Local, state, and national governments all over the world have begun to participate in a movement known as Open Data. The idea behind Open Data is to let citizens, non-profits, and corporations have access to the public information collected or maintained by government.

The MyStops iPhone ties in to local transit data.

The MyStops iPhone ties in to local transit data.

The number of governments worldwide with Open Data initiatives keeps on growing. Canadian cities with open data catalogues now include Edmonton, Mississauga, Nanaimo, Ottawa, Toronto, and Vancouver. The U.S. cities of Boston, San Francisco, Seattle, and New York City also have data libraries, as do the governments of California, DC, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, North Dakota, and Utah. The U.S. Federal Government also has a national initiative known as DATA.gov. Other national govenments and intergovermental organizations participating in the movement include Australia, Estonia, New Zealand, Norway, UK, and the World Bank.

So what is the motivation for governments to begin to putting time and resources in to this movement? Here’s what the City of Edmonton had to say on their website:

“By freely sharing its data in accessible formats – while respecting privacy and security concerns – Edmonton is joining many government agencies in increasing the engagement of citizens, community organizations and private businesses for creative community problem solving and the development of innovative service delivery ideas, applications and solutions.”

The idea is that by openly sharing information a government can empower its citizens and industries to build new tools, resources, and analysis on top of that data. Would you like a service that e-mails you the night before your home’s garbage pickup date as a reminder? Your city might not have the time or resources to build such a service themselves but by providing the raw information online perhaps somebody else could build such a tool. In fact, two local developers in Vancouver did just that using their city’s open data library.

clear-air-status

Clean Air Status utilizing a data.gov feed

Similar mashups of government data with 3rd party tools are being developed all over the world. Most cities with Open Data initiatives have organized competitions (or encouraged them) for people to develop innovative applications that interact with their data libraries. Many large corporations are also making use of municipal data; public transit information for over 450 cities world wide can now be utilized when route planning inside Google Maps.

In a future post we’ll be discussing some interesting potential we see for utilizing open data within the real estate industry.

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