Open Government
June 16, 2010 6 PM UPDATE 3
Visit https://nycctechcomm.wordpress.com/opengov/june2010hearing/ for more details.
Visit http://nyccopendata.eventbrite.com to register. The hearing will be live webcasted and archived at www.livestream.com/nycctechcomm.
The New York City Council Committee on Technology will hold an important hearing on open data standards for all city agencies at 10:00am on June 21, 2010 at 250 Broadway, New York, NY (across the from City Hall). This bill, Introduction 029-2010 (formerly Intro. 991-2009), is an effort to increase government transparency and facilitate easier access to public data. Beyond the ‘good government’ benefits of this legislation, the bill will also unlock City data to enable web developers and entrepreneurs to interact with City government in new and unforeseen ways. Data published under this legislation will be readable by any computer device, whether that is a laptop or a phone, for innovative developments. This Gov 2.0 inspired transparency legislation, targets application developers, startups, small businesses, and academics with the ultimate goal of strengthening the connection between government and the public, while re-energizing the small business-tech sectors.
Please visit https://nycctechcomm.wordpress.com/opengov/ for information on Int. 029-2010. If you wish to testify, please contact the Office of Council Member Gale A. Brewer, Kunal Malhotra, Legislative and Budget Director, at (212) 788-6975 or kmalhotra@council.nyc.gov / Samuel Wong, Legislative Aide on Technology, at (212) 788-6975 or samwong.nycc@gmail.com.
June 1, 2010 UPDATE 2
Int. 029-2010 and Int. 991-2009 are uploaded for comparison.
May 28, 2010 UPDATE 1
Testimonies and other hearing materials from the June 2009 hearing can be found at the following link.
June 25, 2009 Brewer Introduced Major Open Data Legislation
CITY HALL, June 24, 2009 – The New York City Council Committee on Technology in Government will be holding an important hearing on open data standards for all city agencies at 1:00pm June 29th at 250 Broadway in the 14th Floor Hearing Room. This bill, Introduction 991-2009, is an effort to increase government transparency and access to public data. Beyond the ‘good government’ benefits of this legislation, the bill will also unlock City data to enable web developers and entrepreneurs to interact with City government in new and unforeseen ways.
The bill will require the City to create a centralized online repository of all publicly available information that is either produced or retained by the City. Furthermore, data published under this legislation will be readable by any computer device, whether that is a laptop or a phone. Not only will this collection of information be invaluable to elected officials, other government agencies and public advocates, but it can also be used by private citizens who could use the information in ingenious and unforeseen ways. New York could be a pioneer in an increasingly popular and competitive field: Int. 991, when passed, could place New York ahead of any other major city or state in the nation because our legislation is more comprehensive.
The spirit of this legislation parallels initiatives taken in Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C., but we have introduced legislation that surpasses their efforts in both its scope and organization. Intro. 991 would create the first central location for all City data, a “www.datanyc.gov” of sorts, much like the Obama Administration’s recently launched www.data.gov and www.recovery.gov. The Committee is expecting testimony in support from good government groups, web developers, the New York State Senate CIO, and the CIO’s of Chicago, Washington, D.C. and Boston.
Furthermore, the data requirements of Int. 991 would publish data in formats allowing the tech community to interact with City government in a new and exciting manner. Just imagine looking at a restaurant’s ratings (and violations) on your computer or mobile device based on your search or GPS location. On the academic side, students can research legislation and statistics instantly. Open access to information ensures government accountability to provide the most detailed and user-friendly data format, while maintaining user privacy. Essentially, government transparency generates greater collaboration between the people and the government, as it fosters awareness for the local community.
If you want to attend the hearing and/or testify at this hearing, please contact Kunal Malhotra, Director of Legislation and Budget, at kmalhotra@council.nyc.gov or (212) 788-6975.
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The New York City Council Committee on Technology will hold an important hearing on open data standards for all city agencies at 10:00am on June 21, 2010 at 250 Broadway, New York, NY (Across the from City Hall). This bill, Introduction 029-2010 (formerly Intro. 991-2009), is an effort to increase government transparency and facilitate easier access to public data. Beyond the ‘good government’ benefits of this legislation, the bill will also unlock City data to enable web developers and entrepreneurs to interact with City government in new and unforeseen ways. Data published under this legislation will be readable by any computer device, whether that is a laptop or a phone, for innovative developments. This Gov 2.0 inspired transparency legislation, targets application developers, startups, small businesses, and academics with the ultimate goal of strengthening the connection between government and the public, while re-energizing the small business-tech sectors.
Please visit https://nycctechcomm.wordpress.com/opengov/ for information on Int. 029-2010. If you wish to testify, please contact the Office of Council Member Gale A. Brewer, Kunal Malhotra, Legislative and Budget Director, at (212) 788-6975 or kmalhotra@council.nyc.gov / Samuel Wong, Legislative Aide on Technology, at (212) 788-6975 or samwong.nycc@gmail.com.
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Tech Committee
New York Council Committee on Technology (formerly Technology in Government)
NYC Council Committee on Technology's Blog 
I’ve posted this along in conjunction with Seattle’s new site http://data.seattle.gov and look forward to an open process of providing open data to the public at large.
“Open Data Developments from Seattle & New York City”
http://www.phibetaiota.net/?p=25520
Director: Earth Intelligence Network (501c3/non-profit)
(Draft) I expect to be there, but if not…
Comments to the City Council Technology Committee on Open Data
by Thomas Lowenhaupt, Director, Connecting.nyc Inc.
June 21, 2010
Good morning. I’m Tom Lowenhaupt, founding director of Connecting.nyc Inc., a New York State not-for-profit advocating for the development of the .nyc TLD as a public interest resource. My presentation is on the DNS Query Log – a soon to arrive database.
The DNS Query Log
Within the next few years the Internet is going to change in a fundamental way – it is going to become more intuitive.
This will happen as the ICANN, the entity that issues new Top Level Domains such as .com, .org, and .gov finalizes its application process. There will initially be hundreds and then thousands of New Top Level Domains (or TLDs for short), with names such as .bank, .sport, and .news.
So the future holds Chase and Citibank moving from Chase.com and citibank.com to Chase.bank and city.bank. ESPN will move to ESPN.sports and the Wall Street Journal will find advantage in moving to WSJ.news.
With this transition people will come to see the Internet as far more intuitive than today and will begin entering their domain name requests directly. So for example, if you’re looking for a bank you are likely to enter index.bank or directory.bank. Or if you’re looking for news sources you might try categories.news. And information about baseball might be best found from baseball.sports. It’s going to be a different Internet, one where our dependence of search engines will be diminished.
In addition to the forementioned .sport, .news, and .bank, there will be city TLDs such as .paris, .berlin, .tokyo and my favorite .nyc.
Getting to today’s topic.
Imagine the .nyc Top Level Domain name is fully functional in 5 years. And people have come to recognize the benefit of directly entering domain names rather than always relying on Google. So people learn that it’s faster and more direct to enter mayor.nyc, citycouncil.nyc, firedepartment.nyc, and police.nyc.
The operator of the .nyc TLD will connect each of these queries to the appropriate website and create an entry in a Query Log. This Query Log will contain valuable information from a marketing, governance, and civic life perspective.
Let me give an example.
Imagine in 1985 we had the intuitive Internet as I’ve described it today – baseball.sports, police.nyc…
And imagine the residents of Greenpoint, Brooklyn started entering intuitive inquiries into their search boxes such as:
Holeintree.nyc
Spottedbeetles.nyc
Dyingtreesingreenpoint.nyc
What happens to these queries? If they are for an existing website, people will be directly connected to the site. And I’ll skip for the moment the privacy issues associated with that database of successful connections.
But imagine it’s a time like 1985 when the Asian Longhorn Beatle had just arrived on our shores. And residents of Greenpoint are entering intuitive inquiries seeking information about the strange developments going on with their trees. And let’s assume that none of these intuitive inquiries had existing websites. What happens to these erroneous queries?
We advocate that this information go to an Error Query Log Database, and be made available to all for inspection. So some clever researcher can begin exploring these entries and create a proper response. In 1985 that would have been to inform the Parks Department that there are a number of odd things going on with the trees in Greenpoint. And an inspector could have been dispatched to investigate. In reality it took 10 years before that happened and we now face the prospect of 1,200,000,000 trees being lost in America to the Asian Longhorn Beatle.
So what will the Error Query Log show in the future?
I’ve no crystal ball, but it could be the central location for sensing change in our city, in a database controlled by the city. This database should be made available to researchers and programmers on a minute by minute or minimally, hourly basis.
Public access to this sensitive database should be prescribed in your legislation.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Someone might ask if this Query Log was required as per the RFP issued by DoITT. And the answer would be no. This is an innovation being explored by Connecting.nyc Inc. See our Query Log page for more on this – http://bit.ly/QueryLog.