Portland

The push for open data from government has been gaining momentum over the last few years. This has taken concrete shape in the form of data being released in more usable formats, including websites that are especially designed to release general data and educational data at the federal level. Some local governments are following suit.

As more datasets become accessible - and this includes comparable datasets released over multiple years - we're interested in helping these datasets bridge the chasm between data and information. It's one thing to be able to map crime incidents in a specific area between two dates. It's another thing to be able to look at some performance indicators of schools within these same areas. It's still another to be able to look at a low performing school and high performing school, and compare student to teacher ratios, the percentage of students eligible for free and reduced lunch, the number of crime reports in the neighborhood, the median income, the number of liquor licenses, and the percentage of owners to renters. By leveraging open datasets, we will enable more precise questions about how people learn, and the factors that affect learning.

In the upcoming days, weeks, and months, we will begin to document and release the beginnings of a toolkit designed to simplify building and maintaining web sites that use and display open data as it relates to education and learning. Drupal already has much of the functionality in place to support using open data, and the Drupal community can play a leading role in pushing the use of open data.

Our initial three targets include:

• Datasets: we will identify existing datasets, and document any needed steps required to prepare them for more widespread use.
• Map tiles: much of this data can be represented geographically, at the country level, the state level, or the local level. We will identify existing map data that can be used when developing location-based visualizations, and document the process of creating new map tiles. Any new map tiles we create will be released out under a Creative Commons license.
• Search and Visualization techniques: As we develop tools to import and manipulate datasets, we will need to search and filter this information, and make it comprehensible. This will likely result in new code that integrates various pre-existing open source visualization tools with the Views module. Any new code we develop will be released back onto Drupal.org

We hope that the process of looking at information related to learning will help people more effectively discover, understand, and explain the connections between student learning, school performance, the role of the teacher, and the relationship between all of these factors and the socioeconomic milieu in which they occur.

We also want more people to get involved. Toward that end, we have created a working group to discuss strategies and approaches for using open data - if you want to get started working in the space, join the group. Many hands make light work, and much of this work requires research and familiarity with how educational data is structured, as opposed to any hardcore coding or site building expertise.

Within the next few days, I'll have another post out that defines what we see as a starting point for the toolkit, and identify some of the tools that already exist that move us toward that point.

Earlier this fall, Mayor Sam Adams and the City of Portland made some strides toward more open data and transparency in government. One step in this direction is the site at http://publicalerts.org

I found the site via Justin Houk; shortly thereafter, Mayor Adams asked for any suggestions. At first glance, the site looks incredibly useful, and I'm glad to see the city moving in this direction. Here are some ideas that could be implemented on the platform.

Suggestions

• Each alert should be its own entity, with a unique linkable url.
• Alerts should be exposed via RSS feeds, and these feeds should be categorized by type of advisory, and zipcode (where it's relevant)
• Events that can be mapped should contain geodata -- I'm specifically thinking about alerts and advisories about power outages, road construction, accidents, or other events that can tied to a specific place.
• Alerts should be browsable by date.
• Individual alerts could be pushed to Twitter (or any other external microblogging platform) with a standard format: [type of alert]: [headline]: [link]. Using this format, a traffic advisory would look like: Traffic alert: Construction on I5 SB starting Dec 12, 8:00 PM : http://some.url

Most of this data is already being published, but it is not being generated in a format that contains this additional metadata. For example, see the Trimet Alert page. The type of structured data I describe would be very easily achieved using a variety of freely available open source tools, such as Drupal. Unfortunately, it appears that the city of Portland's web presence runs (at least partially) on a Cold Fusion based monstrosity (look for the tell-tale .cfm at the end of some urls. The stench of a Cold Fusion-based site is unmistakeable; it reeks of decaying technology ;) ).

But using the formats I describe above, you could create a searchable map of construction data and see what roads are under construction during specific times of day. Or, you could take a look at Trimet bus routes in NE Portland and see if there were any service interruptions before your trip. The city of Portland is already putting the time into creating this data, but changing the format in which they published it would make it more reusable, and, ultimately, more useful to more people.