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The MTA is iterating

By Nicholas Bergson-Shilcock | Published: January 15, 2010
When you think of iterative development, you’re unlikely to also think “government agency.” You’re even less likely to think “MTA.” But that might not be the case in the future, as today the MTA showed a strong sign that the situation is changing: They listened to feedback and responded. Quickly. In my post yesterday, I identified several Read more...
Also posted in data, mta, nyc, open data | 6 Comments

Wanted: Volunteer Web Developer for NYC Parks Project

By Philip Ashlock | Published: December 28, 2009
The Open Planning Project is partnering with the PenTales Storytelling Projects to develop an interactive web app for the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. The application will serve as an interactive platform for New Yorkers of all ages to share and collaborate on stories they have produced through hand-writing, digital-writing, photography, moving Read more...
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Help open the Big Apple

By Philip Ashlock | Published: August 26, 2009
Delicious data inside. Photo by Anabadili via Flickr. The effort to open municipal data is an initiative with momentum. Inspired in part by the transparency mandate on the federal level that gave us the first ever White House CIO and data.gov, cities across the country are opening up. One city in particular set the scene Read more...
Also posted in open government | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Senatepedia: By Joe Citizen, for Joe Citizen

By Vanessa Hamer | Published: June 9, 2009
My first session was facilitated by Karen Adams, who works in Senate Tech Services. Karen came with a kernel of an idea for a 'NY Senatepedia wiki'...a place where people could explain Senate jargon, document the histories of different legal actions, and connect items with related information. A Senatepedia has a ton of merit. It would facilitate peer-to-peer learning between private citizens. It would put in plain view the machinery of Read more...
Also posted in Activity Feeds, Launch, games, government, open government | Leave a comment

Does usefully open data have to mean XML?

By ian bicking | Published: May 29, 2009
I’ve been having some discussions with people at the Chicago Open Government group, talking about data openness. One common complaint all around is about data exported as PDFs. The particular topic we were discussing was TIFs. TIFs (Tax Increment Financing) are something a city can use to try to improve a neighborhood, Read more...
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MTA NYCT Bus in GTFS

By novalis | Published: May 22, 2009
Here at TOPP I’ve been working on ways to better present and manipulate New York City bus scheduling data. Google Transit has the MTA’s bus timing data so that they can do trip planning. But the MTA for some reason won’t let them release it. I filed a FOIL request with the MTA for Read more...
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