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Digital volunteers are racing to map regions in West Africa where the Ebola virus, which has a 90 percent fatality rate, continues to spread 
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Sunlight Foundation Reporting Group (blog) New Louisville Open Data Policy Insists Open By Default is the Future Sunlight Foundation Reporting Group (blog) On Tuesday, October 15, 2013, Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer announced the signing of an open...
Phillip Trotter's insight:
Interesting to see cities beginning to adopt open data policies as default. Recent open data competitions in places like New York are helping create awareness of the possibilities of using openly available data, mobile etc for innovative apps and improved city planning and governance. Looking forward to see what Louisville's decision generates.
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From
enigma
Search and discovery platform for big public data that exposes billions of public records across previously siloed datasets. (Looks interesting.
Phillip Trotter's insight:
The Enigma team recently won TechCrunch New York startup competition - check out the video of their presentation. Interesting product that pulls together a diverse data set with accessible query tools and api.
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Here’s an interesting project using slightly unorthodox means to get data out into the open: crowdfunding the purchase of US healthcare data for subsequent open release. The company behind the project is NotOnly Dev, a Health IT software incubator who describe themselves as a “not-only-for-profit” company. Earlier this year they released a Doctor Social Graph, which displays the connections between doctors, hospitals and other healthcare organizations in the US. The dataset used is billed as “THE data set that any academic, scientist, or health policy junkie could ever want to conduct almost any study.” Scroll down the page to see Fred Trotter talking about the idea.
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The drug company GlaxoSmithKline hopes that making its research available to scientists will lead to safer, more effective drugs. Whether more disclosure might lead to safer, more effective drugs remains to be seen. GlaxoSmithKline, a British drug concern, will open its clinical trial data to other researchers once a drug has completed the approval process or been abandoned. Glaxo is taking the step after experimenting with disclosure for treatments for tropical diseases like malaria and finding those efforts successful, according to company officials. In addition, the company plans to release information about 200 of its experimental drug compounds that have shown signs of fighting tuberculosis. Learn more by clicking on the image or the title.
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Snagged this from the excellent Digital Cities Scoop team. In many cases, Smart cities are linked to the idea of ‘data’. For instance, Open data and sensor data provide the foundation for making cities smarter by enabling new services and acting as a feedback loop for improving existing services. However, data itself does not constitute value. Data must go through a platform that enables value added services. Good article - click on the image or the title to learn more. Via estratic, Patrick Genoud
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The Guardian
Phillip Trotter's insight:
The first year anniversary of the Open Data Institute founded by the Guardian - is generating a lot of good stories on Open Data success stories. We use open data sources in a number of current research projects and hopefully we can add to some of thos success stories over the next year. In this article the Gaurdian is highlighting open day as a force for democratic good - as the old saying goes sunlight is the best medicine.
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Wall Street Journal (blog)
Phillip Trotter's insight:
An interesting side effect of the US government shutdown is to highlight the role of Government data feeds in a variety of settings. Interesting blog post and amusing comment from wall street journal.
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For environmental journalists around the world, a lack of access to data on issues from oceans to sanitation can make it hard to report accurately on projects and policies. But technology may be changing the game. “Recent advances in technology have the power to revolutionize transparency within the sustainability movement,” says Manish Bapna, acting president of World Resources Institute (WRI). He believes this could "transform the way we look at a wide range of environmental issues.” Click on the image or the title to learn more.
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Good blog post on what actually open data needs to be. Tim Davies does a great job summarizing requirements for open data with an example from the UK government that fails the test. In this case the UK government released the Digital Landscape Research undertaken by 2CV. However the published data appears tobe a derivative cross tabulation -not the raw data that the results were derived from. Lack of a data provenance guide menas while the data base been published it is difficult to actually use it further. Lack of contact information means the authors of the data set cannot be easily contacted. Some very good insights and useful guidance in the post - worth reading. Click on the image or the title to learn more
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City of Ottawa's planned move to Drupal as an open-source system for its website also provides an opportunity to increase the number of data sets available in the catalogue, particularly those that change often, such as schedules, As a resul tthe citiy is planning another open-data contest as the city looks to improve the way it offers raw information that developers can use to make helpful apps. The city's website is expected to relaunch in November, and a gallery is to be added to help people find third-party apps created from municipal data, Click on the image or the title to learn more.
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Definitely a trend occuring in Europe, be interesting to see how it takes root elsewhere. Public administrations that grasp the benefits of making publicly available their data will also increase their use of free and open source, experts on open data agree. Open data and open source face comparable threats: initial lack of support and a fear for the impact on the organisation. Click on title to learn more.
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The use of OpenStreetMap (OSM) as an unifying geodata system is increasing in humanitarian aid. The current Ebola outbreak in West Africa is a challenge at multiple levels for teams trying to coordinate a response. Due to years of war there are few up to date maps in the region and multiple boundaries mean different groups are collecting data. Digital volunteers creating new OSM entries will be a key asset in enabling health officials to manage the outbreak and hopefully bring things under control.