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.”
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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