Gapminder Updates Web Site

Here's a quick update from Gapminder.org:

We have given Gapminder's web site a major overhaul. In the process we added many new, helpful functions to make it easier to use Gapminder.

The news include better navigation, Hans Rosling's twitter, an easier way to find and download data and a new page especially for teachers.

The biggest improvement is the new Gapminder World. We have made it easier to find interesting stories in the vast amount of data. To use, simply click the “Open graph menu” and choose from the list of stories.

And yes, everything now looks much better!

Gapminder is a non-profit foundation based in Stockholm, Sweden. We are promoting sustainable global development and the achieve- ment of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals by unveiling the beauty of statistics for a fact based world view.

Read more ...

DataMasher

I'm having some fun playing with DataMasher.org, a tool that pulls state data sets (many, but not all, from Data.gov) and allows you to throw data sets together to find interesting information and stories.

Take births divided by population and you get a list of the Most Reproductive States (not surprisingly, Utah leads the pack, but Texas and Alaska are right on their heels.) Select Alcohol consumption/Binge Drinkers and multiply that by the Firearm death rate per 100,000 and you have the Boozin' & Shootin' Index -- D.C. edges out Nevada and Alaska (Utah's way at the bottom for this one!)

You can get your results in a map or a table, and you can suggest additional data sets you think might be useful. 

Have some fun with the site, and think about how your own community indicators project might benefit from this kind of tool.

Hat tip: DataPoints blog via @Kidsdata

Read more ...

Int'l Society of Child Indicators Newsletter Released

The International Society of Child Indicators has released its Summer 2009 Newsletter. You'll want to take a look at the following:

• Their 2nd International Conference scheduled for November 3-5, 2009, at the University of Western Sydney, Australia;
• The collected papers from their first 2007 conference;
• A nice write-up of Measure DHS (Demographic and Health Surveys), a collection of free data from more than 200 surveys in 75 countries. "The strategic objective of MEASURE DHS is to improve and institutionalize the collection and use of data by host countries for program monitoring and evaluation and for policy development decisions."

You'll also be interested in this announcement:

Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago has published a report on “Improving Indicators of Child Well-Being.” The report makes a number of recommendations on new directions for child well-being indicators, including the areas of early childhood and young adult transitions. It also argues for additional indicators on childcare, poverty, and immigration. The report follows a symposium on child well-being indicators held in December 2008, attended by leading experts from universities, government agencies, and nonprofit organizations. It is available on the Chapin Hall website at http://www.chapinhall.org/research/report/improving-indicators-child-well-being.

Take a look at ISCI. Membership is available.

Read more ...

American Community Survey Data Release and Update

UPDATE - U.S. Census Bureau Release of 2008 ACS 1-Year Estimates

The Census Bureau has released social, demographic, housing, and some economic data from the 2008 ACS for areas with populations of 65,000 or more.

On September 29, 2009, the remaining 2008 ACS economic data will be released. The delayed release of these data is due to the discovery of a coding error that affected the estimates of poverty, family income, and food stamp receipt. The Census Bureau released all tables that weren't affected by the coding error. For a list of the impacted tables, please see the revised release schedule http://www.census.gov/acs/www/Products/2008/schedule.html.


Below is a sample of the topics included in the current release:

• Educational attainment
• Industry
• Occupation
• Class of worker
• Journey to work
• Employment status
• Work status
• Veteran status
• Housing
• Foreign born
• Migration

Information about the 2008 ACS data release can be found at: http://www.census.gov/acs/www/Products/index.html.

What's New and Notable

Economic Briefs - The Census Bureau is introducing a series of briefs spotlighting the economic characteristics of the nation, states, District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico using data from the 2008 ACS 1-year estimates.
You can access these briefs at
http://www.census.gov/acs/www/Products/2008/prodchanges.html#New.

Table Shells - New Table Shells are available at our 2008 Data Products Details page http://www.census.gov/acs/www/Products/users_guide/index.htm.

Comparison Guidance - New guidance is available for comparing 2008 ACS 1-year estimates with 2007 ACS 1-year estimates, as well as comparing 2008 ACS 1-year estimates with Census 2000 estimates. This guidance can be found at: http://www.census.gov/acs/www/UseData/compACS2008.htm.

Information on Data for New and Revised Content Beginning in January 2008, three new questions were added to the ACS and 12 questions were revised. In addition, the wording and format of the age, sex, race, Hispanic origin, relationship, and tenure questions were revised to be consistent with the 2010 Census. A summary document on the differences between the 2008 ACS and earlier years can be found at http://www.census.gov/acs/www/AdvMeth/content_test/summary_results.htm.

A Look Ahead

October 27, 2009 - Planned release of 2006-2008 ACS 3-Year estimates.

Fall, 2009 - The Census Bureau has revised the release dates for the 2008 ACS 1-year and 2006-2008 3-year PUMS. We expect to release the 2008 ACS 1-year PUMS by the end of October and release the 2006-2008 3-year PUMS by the end of November or in December. We will issue an ACS Alert when each of these files is ready for release.

Contact Us

If you have questions or comments about the American Community Survey, please call (800) 923-8282 or visit ask.census.gov.

Read more ...

Canada's Social Indicators Show Poverty Is Greatest Challenge

The Conference Board of Canada released their report card on social indicators for Canada, and addressing poverty remains the top concern.

The gives letter grades to Canada and 16 other "peer countries" for 17 indicators of Society, divided into three main categories: Self-Sufficiency, Equity, and Social Cohesion. The framework for understanding these indicators, as well as the indicators chosen, is interesting--take a look (click on the image to make it larger):

From their website:

Self-sufficiency is assessed by two indicators that measure the financial autonomy of individuals within the economy and society. For most people, employment participation is probably the most important means of achieving self-sufficiency. Canada’s relatively low unemployment rate implies that our economy is doing a good job at ensuring that people who want to work are able to do so. But the situations of two vulnerable sub-populations—youth and people with disabilities—are often masked by the overall numbers.

Equity has two broad dimensions: equality of outcome and equality of opportunity. Opinions on what is a “fair” or “just” distribution of resources vary widely, and it is difficult to obtain measurable and comparable information on equality of opportunity. One indicator can be seen as a measure of equality of opportunity—intergenerational income mobility. It assesses the likelihood that individuals can break out of the income class into which they are born. The remaining five equity indicators focus on equity of outcomes: elderly poverty, child poverty, working-age poverty, income inequality, and the gender income gap.

Social cohesion is assessed through indicators that:

• measure the extent to which people participate in their communities (voter turnout and social isolation)
• measure how they feel about their lives and communities (trust in parliament, life satisfaction, and acceptance of diversity)
• report on the breakdown of community life (homicides, burglaries, assaults, and suicides)

The Conference Board also releases a separate report card for Economy, Education and Skills, Innovation, Environment, and Health. The framework is interesting, and the indicators are a fascinating set.

When you look at the display layout, the combination of letter grades and colors make it easy to quickly see where the problems are. What's even more interesting is to use their radar chart to look at the indicators against peer averages.

Take a look and see if your country is included in the peer comparisons. When you click on the specific indicator (in the left-hand column), you get more charts, maps of the data, and quite a bit of contextual information and research (footnoted) about the indicator. This setup provides clean, clear messages to a target population -- which is different, perhaps, than some of the target populations served by community indicators projects. However, the report as structured looks very helpful in setting priorities for national policy.

There's a great deal to learn from this report, and I highly encourage you to take the time to prowl through the data and the reasons why these indicators were selected.

Read more ...

BEA Delays Release of Personal Income Data

The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) has issued the following announcement today:

State personal income statistics for the second quarter of 2009 and comprehensive revisions to those statistics for earlier periods that had been scheduled for release tomorrow, Friday, September 18, instead will be released on Friday, October 16.

BEA had accelerated the production of the revised state personal income statistics that are consistent with the recently-released comprehensive revision of the GDP statistics, with the aim of releasing those statistics more quickly than in previous comprehensive revisions. Due to discrepancies just discovered in the data, we are unable to meet the accelerated schedule. We apologize for the delay; but the statistics BEA produces must meet our standards for accuracy.

More information available at www.bea.gov.

Read more ...

Patchwork Nation

There's a fascinating new website from the Christian Science Monitor called Patchwork Nation. It uses a series of data points to show geographic clusters of people across the United States in 12 distinct categories.

What makes it even more interesting is its ability to display county-specific data on a series of indicators, and to overlay two indicators to see interactions.

From their description:

About the Patchwork Nation project

The United States is a vast, diverse place – more than 300 million people spread over 3.5 million square miles. Yet our understanding of its complexities is limited. We think of demographic slices or broad regions, or we fall back on the overused, oversimplified ideas of red and blue America.

Patchwork Nation, funded by the Knight Foundation, a nonprofit philanthropic organization based in Miami, is designed to help us get past those views and understand how different communities and cultures within the US experience different realities – and shape the whole.

As America enters a period of great uncertainty – with a new president, a stumbling economy, rising foreign financial powers, energy challenges, and an unstable world – it’s never been so important and so difficult to understand the United States. That’s what Patchwork Nation is about.

We’ve identified 12 types of places across the US, which are distinct voter communities. They are:

* Boom Towns - growing and diversifying
* Campus and Careers - young and collegiate
* Emptying Nests - having retirees and baby boomers
* Evangelical Epicenters - culturally conservative
* Immigration Nation - heavily Hispanic
* Industrial Metropolis - big-city
* Military Bastions - bordering or encompassing bases for the armed forces
* Minority Central - heavily African-American
* Monied 'Burbs - wealthy and educated
* Mormon Outposts - many LDS adherents
* Service Worker Centers - small-town
* Tractor Country - rural and agricultural

We’ve also pinpointed specific communities that represent each type of place. For example, Sioux Center, Iowa, typifies “Tractor Country.”


Special thanks to Edwin Quiambao of the Annie E. Casey Foundation for drawing it to my attention. He pointed out some of the indicators available at the county level:

-election information

-hardship index

-health uninsured

-density of doctors

-chrysler dealers/closures

-hospital beds

-foreclosure rate2009

-unemployment rate

-median household income

-war deaths per 100,000

-high school graduates

-college graduates

Take a look!

Read more ...

Data Update: Annie E. Casey Releases 2009 KIDS COUNT

The Annie E. Casey Foundation has just released the 2009 KIDS COUNT Data Book.

From their website:

Counting What Counts: Taking Results Seriously for Vulnerable Children and Families: The 20th annual KIDS COUNT Data Book profiles the well-being of America’s children on a state-by-state basis and ranks states on 10 key measures of child well-being. The Data Book essay calls for a “data revolution” that uses timely and reliable information to track the progress and improve the lives of vulnerable children.

Also go to their datacenter for another way to access the data.

Read more ...

Exploring Wolfram Alpha

Wolfram Alpha is a new search engine that's a little different, and (if it survives the Yahoo/Google/Bing fight) may be of surprising use to those of us who play with information for a living.

Google dominates the search engine market right now, and its public data tool is a welcome addition. Microsoft's attempt to get into the game with Bing may shake things up a bit. But Wolfram Alpha is an intriguing source -- it bills itself as a "computational knowledge engine" and aims "to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone."

From their website:

We aim to collect and curate all objective data; implement every known model, method, and algorithm; and make it possible to compute whatever can be computed about anything. Our goal is to build on the achievements of science and other systematizations of knowledge to provide a single source that can be relied on by everyone for definitive answers to factual queries.

Wolfram|Alpha aims to bring expert-level knowledge and capabilities to the broadest possible range of people—spanning all professions and education levels. Our goal is to accept completely free-form input, and to serve as a knowledge engine that generates powerful results and presents them with maximum clarity.

They continue:

As of now, Wolfram|Alpha contains 10+ trillion of pieces of data, 50,000+ types of algorithms and models, and linguistic capabilities for 1000+ domains. Built with Mathematica—which is itself the result of more than 20 years of development at Wolfram Research—Wolfram|Alpha's core code base now exceeds 5 million lines of symbolic Mathematica code. Running on supercomputer-class compute clusters, Wolfram|Alpha makes extensive use of the latest generation of web and parallel computing technologies, including webMathematica and gridMathematica.

What does this mean? I plugged in "unemployment rate Duval County Florida" into Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Wolfram Alpha. Here's what I got (top result only):

Yahoo: Duval County, Florida Zip Code, Radio Stations, Crime Rate, Weather ...
Duval County, Florida (FL) Zip Code, Radio Stations, Crime Rate, ... Unemployment rate in 2004: 5.2% Average household size: Duval County: 2.5 people. Florida: ...
www.usaelectionpolls.com/cities/Florida/Duval-County.html  - Cached

Bing: Unemployment Rate: Duval County, FL, Florida; Percent; NSA
The best economic data site with over 100,000 series. Users have the ability to make their own custom charts, XY plots, regressions, and get data in excel files, or in copy ...
www.economagic.com/em-cgi/data.exe/blsla/​laupa12060003 · cached page

(which turned out to be exactly the same as the top result in Google -- still looking for a reason to use Bing ...)

Google: Unemployment Rate: Duval County, FL, Florida; Percent; NSA
The best economic data site with over 100000 series. Users have the ability to make their own custom charts, XY plots, regressions, and get data in excel ...
www.economagic.com/em-cgi/data.exe/blsla/laupa12060003 - 30k -

(I forgot -- had to try a couple of times to get the formatting right for Google's public data site)  "unemployment rate duval" returned:

(some of the graph cut off when I grabbed the image -- that's my fault, not Google's.)

Wolfram Alpha, on the other hand, gave me this:

Then I got a little creative. I asked for "unemployment rate Duval County Florida/unemployment rate united states" and got this:



Now that's pretty cool. They'll grab data as data and do computations with it -- this is a real step forward to a semantic web.  So bookmark www.WolframAlpha.com and see what other goodies it has in store. This is really neat stuff.

(Hat tip: L. Gordon Corvitz)

Read more ...

Open Government Link List from GovLoop

Jeffry Levy shared this list of news and links for increased government transparency and data sharing on GovLoop:

U.S. Government YouTube hub: gives you quick access to all agency channels.

White House blog post re: Gov't 2.0: Bev Godwin highlights social media projects all across government. Features a video with White House New Media Director Macon Phillips giving a guided tour of many gov't 2.0 sites.

Data.gov: the new gov't-wide site designed to give you raw data to play with. Mashups, anyone?

Round 2 of the Open Gov't Initiative: the White House invites all Americans to suggest ideas on how to make the gov't more transparent, participatory, and collaborative. The site features an innovations gallery, showing the best of open gov't.

Those are all from the gov't itself. But also today, the Sunlight Foundation launched Apps for America 2, where people are invited to create good uses for gov't data they find on data.gov.

And here's my bold prediction: in a year, we'll look back on this stuff and laugh at how little we were doing back then.

Just thought you might want to know.

Read more ...

Surburban Sprawl and CO2 Emissions: Maps

The Housing + Transportation Affordability Index group at the Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT) have released a new map showing differences in greenhouse gas emissions for urban v. suburban households within metro regions.

They state:

At first glance, cities may appear to be a big source of the greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming. But new research by CNT, which compares greenhouse gas emissions of city and suburban households, yields some surprising results.

CNT looked at emissions of carbon dioxide, a key greenhouse gas, stemming from household vehicle travel in 55 metropolitan areas across the U.S. When measured on a per household basis, we found that the transportation-related emissions of people living in cities and compact neighborhoods can be nearly 70% less than those living in suburbs.

This is in addition to the maps they have on housing+transportation costs and gas cost impacts.

The presentation is interesting and might spark discussion about land-use patterns and the costs of sprawl in your community. I only wish they had more of the metro regions in the US covered.

(Hat tip: NNIP)

Read more ...

Data.Gov Launched

We told you last month that Data.gov was coming. Now the new site has launched.

From OMB Director Peter Orszag at the White House Briefing Room Blog:

Today, I'm pleased to announce that the Federal CIO Council is launching Data.gov. Created as part of the President's commitment to open government and democratizing information, Data.gov will open up the workings of government by making economic, healthcare, environmental, and other government information available on a single website, allowing the public to access raw data and transform it in innovative ways.

Such data are currently fragmented across multiple sites and formats—making them hard to use and even harder to access in the first place. Data.gov will change this, by creating a one-stop shop for free access to data generated across all federal agencies. The Data.gov catalog will allow the American people to find, use, and repackage data held and generated by the government, which we hope will result in citizen feedback and new ideas.

Data.gov will also help government agencies—so that taxpayer dollars get spent more wisely and efficiently. Through live data feeds, agencies will have the ability to easily access data both internally and externally from other agencies, which will allow them to maintain higher levels of performance. In the months and years ahead, our goal is to continuously improve and update Data.gov with a wide variety of available datasets and easy-to-use tools based on public feedback and as we modernize legacy systems over time.

Democratizing government data will help change how government operates—and give citizens the ability to participate in making government services more effective, accessible, and transparent.

You can also see a video demonstration of the site. I'm still playing around with it -- it seems to have a nicer interface than FedStats.gov, but the "tools" section really just links you to the agency website that has the data -- just like FedStats did (still does, actually).

The "raw data" search function is the most interesting, with data sets available in XML, CSV/Text, KML/KMZ, and ESRI formats -- that's really neat and should be fantastically useful.  "Should be," that is, because right now there's not a lot there.

If you listen to the effusive claims for the new site, pay attention to the key phrase: "is going to democratize data." Right now it's a limited set of data. I'm looking forward to what comes next.

Read more ...

Newly Released: 2007 National Survey of Children's Health

Here's an update I think you'll be excited about: The Child and Adolescent Health Measurement Initiative (CAHMI) is pleased to announce "point and click" online access to national- and state-level findings from the JUST RELEASED 2007 National Survey of Children's Health (NSCH).

Get and compare state-level data on over 100 child health indicators on topics such as obesity, insurance, medical home, mental health, risk for developmental delays, dental health and much more! View findings by many subgroups of children, such as by household income, race/ethnicity, insurance coverage and health status.

Begin your customized data search on the online Data Resource Center website at www.childhealthdata.org.

I don't know if you're familiar with the Data Resource Center website, but it's a nice resource from the folks at CAHMI (the Child and Adolescent Health Measurement Initiative) that we introduced to you some time back. I like the tools available, as context for the specific trends in our communities.

Take a look!

Read more ...

Unemployment and Job Loss Data

We now have a new source for trying to understand underemployment numbers. The standard unemployment data we use obscure a significant number of workers and don't tell a complete story. Our friends at the Community Action Network (CAN) in Austin, Texas describe the issue this way:

The official unemployment rate includes people without a job who are available to work and who have actually sought work in the past four weeks. Discouraged workers and under-employed part-time workers who want full employment are not included in this rate. For the first time, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is releasing "labor underutilization rates" by state that do include these populations.

So what does that mean for your state? In Florida, while the official 2008 unemployment rate was 6.1 percent, by using a broader definition that includes discouraged workers and the underemployed we get a much higher percentage, nearly double, at 11.9 percent. Check out the BLS data sets for yourself. The other thing that would make this more useful for community planning is if they had the data available at the community level. But this is a good start.

CAN also wanted to make sure we knew about another resource. I looked at this last month, couldn't get it to work for me, and gave up -- but maybe this will work for you. At Slate magazine they have a map for you to play with to see county-by-county job losses. They describe the map this way:

Using the Labor Department's local area unemployment statistics, Slate presents the recession as told by unemployment numbers for each county in America. Because the data are not seasonally adjusted for natural employment cycles throughout the year, the numbers you see show the change in the number of people employed compared with the same month in the previous year. Blue dots represent a net increase in jobs, while red dots indicate a decrease. The larger the dot, the greater the number of jobs gained or lost. Click the arrows or calendar at the bottom to see each month of data. Click the green play button to see an animation of the data.

Now, if I wasn't having problems with my flash player every time I went to this site, I'm sure that's exactly what I'd see. This gives us more localized information, so this may be a useful resource for your community.

And thanks for the updates! Keep sharing this kind of information!

Read more ...

Community Indicators: Citizen Scientists

I like the trend highlighted in this report from CNN's SciTech blog -- everyday people contributing to data collection. John Sutter calls it the "democratization of science" -- people capturing photos of wildlife, entering GPS locations of animals found, recording bird migrations -- all adding to a much broader scientific picture. It's the same message we've been trumpeting about data openness -- except it's headed the other way, with ordinary citizens providing information that scales upward.

This brings data sharing full circle, and I like it. See how you can be involved with this list of citizen scientist opportunities. I think we as community indicators practitioners ought to be paying attention to this trend, and with the right kind of framework/schema, we can be haviing more and more citizen-generated data aggregating upward to tell us much more about our communities, states, and the country we live in.

If you have experience in citizen-created data collection, please share!

Read more ...

Google Public Data New Tool Released

The Official Google Blog reports that they've released a new search tool -- one that accesses public information and builds on their acquisition of Trendalyzer.

Here's how it works:

1. Go to Google.com.
   
2. Type in [unemployment rate] or [population], followed by a U.S. state or county. (Just type in the county name -- "unemployment rate duval" worked for me, while "unemployment rate duval county florida" gave me other links but not the publicdata information.)
   
3. The most recent estimates will appear. Click on the publicdata link, and you'll get an interactive table.

The table gave me monthly unemployment rates from 1990 to March 2009 for Duval County, Florida. It then had a list of states and counties and I could click on any one of them and get instant comparative data charted alongside my original county on the graph. Very cool.

Google says,

"The data we're including in this first launch represents just a small fraction of all the interesting public data available on the web. There are statistics for prices of cookies, CO2 emissions, asthma frequency, high school graduation rates, bakers' salaries, number of wildfires, and the list goes on. Reliable information about these kinds of things exists thanks to the hard work of data collectors gathering countless survey forms, and of careful statisticians estimating meaningful indicators that make hidden patterns of the world visible to the eye. All the data we've used in this first launch are produced and published by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the U.S. Census Bureau's Population Division. They did the hard work! We just made the data a bit easier to find and use.

Since Google's acquisition of Trendalyzer two years ago, we have been working on creating a new service that make lots of data instantly available for intuitive, visual exploration. Today's launch is a first step in that direction. We hope people will find this search feature helpful, whether it's used in the classroom, the boardroom or around the kitchen table. We also hope that this will pave the way for public data to take a more central role in informed public conversations.

This is just the beginning. Stay tuned for more."

You can read more about the new tool in this Washington Post article. I'm pretty excited about the possibilities.

Read more ...

New KIDS COUNT Data Center Available

The KIDS COUNT Data Center has been redesigned and is now available for use. This replaces the former CLIKS database, and has been in the works for a little while -- we told you earlier this was coming (and had a sneak peek at the NAPC Conference in March), and now it's here!

From the site:

• The Data Center now has county-level data 4/17/2009

  Welcome to the NEW KIDS COUNT Data Center, the place to get all the information you are looking for about the kids and families living in your community. Now including the information formerly in the Community-Level Information on Kids (CLIKS) site, the KIDS COUNT Data Center has data for states, cities, counties, and school districts.

• New Education and Demographic Data Available 4/17/2009

  The education and demographic sections in Data Across States have been updated to include the 2007 American Community Survey data. Updated data for states and large cities include:
  • Children in households where the household head is a high school dropout
  • Young adults enrolled in or completed college
  • Grandchildren in the care of grandparents

Go check it out!

Read more ...

Transparency and Open Government Newsletter

This has been tweeted and retweeted a number of times in the past hour, and just in case you missed it, I thought I'd pass it on. The CitizenServices.Gov site (which you may know as USASerivces.Gov, the Citizen Services Network E-Government initiative led by the General Services Administration’s Office of Citizen Services) has launched its new newsletter -- and it's a must-read for community indicators practitioners.

The Transparency and Open Government Newsletter (PDF) includes a number of items of interest in its 40 pages:

President Obama's Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies

A section on Democratization of Data including articles such as:

• Unfettered Access to Data Can Transform Government?
• Technology as a Game-Changer
• Information as a Public Good
• Citizen Views On Transparency

Another section on Practices at Work in Government, including:

• Texas Websites Improve Accountability
• Georgia’s Commitment to Customer Service and Good Government
• Transparency 2.0
• Measuring E-Government 2.0
• E-discovery, Transparency and Culture Change
• AGA Opens the Doors of Government to the Citizens

And much more, including:

• Through a Glass, Darkly. What do we mean by transparency in government?
• Transparency in Government Begins Outside
• The Collaborative Government: Beyond Transparency in Government
• Get Ready for Wiki-Government
• Building the Digital Public Square
• Open Government Serves Citizens

Whether you use government data in a government performance benchmarking report, community indicators system, or some of both, you need to be paying attention to how the rules are changing in how data flow from the government to you. The same models for data distribution at the federal level, including the assumption that the information is public unless otherwise restricted (instead of the assumption that information is restricted unless pronounced available), can be encouraged at the state and local levels.

Read the newsletter and let me know what you think.

Read more ...

Data.gov Coming!

From Slashdot yesterday:

"In late May, Data.gov will launch, in what US CIO Vivek Kundra calls an attempt to ensure that all government data 'that is not restricted for national security reasons can be made public' through data feeds. This appears to be a tremendous expansion on (and an official form of) third-party products like the Sunlight Labs API. Of course, it is still a far cry from 'open sourcing' the actual decision-making processes of government. Wired has launched a wiki for calling attention to datasets that should be shared as part of the Data.gov plan, and an article on O'Reilly discusses the importance of making this information easily accessible."

You can follow the discussion here. This looks really interesting.

Read more ...

PolicyMap Student Update

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Jeff Rechler

215-564-3200 x118

jrechler@gobraithwaite.com

PolicyMap Launches Affordable E-Resource for Students

Online Mapping Tool Lets University Students Utilize

Professional-Grade Data at an Accessible Student Rate

(Philadelphia) February 11, 2009 – TRF’s PolicyMap.com today announced that it is opening up its vast wealth of online market and demographic data to university students at a deeply discounted rate. Students now have easy, affordable access to the same professional-grade data utilized by thousands of policymakers and professionals across the nation. The electronic resource is intended to aid scholarly research and support class discussions through the application of credible data that was previously scattered across the web or unavailable for students.

University students can utilize TRF’s PolicyMap.com for quick access to more than 4,000 data indicators related to demographics, real estate markets, education, employment, money and income, crime, energy, and public investments. These indicators are aggregated from a variety of sources including U.S. Census, Claritas, FBI, IRS, the Postal Service, and the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act.

“Students can now support their coursework not just through data, but with compelling visual maps, charts, tables, and reports,” said Maggie McCullough, Director of TRF’s PolicyMap.com. “The full range of data and GIS functionality on TRF’s PolicyMap.com is available to students at just $35 per semester, a fraction of the cost to standard subscribers. “ For details, students and professors who wish to subscribe can visit http://blog.policymap.com or call 1-866-923-MAPS.

More than 150,000 users have accessed TRF’s PolicyMap.com since its launch in 2008. To date, its varied subscribers include the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Philadelphia Federal Reserve, state agencies including the New Jersey Housing Mortgage Finance Agency, private entities like Comcast, as well as nonprofit community organizations nationwide.

About PolicyMap

PolicyMap is an online mapping tool that makes it quick and easy to gather and analyze geocentric information. PolicyMap is a service of The Reinvestment Fund (TRF), a not-for-profit leader in the financing of neighborhood revitalization. TRF developed PolicyMap to empower decision makers with better access to credible market and demographic data. To utilize PolicyMap, visit www.policymap.com. To learn more about TRF, visit www.trfund.com.

Read more ...