Comments on: Ireland: Closing the door to Open Government? http://blog.opengovpartnership.org/2012/09/ireland-closing-the-door-to-open-government/ Good ideas come from everywhere Wed, 15 May 2013 04:34:00 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 By: California Jack http://blog.opengovpartnership.org/2012/09/ireland-closing-the-door-to-open-government/#comment-1600 California Jack Tue, 11 Dec 2012 01:39:00 +0000 http://blog.opengovpartnership.org/?p=1443#comment-1600 Well, I think it was a good decision to name names. But why, with all the media attention, did you name American companies? Don’t you think names of councillors on the Dublin City Council would be a more effective use of scarce resources? Don’t you think identifying the types of data you want, and the people in charge who have it, would be in order?

The Irish don’t have to come to America anymore to get a decent government. Give some councillors a chance to make a name for themselves. Start saying exactly what you want. Here, I’ll help you:

* Geospatial maps, such as cadastral data and political boundaries. Who has them? Geospatial data, in my experience, links all data together, and is quite visually satisfying. For example, Los Angeles County, with a population of 9 million, has GIS maps for every house. (http://planning.lacounty.gov/gis) The California Geoportal plans on collecting all of these in 1 location, but they’re already available.
* Start filing some Freedom of Information Act-like requests (here in California its called a California Public Records Act request) with local agencies. If you can’t, you got bigger problems with open government than open government data. Get the data, don’t wait for them to put it up. What, you think Los Angeles, home of the LAPD, just up and decided one day to put the data on the web? LOL. No, they probably wanted to stop making public records act CDs all day.
* Start naming names and putting people “on the spot”. Andrew Montague from the Dublin City Council looks like a good candidate. If he won’t cooperate, get political. Better yet, get him to name names. Start discerning who is helping and who isn’t, and spread the word. Many people want to know what their representatives are, or aren’t doing, and the tiniest matter can sometimes be the choice between two candidates.

]]> By: Too much information: Links for week ending 5 October 2012 | The Barefoot Technologist http://blog.opengovpartnership.org/2012/09/ireland-closing-the-door-to-open-government/#comment-1033 Too much information: Links for week ending 5 October 2012 | The Barefoot Technologist Sat, 06 Oct 2012 00:01:35 +0000 http://blog.opengovpartnership.org/?p=1443#comment-1033 [...] Ireland: Closing the door to Open Government? The Open Government Partnership blog accuses Ireland of closing the door on open government initiatives after it withdrew its support for open standards in the way it publishes the Irish National Parliament records: “when presented with the Open Government Partnership argument, [the] response was to challenge the cost of OGP rather than seek out the most beneficial advantage”. [...]

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