Open Data

See the following -

Wikipedia Founder to Help in [UK] Government's Research Scheme

Alok Jha | The Guardian | May 1, 2012

The [UK] government has drafted in the Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales to help make all taxpayer-funded academic research in Britain available online to anyone who wants to read or use it. The initiative, which has the backing of No 10 and should be up and running in two years, will be announced by the universities and science minister, David Willetts, in a speech to the Publishers Association on Wednesday.
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Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales Explains Its Mission To Be Mainstream

Jemima Kiss | The Guardian | July 23, 2013

Wikipedians plan more outreach for teachers, better tools for developers and simpler editing tools to increase their audience Read More »

Will PRISM Hinder State And Local Open-Data Efforts?

Colin Wood | Governing | June 13, 2013

In recent years, many state and local governments have put effort into open data projects that would inspire developers to create apps and find ways to use public data to bring value to their communities. Read More »

Without Sharing, Big Data Is Nothing

Zack McCartney | Healthcare IT News | September 4, 2013

Industry insiders say developing open data exchange was the key to unlocking big data’s potential Read More »

Working to Get the United Nations to Adopt Open Source Development Tools

Working at the bleeding edge of global development is about to get more lively. Akvo.org co-founder Mark Charmer argues the world needs the open source movement to assert itself right now.... Read More »

Wrapping Up Open Data Day 2013

Beatrice Martini | Open Knowledge Foundation Blog | February 28, 2013

Open Data Day 2013 took place on the 23rd of February – and it was great! From curious citizens to journalists, tech-geeks to scientists, designers to data wranglers, hundreds of people got together to show support for and encourage the adoption of open data policies by the world’s local, regional and national governments. Read More »

Yelp's Move To Incorporate Health Inspection Information Is A Huge Step For Open Data

Alissa Black | Slate | January 18, 2013

If you knew that your favorite local eatery failed its latest health inspection, would you still eat there? Most of us don’t have to consider that question because restaurant hygiene scores are hard to find—we would have to go out of our way to locate the information on lousy government sites. But that may be about to change. Read More »

Yes, GIS Files Are Public Data, Too

Emily Badger and Sara Johnson | The Atlantic Cities | July 11, 2013

Back in 2007, the Sierra Club requested a copy of what it thought was a public record from Orange County, California, covering information like the location and addresses of 640,000 land parcels in the county. Read More »

Yes, You Can Reconcile The Wide Sharing Of Personal Medical Research Data With Greater Participant Control

Glynn Moody | TechDirt | March 15, 2016

Although the benefits of sharing big datasets are well-known, so are the privacy issues that can arise as a result. The tension between a desire to share information widely and the need to respect the wishes of those to whom it refers is probably most acute in the medical world. Although the hope is that aggregating health data on a large scale can provide new insights into diseases and their treatments, doing so makes issues of consent even trickier to deal with. A new study of Parkinson's disease from Sage Bionetworks, which describes itself as a "non-profit biomedical research organization," takes a particularly interesting approach. Unusually, it used an iPhone app to gather data directly from the participants...

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‘Misguided’ Nations Lock Up Valuable Geospatial Data

Staff Writer | Directions Magazine | February 19, 2014

Many governments, particularly those in low-income countries, are “shooting themselves in the foot” by failing to give research and development communities open access to their caches of geospatial data, experts have warned. Read More »

‘Open Source, Open Science’ meeting report – March 2015

On March 19th and 20th, the Center for Open Science hosted a small meeting in Charlottesville, VA, convened by COS and co-organized by Kaitlin Thaney (Mozilla Science Lab) and Titus Brown (UC Davis). People working across the open science ecosystem attended, including publishers, infrastructure non-profits, public policy experts, community builders, and academics. Read More »

“Keep On Inspiring”: U.S. Chief Technology Officer Todd Park Visits iTriage

Amelia Laing | iTriage | October 12, 2012

On Wednesday U.S. Chief Technology Officer Todd Park visited iTriage at our headquarters in Denver, CO as part of a seven-city tour promoting five important government initiatives. “I am so inspired by what you’re doing,” said Park to a gathering of iTriage employees. “You’re empowering people to take control of their health, and you’re saving lives. What you’re doing is incredibly important.” Read More »

Mike O'Neill and Seong K. Mun on OSEHRA - The VistA Open Source Custodial Agent

Event Details
Type: 
Seminar/Webinar
Date: 
March 1, 2012 - 4:00pm - 5:00pm

Those interested in finding out more about OSEHRA, the VistA Custodial Agent organization, will have a golden opportunity on March 1. Mike O'Neill - Senior Advisor, Veterans Affairs Innovation Initiative (VAi2) and OSEHRA Board Member and Dr. Seong K. Mun, founding President of CEO of OSEHRA will be giving a webinar presentation and detailed discussion on OSEHRA's background, mission and current status.

OSEHRA’s mission is to facilitate, through the use of the best practices in open source software development, the improvement and maintenance of EHR information systems.  These systems will be freely available for all medical beneficiaries. OSEHRA has been modeled after successful open source collaborative efforts and will welcome the contributions from all kinds of developers...

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Todd Park to Speak at Commonwealth Fund in San Francisco

Event Details
Type: 
Open Source Event
Date: 
June 18, 2012 - 12:00pm - 2:00pm
Location: 
SF Club Office
Blue Room, The Commonwealth Club
United States

Park will discuss how advances in technology will continue to affect changes to our health-care system, create jobs and improve life for Americans. He will focus on his current work and how Healthcare.gov (which he helped create in his previous position as CTO of HHS) is being incorporated to help reduce health-care costs. He will also briefly discuss his overall work as CTO and how his health-care work ties in to this. Park joined the administration in August 2009 as chief technology officer of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. In this role, he served as a change agent and “entrepreneur-in-residence,” helping HHS harness the power of data, technology and innovation to improve the health of the nation.

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NASA, State Department and Veteran Affairs Innovation Initiative Host Open Source Summit

Event Details
Type: 
Conference
Date: 
June 20, 2012 - 9:00am - June 21, 2012 - 5:00pm
Location: 
University of Maryland Business School
7621 Mowatt Lane
College Park, MD 20742
United States

Registration for the second Open Source Summit, hosted by NASA, the U.S. State Department and the Veteran Affairs Innovation Initiative to advance the use of open source software in government, is under way. The event will be held June 20-21 at the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland in College Park, Md.

The summit will convene leaders from government and industry as well as software practitioners to discuss the development, release and use of open source software, which is characterized by a collaborative development process and free user access.

Discussion topics will include the current and future state of the government open source community, how-to insights for open source projects in government, real-world projects and their successes and challenges, and government procurement of open source software.

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