Here’s a video about the DataPortability.org working group, explaining some of the benefits of open data standards as applied to social networking and personal information.
DataPortability - Connect, Control, Share, Remix from Smashcut Media on Vimeo.

For far too long, getting access to important documents has meant having a very expensive subscription to an exclusive service.  This has held true across disciplines, including politics, law, and academia.  The Internet is starting to change this, lowering the cost of storing and transferring information to nearly nothing.  With the help of pioneers like […]

This blog has had a bunch of hits today from people searching for a google map of superdelegates.  I just noticed a CNN piece on a google map layer of superdelegate information, and had to find it for myself.  As far as I can tell, they’re referencing this post, which explains the creation of the […]

Reuters introduced a new entity extraction tool called Calais, which, through an API or web-based submission form, takes text and recognizes entities, outputting an RDF file of recognized entities, complete with URIs.  I wonder if entity extraction will become like spellchecking, widely available and free.  I also wonder if tools that use semantic structured data […]

As the research of the Harvard Transparency Policy Project has made abundantly clear, applying the principles of openness and transparency to complex systems demands a careful approach to epistemic nuances; questions like what should be knowable to whom need to be answered before disclosure requirements are implemented, and need to be built into a disclosure […]

Via the Free Government Information blog, Searcher Magazine’s current issue has a great basic tutorial on how to engage with congressional level politics online. Laura Gordon-Murnane leads a tour through sites filling different civic roles in a congressional level election, including voter […]

I’m wondering to what degree federal government entities have formally committed to using open standards. The closest I can find is language from the OMB Circular A-130, which, as far as I can see, doesn’t explicitly mention proprietary vs open standards.
There are several passages, however, which could be taken to add up to as […]

Via TechCrunch, I just found a web-based pdf viewer that allows for up to 100mb uploads (500 pages), is free, permits embedding, and has a slick interface. Cool!
Here’s s-pub 102-20 again, perhaps in a more legible form.

if you click on “open publication” you’ll get a new page with the document in it, with the […]

I just came across a memo from the House Inspector General to the Clerk of the House in 2001 (link). It reviews whether the Clerk has sufficiently implemented the requirements of the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995, which the Clerk’s office had, for the most part.
The report provides a convenient description of some of […]

Congressman Mike Honda (D, CA-15) is one of this project’s heroes in the House. In fact, I can’t recall any other congressman picking out a recommendation of the Open House Project and saying publicly that it’s a good idea, and referencing this project. In November, he took real action to further transparency in Congress by […]