Why We Should Treat Public Data Like Water
The revolutionary potential of the internet means that we can do more than simply build a more beautiful user interface for antiquated government operations.
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How the NYC Commission on Human Rights Uses Open Data Against Discriminatory Landlords
The New York City Commission on Human Rights has partnered with the city’s data analytics office for help using open data to go after bad landlords. One of the lesser-known protections of the New York City Human Rights Law prohibits housing providers from discriminating against potential tenants based on their...
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Loveland’s Labor’s Lost: Detroit’s Dubious Civic Tech Champions
Like other for-profit civic technology companies, Loveland sits at an uncomfortable intersection of priorities. Since its inception, Loveland has struggled to reconcile what its founders think the city needs with what community organizers and residents want and need and what nonprofits, government agencies, and companies are willing to buy.
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Detroit’s Foreclosure Crisis and the Need for ‘Information Justice’
Nfr Esters knew she couldn’t save the family house through conventional means. She had inherited the duplex on the East Side of Detroit from her great-grandfather in 2010, but a pipe burst before she moved back to the city, flooding the basement and racking up a $4,000 water bill that...
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Debating Cass Sunstein on Transparency
We need to find a language that allows us to differentiate honest, disinterested debate over policy options from special-interest lobbying and campaign-finance blackmail.
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The Next Open Data Movement
A version of this essay was originally published on the SeeClickFix channel on Medium. Picture a classroom where the teacher presents their information, but the students are not invited to ask questions or present their opinion. Attendance is not mandatory. Now picture the classroom in its fourth week. There’s a...
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Over-Politeness Is the Fatal Flaw in the Open Data Movement
I am, for my sins, one of the many parents of the strange beast that is the open data movement. I was one of the first people to nag politicians about the value of opening up public data in machine readable ways. I’m one of the first people who actually...
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In Texas, a Model For Sharing Open Water Data
When drought-prone Texas goes dry, the whole world feels it. That, at least, is one takeaway from a New York Times article describing the economic impact of the worst drought in the state’s history on the world cotton market. In total, the 2011 drought cost local agriculture, the cattle industry,...
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The Importance of Open Data to 21st Century Regulation
In the absence of open data standards, companies like Airbnb can define their own terms for behaving in an “open and transparent” way.
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The Bomb, the Pill, and the Shot
A few days ago, Tom Steinberg—the founder and former director of mySociety—wrote a fascinating piece on power that was meant for people developing civic technology. In a post on Medium, Tom clearly describes the nature of power as it relates to technology and implored civic technologists to think more directly...