Bumper Crop of Apps from Open Access to Municipal Government Information
There's lots of buzzing about Vivek Kundra, head of the Office of Chief Technology Officer (OCTO) for the District of Columbia.. His visionary leadership has helped create more transparent access to municipal government information for everyone - people who live in DC, visitors and people who work there -- the municipal government employees.
The OCTO decided to use Google Apps as their platform for collaboration across agencies and employees. What they can do is pretty amazing and I would argue necessary -- they can merge their information with Google Earth. For example, the Fire Department can zoom into see if the fire hydrant is open, see the critical facilities nearby, and look up phone numbers to start calling agencies to arrange for EMS support or relocation of citizens. They're just one of the first municipal governments empowering their employees to be able to really put their data to work. Watch this video to find out more about their decision to choose Google Apps.
Under Kundra's leadership, the OCTO has an impressive data catalog with information delivered in the following formats as appropriate: XML, Text/CSV, Atom (GeoRSS support), and KML/ESRI Shapefile. This catalog is available online for people to mashup. This fall, the OCTC, iStrategyLabs and Mashable sponsored an Apps For Democracy contest. iStrategyLabs submitted a proposal and brought this site to live in 6 days because they could build on the rich data catalog. Then they invited everyone to join and build applications and compete for prizes. 30 days later there are 49 applications that serve residents and visitors of DC including:
- iLiveAt - enter an address and get info from nearby shopping to crime rate
- DC Historic Tours is a Google Maps mashup "that combines custom walking tour creation with Flickr photo feeds and Wikipedia entries".
- PARKITDC - Enter a location to find parking nearby and whether meters are need to paid, where you can park and where its resident only. There's feed of recent auto crimes near the area, meters acting up and addresses recently searched
Check out all the award winners, the application directory, and more about the next round of the contest.
(Link via Bob Gourley, CTO Vision blog)
Tags: data catalog | Google Apps | government | municipal | mashups
