freedom to choose Java, Microsoft, open source libraries, and commercial 3rd party libraries & products to build the best possible solutions for my customers. Conflicting choices? Not really–my goal is to accelerate innovation while delighting customers so they can focus on their business goals vs. the technology stack. The good news with technology is that it isn’t a religion although some seem to try to make it so–you really can sample the best that each has to offer vs. picking a doctrine. I think everybody should enjoy that same freedom of choice.
This is one reason people don't consider blogs journalism - you don't do your legwork. This trend is happending far beyond the three or four cities you mention. For instance, New York City has a multi-year contest around App development running [http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/29/new-york-city-starts-contest-for-big-apple-apps/] and Washington, DC is arguably where the whole trend started a few years ago. Rather than being a leader, Portland is jumping on a bandwagon.