Congress Approves Act that Opens US Government Data To the Public; Requires Federal Agencies To Publish 'Non-Sensitive' Info in 'Machine-Readable' Format (engadget.com) 89
An anonymous reader shares a report: Congress has passed a bill that could make it easier for you to access public data released by the government. The House approved the OPEN Government Data Act on Saturday, while all eyes were on the shutdown, as part of a larger bill to support evidence-based policymaking. It requires that federal agencies must publish any "non-sensitive" info in a "machine-readable" format (essentially in a way that's legible on your smartphone or laptop). The act also insists that agencies appoint a chief data officer to oversee all open data efforts. Having passed the Senate last Wednesday, the bill is next headed to the President's desk.
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Good point. Can you look it over and get back to us?
https://www.congress.gov/bill/... [congress.gov]
I see it was near unanimous, very bi-partisan (Score:2)
I note it was approved almost unanimously.
(Un?)intended Consequences (Score:3)
Nothing like a show of across-the-aisle holiday unity on a straightforward public interest bill right? And we've got a whole bunch of non-traditional new congressfolk incoming, maybe not as loyal to the existing power structures, and looking like they intend to try to shake things up.
If I'm being cynical, the biggest poison pill that springs to mind, without even looking at the bill, is the straightforward (un?)intended consequences when this bill hits bureaucratic inertia.
It seems to me like a great way t
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Yellow People
Chop sticks and tiny dicks
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You'll never see his tax returns because you would see that a) he did nothing illegal, and b) it would point out all the loop holes in the tax code to make everything he did legal that congress refuses to patch because they use them too.
The biggest problem with useful idiots such as yourself is to think "your guy" is in any way better than "the other guy".
Firstly, I don't have a 'my guy' I'm a very fair minded person in that I despise all politicians equally regardless of where on the left-right scale they are. I only make a handful of exceptions for a few left and right who proved themselves to be relatively un-scumbaggy (as politicians go). Secondly, the tax loopholes are thoroughly documented and well known to most of the public, that is one of the major reasons that congress' approval rating stands at ~20%. Thirdly, if you think that your biblically prop
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There is nothing illegal about doing legitimate business with Russia or any other country as long as you do not violate any government imposed sanctions. Until Trump was elected he was a private US citizen and under no obligation to only participate in politically correct business ventures. His campaign was also free to communicate with any Russian or other foreign national. The whole "collusion" accusations have no legal foundation because because the government investigators have manipulated the term to turn innocuous communications into some kind of crime. And the collusion investigation has not charged anyone with any crime between the Trump campaign and Russia. And other than Trump being an idiot Russia has not gained one concession from the US. On the contrary Trump has ramped up the economic sanctions, seized Russian real estate across the US, and expelled over a hundred diplomatic staff members from the country. The US has not cooperated with Russia in any of the many international on-going conflicts. On the contrary the US has brushed aside Russia's concerns with ease. The US fired cruise missiles that flew directly over the Russian ships parked beside Syria. When Russia decided to use their state sponsored mercenary group combined with a few natives to launch an offensive towards the US forces in Syria the US killed over 300 of the attackers with air and ground based artillery assets. If Russia wanted Trump to win the election they royally fucked up. Russia is a bit player on the world stage who operate on past glories and skillful propaganda. They have nuclear weapons which cannot be used without destroying themselves. Their conventional forces are a mere shadow of what they were during the Cold War. They also lack the most important tool needed for spreading their influence on the global stage which is money. The state of California has a higher GDP than Russia. Compared to the US and China Russia is a 3rd world country run the Russian oligarchs who operate like the mafia.
You can do legitimate business in Russia? ... without paying off the Government/Mafia? ... I hear the two are pretty much the same these days.
Yours, mine, and his are private (Score:2)
By law tax returns are confidential - yours, mine, and his.
Many politicians voluntary choose to release some tax returns many don't. (Similar to how some politicians have a brain, many don't.)
I agree we can anticipate the house will subpoena them and the OOPS illegally leak them.
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Tax returns can be interesting. Just reading about Santa's, seems the CRA (Canada Revenue Agency) considers some of it unusual such as getting paid in cookies and carrots. He also claims the Northern Residents Deduction. Good news is that he's put all the email and phone scammers on the naughty list.
https://www.ctvnews.ca/politic... [ctvnews.ca]
'Machine-Readable' Format (Score:2)
I have to wonder if it will also be 'search-able'
I'd start with space aliens. (because too many results returned on just aliens.)
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That's odd, it only turns up pics of the President's hair.
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The full computing power of the US government.
EPA Climate Data (Score:5, Interesting)
When the Republicans took office, one of the first things the thugs did was remove all of the EPA's climate data from the internet. The EPA had massive volumes of data accessible to anyone, and Republican thugs removed it all. Immediately.
Does this new law require them to put it all back?
Re:EPA Climate Data (Score:4, Insightful)
When the Republicans took office, one of the first things the thugs did was remove all of the EPA's climate data from the internet. The EPA had massive volumes of data accessible to anyone, and Republican thugs removed it all. Immediately.
Does this new law require them to put it all back?
That data is probably too sensitive.
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And yet, Republicans are getting this passed. Now, if Trump doesn't sign it, then you'll have a gripe.
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Anyone who thinks a wall solves any real problem is a moron. Not only would it take like 10 years to build, who the fuck knows how much it would ACTUALLY cost... the initial 5 BILLION DOLLARS doesn't do shit, it just breaks ground...
Only a retard would support the wall if they can't afford to patrol it. Go figure, we have a huge retard in office, he's literally shut down all government functions and cost taxpayers MORE MONEY as the stock market plunges. Morons.
You will break first, Mueller is kneecapping
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Anyone who thinks a wall solves any real problem is a moron. Not only would it take like 10 years to build, who the fuck knows how much it would ACTUALLY cost...
If they can't show on paper using realistic estimates based on the best available information that the wall is worth it, then I'd ditch it.
When comparing if something is worth it, you have to 1) Justify the deficit spending. 2) Prove that it is a better way to spend money than other possible alternatives. Basically figure out how to give all the possible ways to spend money a return on investment score over time. (It's okay for a government to play 50 years out.)
As near as I can tell the wall thing is mo
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And yet, Republicans are getting this passed. Now, if Trump doesn't sign it, then you'll have a gripe.
I think you only read the first 5 words of the GP's post and then immediately went on a completely unrelated and irrelevant defensive.
Try and read the post in its entirety, the post was well structured so as to make the post obvious by standing on its own in a separate sentence.
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...one of the first things the thugs did was remove all of the EPA's climate data from the internet.
The ultimate in thuggish violence! The bits were manhandled by ruffians!!!!!
Did you ever stop to think that this is the kind of false dramatic exaggeration that leads people to question anything related to "climate"? If you're pretending that moving data around is thuggery, then maybe everything you guys say about climate is the same sort of hate-driven hysteria. Maybe only part of it is, but then which part?
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I did stop to thing about that. But then I remembered that honesty and integrity is not something they value anyway. They only value their own authority.
So I figured, whatever. It's not like the facts have been hard to come by. Republicans are going to believe whatever they want anyway.
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I did stop to thing about that. But then I remembered that honesty and integrity is not something they value anyway.
Nor do you, apparently. Too bad for anyone who wants honesty or integrity. Too bad for anyone who wants to have a genuine conversation or anyone who wants to live in peace, without haters threatening them over made up or exaggerated nonsense.
I don't think you'll be able to hate your way to a healthy climate. Exaggerations and lies don't seem to be effective in dealing with climate issues either.
If you actually have an objective other than spreading hatred, you're not achieving it.
Machine readable is not enough (Score:1)
Documents should be required to be created in open formats such as Open Document Format, instead of closed formats like the disgusting closed Microsoft XML (.xlsx, etc)
Conspiracy Fodder (Score:2)
Internal stuff that will make no clear sense without context will be re-construed by trolls, and all heck can brake loose. Workers will be afraid to put anything into concrete form for fear of something being publically spun for trollism or politics. They'll feel pressured to either do everything by voice, or type things very carefully. Either way, it will slow things down, making gov't even MORE inefficient.
There's the old adage about the law making process being like sausage: it's best you don't see it be
Need analytic tools to make sense of the data (Score:4, Interesting)
I am building an analytic tool that makes it really easy to create relational tables from CSV or Json files and do all kinds of analytics using it. See a quick 4 minute demo video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] to see a few things we can do with that Chicago data. It is just as easy to do similar things against any data you can download. In this instance, trying to load the 6.5 million row table into Excel is not very practical.
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A lot of government sites currently publish data that can be easily downloaded, but the average user has trouble making sense of it. ...
I am building an analytic tool that makes it really easy to create relational tables from CSV or Json files and do all kinds of analytics using it. ... In this instance, trying to load the 6.5 million row table into Excel is not very practical.
You're contradicting yourself if I take you literally, and considering your project I think I should.
You state your goal is to create relational tables for data analysis/analytics. Taking data in the form of CSV to load into a *database tables* with relations is pretty normal, I do it all the time as do a lot of others. Then you complain about not being able to load a huge amount of data from a CSV file into Excel. How in the heck do you have relational tables in Excel?
If you plan to do analysis with l
More sensitive information (Score:2)
It's going to be amazing how much data is going to be classified as sensitive.
Visicalc format (Score:3)
Massachusetts tried this (Score:1)
Take a good look at how "Open Office XML" got created to duck the Massachusetts legislative mandate to have an actual standard for government electronic documents, and got turned into the biggest standards fraud of this century. The name was selected to confuse people who were consering OpenOffice and its OpenDocument format, It was well analyzed at the time on www.groklaw.net as an abuse of the standards committees and process, and it remains one of the most inconsistent and uneven standards on the planet.
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I'm with you, anon.
For anyone who understands what happened here, it's obvious that this whole Microsoft MOOXML fiasco is one of the most devious, venal frauds ever perpetrated by Microsoft - and that's saying a lot.
As long as the company continues with its proprietary MOOXML format and doesn't drop it for ODF, it's a complete lie for anyone to pretend that, "Microsoft has changed."
No. They haven't.
"machine-readable" (Score:1)
"machine-readable" format (essentially in a way that's legible on your smartphone or laptop)
That isn't what "machine-readable" means.
Financing? Otherwise, it might be an empty order. (Score:2)
A problem government agencies have had with making data available is the IT cost of distributing it. For the longest time the Patent Office has made patents a pain-in-the-ass to download not because the patents are not public documents, but because they could not handle the demand. So they told the public to go buy them from private companies if they wanted good service.
If that problem has just been passed on to the entire Federal Government, it is an ineffective command.
Data may become sensitive in aggregate (Score:1)
IMHO it's rather easy to consider some datum non-sensitive that turns out to be sensitive when viewed as part of a group. Certain large web-based service providers make a fortune out of data mining, and once someone spot connections between "non-sensitive" data and some humongous database of definitely-sensitive data, all bets are off.
In NC, Voter files are available... (Score:2)
only in EBCDIC format in many counties. That is still machine readable. for an IBM mainframe.
Does that include anyone's tax returns? (Score:2)