California Building Open Data Portal for Green Government

"California’s growing collection of open data websites has another addition: a portal focused on all things about green government. A beta of the GreenGov open data portal was launched ahead of the Innovation Code-a-Thon this weekend on Oct. 24-25. The $25,000 contest at the Ziggurat building in West Sacramento is sponsored by the Department of General Services, GovOps and several other departments and companies. A prize pool of $25,000 is up for grabs, funded through 2014 legislation from Assemblymember Mike Gatto, D-Glendale, creating a total of three innovation contests. This weekend’s hackathon will challenge participants to develop apps and tools that improve government sustainability, via the 'Green Gov Challenge.' So far, the GreenGov transparency portal offers data sets on topics such as the location of alternative fuel stations, source-level greenhouse gas emissions, state building sustainability metrics, California water district and special district boundaries, purchase order extract data, and more. The California Department of Technology said it provided project management, infrastructure and geospatial services on development of the GreenGov portal. The California Health and Human Services Agency, Board of Equalization and Franchise Tax Board are among the state entities now offering data their own open websites. The Center for Digital Government, operated by TechWire's parent company e.Republic, is one of the sponsors for this weekend's code-a-thon contest."