OpenMuni

From Civic Commons Wiki

Cataloging case studies, best practices, and standards for open governance, open data, and open source on the local municipal level:

OpenMuni is a resource to spread knowledge on how localities can better provide open channels of information to improve quality of life, increase civic engagement, and make local government more effective. The website will be much like an encyclopedia documenting best-practices and open standards for file formats, APIs, open source software, and supporting policies and licenses that are pertinent to the municipal level. Furthermore, there will be case-studies documenting the process of opening-up city agencies and building closer partnerships with their constituents and software developers.

OpenMuni is a collaboration between many cities and organizations including The Open Planning Project, Code for America, and CityCamp.

Contents 1 Gov 2.0 Initiatives by City 2 Open Data & Open Source Policy 2.1 Case Studies 2.2 Pending 2.3 Guidelines 2.4 Comparative Studies 3 Open Data Catalogs 3.1 Cities 3.2 States, Provinces, and other Regions 3.3 Nations 3.4 Idea Sourcing for Data and Apps 3.5 Open Source Data Catalog Platforms 4 Data Types 4.1 Municipal Services 4.1.1 Transportation 4.1.1.1 Public Transit 4.1.1.1.1 Real Time 4.1.1.2 Bicycling 4.1.1.3 Traffic 4.1.1.4 Accidents 4.1.1.5 Parking 4.1.2 311 4.1.3 Crime 4.1.4 Apps 4.1.5 Data APIs 4.1.6 Emergency 4.1.6.1 Feeds of Emergency Response 4.1.7 Geography Formats 4.1.8 Education 4.1.9 Budget 4.1.10 Garbage/Sanitation Service 4.1.11 Health Inspections 4.1.12 Building Permits 4.1.13 Building/Lot Data 4.1.14 Land Use & Zoning 4.2 Local Democracy 4.2.1 Representatives 4.2.2 Voting 4.2.3 City Council & Legislation Management 4.2.4 Public Meetings 4.2.5 Social Media Policies & Best Practices 5 Case Studies 6 Other References 7 Related White Papers 8 Organizations Covering Municipal Information Technology 9 Organizations Helping Governments Get Data Online

Gov 2.0 Initiatives by City

• Austin
• Edmonton
• London
• Manor
• Nanaimo
• New York City
• San Francisco
• Seattle
• Toronto
• Vancouver
• Washington D.C.

Open Data & Open Source Policy

Case Studies

• Washington D.C. (PDF)
• Vancouver (PDF)
• Portland (PDF)
• San Francisco - Open Data (PDF) and Open Source Policy

Pending

• New York City Int 991 Proposed Legislation
• Edmonton Open Data Report (pdf)

Guidelines

• W3C on Publishing Open Government Data
• Open Data Principles from the Open Government Working Group on releasing data
• In the United States copyright does not protect facts, ideas, systems, or methods of operation, although it may protect the way these things are expressed

Comparative Studies

• Open Source Policy
• Open Data Policy

Open Data Catalogs

Cities

• Washington D.C. (terms)
• Nanaimo, B.C.
• Vancouver, B.C. (terms)
• San Francisco (terms)
• New York City (terms)
• Toronto (terms)
• London (terms)
• Edmonton (terms)
• Seattle (terms)

States, Provinces, and other Regions

• California, USA
• Utah, USA
• Michigan, USA
• Massachusetts, USA]
• Mecklenburg County, NC, USA

Nations

• United States of America (terms)
• United Kingdom (terms) - built on the CKAN source code
• New Zealand (terms)
• Australia (terms)

See more lists of local data catalogs

See also, tags for openmuni+datacatalog and CityCamp+datamine

Idea Sourcing for Data and Apps

• Washington D.C. Uservoice
• Toronto DataTO
• NYC Uservoice, BigApps Suggestions, BigApps RFEIs, and wishlist
• San Francisco DataSF Ideas
• Edmonton Uservoice
• Austin Open Austin
• Manor Manor Labs

Open Source Data Catalog Platforms

• CIVX (source)
• CivicDB (source)
• Openly Local (source)
• Microsoft Open Government Data Initiative - OGDI (source)
• OpenGov Sweden (source) - Directory
• Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network (source) - Directory
• National Data Catalog (source) - Directory

Directory denotes that the system links-to and provides metadata about data hosted elsewhere rather than acting as a repository for the data itself.

Data Types

Municipal Services

Transportation

Public Transit

• GTFS schedule data standard
• http://CityGoRound.org
• Case studies by city
• OpenTripPlanner - open systems for multi-modal routing

Real Time

• Portland Trimet
• Washington D.C. Circulator
• SFMTA NextMuni prediction feed
• BART ETA Feed
• MassDOT / Boston MBTA Real time feed
• Chicago Transit Authority (third-party)
• Seattle King County Buses API

Bicycling

• Chicago Bicycle Program's Bike Parking data and feeds

Traffic

Accidents

Parking

311

• http://www.open311.org

Crime

• Example API: http://labs.hamptonroads.com/api/crime/
• Example Data: http://data.octo.dc.gov/Metadata.aspx?id=3 (KML google maps)

Apps

• http://oakland.crimespotting.org/
• http://www.lapdcrimemaps.org/
• http://www.seattlecrime.com/911/map
• http://www.crimereports.com
• http://spotcrime.com/ny/new+york
• EveryBlock - Formerly ChicagoCrime.org.
• Your Mapper

Data APIs

• Your Mapper API

Emergency

• Common Alerting Protocol
• DHS Virtual USA (forthcoming)
• People Finder Interchange Format

Feeds of Emergency Response

• Nanaimo
• Montcopa County
• Lancaster County, Pennsylvania Live Incident Status, (also available in RSS format)

Geography Formats

• http://www.business.gov/about/features/api/geodata/
• Open Municipal Geodata Standard
• GML
• KML
• Shapefiles

Education

• Education.com Schools API

Budget

Garbage/Sanitation Service

• http://vantrash.ca/api.html

Health Inspections

• http://www.nyc.gov/html/datamine/html/data/terms.html?dataSetJs=raw.js&theIndex=24

Building Permits

• San Francisco: These are .XLS spreadsheets published on a monthly basis. Go here for more info: http://www.datasf.org/search.php?search=building. Here is how the data is used on EveryBlock: http://sf.everyblock.com/building-permits/
• Atlanta: This is not a "feed", just a series of text files like this. This is definitely not a preferred method of publishing data, but it is consistent, so that a developer would only have to write a scraper once. Here is how the data is used on EveryBlock: http://atlanta.everyblock.com/building-permits/by-date/2009/12/1/103138/
• Charlotte/ Mecklenburg County: This is an interesting case. Many years ago, they launched their "Integrated Data Store", a system of searches and download files. It is not a "feed", really (XML, RSS), but it does allow for the user to configure a search and download a reliably formatted .csv file. Here is how the data is used on EveryBlock: http://charlotte.everyblock.com/building-permits/
• Boston permit search: This is an example where the data is not provided in any format other than a Web search. The goal of any city should be to eliminate the need to scrape Web databases. Here is how the data is used on EveryBlock: http://boston.everyblock.com/building-permits/by-date/2010/1/22/339007/

Building/Lot Data

Land Use & Zoning

Local Democracy

Representatives

• http://ideas.topplabs.org/wiki/Who_is_my_government%3F

Voting

• http://votinginfoproject.org/

City Council & Legislation Management

• Openly Local - tracks council members, committees, and meetings
• NY Senate OpenLeg (source code)

Public Meetings

• http://pages.e-democracy.org/Public_Meetings

Social Media Policies & Best Practices

• http://www.govloop.com/page/web-20-policies-and-best

Case Studies

• Leveraging Open Data: Washington D.C.
• Developing an open standard: GTFS
• On the ground civic engagment: FixMyStreet et al
• Open Policies
• Engaging the developer community: Boston MBTA
• Multi-city collaboration: Open311
• Social Media Engagement: BART
• Apps Contests
• Real Time Data
• Open Source: Portland

Other References

• http://www.ipublic.org/wiki/
• http://www.talkstandards.com/open-forum-standardization-and-egovernment-3/
• http://www.osor.eu/
• http://www.futuregov.net/articles/category/localgov/
• http://govfresh.com/category/local/
• http://www.govtech.com/pcio/
• http://opengovdirective.pbworks.com/
• http://www.opencongress.org/wiki/Third_Party_Websites_That_Transform_Government_Data
• http://ideas.topplabs.org/wiki/Open_Government_in_a_Box#Local_Level
• http://pages.e-democracy.org/Tools_for_transparency

Related White Papers

• Open Data is Civic Capital: Best Practices for "Open Government Data"
• IT Governance Capability: Laying the foundation for government interoperability
• A Call to Action for State Government: Guidance for Opening the Doors to State Data
• Open access policies, practices and licensing : a review of the literature in Australia and selected jurisdictions

Organizations Covering Municipal Information Technology

• MySociety
• The Open Planning Project
• Code for America
• E-Democracy.org
• Center for Future Civic Media
• Senseable City Lab
• EU CitiLab, Innovative City
• Public Technology Institute
• International City/County Management Association
• National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors
• National League of Cities
• United Cities and Local Governments
• Digital Local Agenda
• IT4ALL - Network of Local Authorities for the Information Society
• Global Cities Dialog

Organizations Helping Governments Get Data Online

• GovMapper