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States of Transparency: Colorado
By Sarah Dorsey Aug 20, 2010 4:49 p.m.The Open Government Directive encouraged states to put valuable government data online. In this series we're reviewing each state's efforts in this direction.
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OGD: Treasury refines its plan
By Ryan Sibley Jun 11, 2010 3:53 p.m.Last month the Department of Treasury released the second iteration of its open government plan. The agency says it worked on three points to improve upon its first plan, adding specificity, clarifying the FOIA process, and addressing things missing from the first attempt – such as an outline revealing information requests from Congress. Treasury says it is continually working to improve its Open Government plan to satisfy what the public would like to see.
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OGD: Reviewing EPA's interactive datasets
By Aisha Qidwae Apr 29, 2010 11:20 a.m.The Environmental Protection Agency has been ahead of several other cabinet level agencies when it comes to putting data online. For several years now some of their main datasets are available with interactive features such as maps and in a downloadable format. Now according to EPA’s open government plan, the agency is planning on releasing several new data driven projects by the end of 2010, some of which are already public.
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OGD: A state-by-state look at Medicare payments
By Sarah Dorsey Apr 23, 2010 11:03 a.m.Click on the picture for a larger version.
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OGD: VA nurses get second lives
By Sarah Dorsey Apr 16, 2010 5:09 p.m.Recruiters have long used video games to sell military service to young people. The armed forces also use games -- er, "computer simulations" -- to train troops for battle. Now the Veterans Affairs Department plans to join the fun by sending its nurses to Second Life.
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Treasury department holding back on details of mortgage modification program
By Claritza Jiménez | Apr 14, 2010 2:18 p.m.Just how effective is the Obama Administration’s effort to help homeowners stave off foreclosure? It’s hard to know, in part because detailed data that could provide part of the answer is not available to the public.
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OGD: Food access mapping tool provides more than just its title
By Lisa Chiu Apr 13, 2010 10:39 a.m.As part of the First Lady’s campaign to combat childhood obesity, the Department of Agriculture in February launched the Your Food Environment Atlas – an online mapping tool of the nation’s access to food at the county level.
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OGD: Future Medicare data looks promising
By Sarah Dorsey Apr 12, 2010 3:28 p.m.The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services appear to be on to something with their promised new datasets. It's a leap for an agency whose previous offerings were a confusing mishmash of poorly-labeled files. If they continue to add granularity as they roll out more features, journalists could have a useful and innovative set of tools on their hands.
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OGD: Labor releases five enforcement datasets
By Anupama Narayanswamy Apr 9, 2010 4:27 p.m."I now realize that I must have had my first glimmer of the need for preventive journalism as a young West Virginian who would hear of a mine disaster, then read heartbreaking stories of weeping widows and indignant editorials demanding effective safety regulations. But in the years that followed, no reporter went down into the mines to see if they were safer. We only found out they were not after the next disaster when a new round of heartbreaking articles and indignant editorials would appear." -- Charles Peters, Understanding government.com
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Other dangerous mines? Federal data can't tell you
By Anupama Narayanswamy Apr 6, 2010 1:28 p.m.Monday’s explosion that killed 25 miners at Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia came at a mine that had been flagged by inspectors for a series of violations – 3000 since 1995 and more than 500 in 2009 alone.
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OGD: Freeing health care data
By Nancy Watzman Mar 10, 2010 9:11 a.m.We're still tracking government's performance under the Open Government Directive, and we're also asking for specific information to be released. Here's the data we'd like to see on food and drug safety, which we posted over at the Department of Health and Human Services "open" Web page. The agency set up this commenting system as part of President Barack Obama's open government directive. Please take a moment to visit and vote for our suggestions. (Unfortunately the HHS comment format made our paragraphs run together and slightly truncated our comment. This is fixed below.) We'll be posting more of these at other /open pages in the coming days and weeks.
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OGD: Commerce repackages old data and offers broken links
By Sarah Dorsey Jan 28, 2010 2:34 p.m.To comply with the Open Government Directive, the Commerce Department released four high value datasets that require considerable technical sophistication on the part of users--and patience. Some of the files are so large and cumbersome they're very difficult to open and use; others require a great deal of explanation--and you can currently only find those explanations by digging through the agency's site. Still other entries feature broken links or only contain a fraction of the information described on Data.gov. The Commerce Department says they're working on all of these problems, so hopefully we'll see an improvement in the coming days.
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OGD: Defense releases what it already releases
By Lisa Chiu Jan 26, 2010 5:17 p.m.To comply with the Open Government Directive, the Defense Department designated three high-value datasets last week, among them a listing of those requesting more transparency from the Pentagon. DoD released details on the 4,000 Freedom of Information requests it has received as well as datasets with information on service members gender and race, U.S. state, and marriage statistics.
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OGD: High value...er, never mind
By Ryan Sibley Jan 26, 2010 2:46 p.m.Data.gov has apparently changed its mind about which datasets are high value. When datasets were released on Friday, the 2007-2008 State-to-State Migration Outflow file released by the Department of Treasury was designated high value--an asterisk appeared next to its entry in the raw data catalog on data.gov. Today that asterisk is gone. This would leave treasury one high value data set short of the three required by the Open Government Directive. But dont worry, they've added another. The dataset titled, Tax Year 2007 County Income Data, has been placed in the list and given an asterisk. What isn't shared with the public in this instance is the day it was released. The entry only says January 2010, while all other datasets identify the day as well.
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