Philadelphia shows brotherly love to open data with new executive order

“As TechnicallyPhilly reported this morning, the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania has joined the ranks of municipalities putting more public data onto the Internet. “Transparency is a cornerstone of good governance, and it is vital for the City to be open and available to our citizens,” said Mayor Michael Nutter in a statement posted to the city of Philadelphia’s Facebook page. “Philadelphia was recently named at the seventh most social media savvy city in the nation. The Open Data policy furthers many of the policies and initiatives already put in place by the City.” “The Open Data Policy puts in place the necessary framework, structure and governance that will increase collaboration among City departments and bring citizens closer to their government,” said Chief Innovation Officer Adel Ebeid... As NBC Philadelphia reported, the executive order also establishes an internal social media policy for Philadelphia municipal government. The city now has 90 days to select or hire a chief data officer (a position that Logan Clier called for all cities to establish on the Code for America blog earlier today) and 120 days to establish a ‘data governance advisory’ board, both of which will be in entrusted with established standards and means of publishing open data, along with periodically evaluating the releases to date... There’s much to like in this executive order, for open data advocates, but one phrase in particular jumps out: ‘Each City department and agency shall develop a schedule for making information available to the public and updating it on a regular basis.’ This could go a long way to addressing key concern that has been extant in other cities and states, where data sets go online but are not subsequently updated. The good news on that count is that Philadelphia has a partner in Technically Philly, which has been an active participant in driving this change: ‘The Executive Order had been long rumored and follows the more than year-long growth of a public-private coalition pushing for a clearer strategy on using data to make government more transparent and efficient...’ As with every open data effort, the devil will be in the details. Or, to put it another way, the devil will be in the datasets, including the quality and relevance of what’s posted. That said, it’s impossible to see today’s action as anything other than a watershed for the city... I can’t help but hope that everyone in the City of Brotherly Love collaborates in making the most of the opportunity that now lies before Philadelphia to apply data for the public good. Go make stuff that matters.” [Use the link above to access the full text of the Executive Order.]