October 6th, 2009
NYC expands Gov 2.0 with Big Apps
New York City is rolling out developer access to 170 data sets supplied from more than 30 city agencies, as part of its NYC Big Apps initiative, the latest big news is the rollicking Gov 2.0 space, Jenna Wortham blogs for the New York Times. The city’s site explains:
The City of New York is improving the way it provides information and transparency to citizens. But delivering great information requires great tools. The NYC BigApps Competition will reward the developers of the most useful, inventive, appealing, effective, and commercially viable applications for delivering information from the City of New York’s NYC.gov Data Mine to interested users.
The Times quotes Kristy Sundjaja, vice president of media, green, and emerging technology at the New York City Economic Development Corporation, which is co-sponsoring the competition:
Crowdsourcing is a very hot topic in the Gov 2.0 space right now. What’s distinct in New York is the amount of data we’re releasing and that we already have a very impressive developer community here. In terms of scale and magnitude, this is one of the largest competitions that any city has put together.
Transparency of municipal data was pioneered in Washington, D.C., by Vivek Kundra, now, of course, the federal CIO. Kundra has pushed aggressively for opening up federal data as well, primarily through the data.gov site.
