| An open data commitment across gov agencies was an explicit commitment and project started in 2013 during the Obama administration. “On May 9, 2013, President Obama signed an executive order that made open and machine-readable data the new default for government information. Making information about government operations more readily available and useful is also core to the promise of a more efficient and transparent government.” https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/open I know about this because the Australian government then followed and worked on doing the same. Data.gov became a central place to access and even request that departments open specific data sets and in more formats. https://data.gov https://data.gov.au The annual GovHack hackathon was supported by many agencies, leading to a strong prize pool and people from various agencies on hand looking for teams who over the weekend had done cool things with their data (specially if it was public interest). Some projects were further funded coming out of the hackathons. https://govhack.org/about Year on year ongoing commitment to open data in government got us to here. It was a great long term initiative furthering values of cizitzen engagement, open data and open government. |