Starting next week, the APDU Weekly Update will be a benefit of APDU membership. We hope you’ve enjoyed this weekly publication and encourage you to join APDU as a member to continue receiving the update, as well as other benefits and services, including our webinars and network of public data professionals. You can learn more about APDU membership on our website.
APDU Webinar
American Community Survey: What Stakeholders Really Think and How We Can Improve
How is the American Community Survey engaging stakeholders, and what improvements are in the works as a result of feedback? Senior staff from the U.S. Census Bureau will describe current discussions with key stakeholders, including Congress, along with plans to improve public messaging about the nation’s largest household survey.
Presenters: Tim Olson, Respondent Advocate, U.S. Census Bureau Tasha Boone, Assistant Division Chief, ACS Communications
The Open Data Institute announced the creation of a new international open data network. As a part of this, the Knight Foundation also announced it will be seed-funding a U.S. Open Data Institute modeled after the nonprofit Open Data Institute in the United Kingdom, which aims to promote collaboration among governments, organizations, and businesses to catalyze the adoption of open data.
Around 1,000 politicians, bureaucrats and civil society representatives are expected in London for the annual summit of the Open Government Partnership (OGP), which says it aims for “a global culture of open government that empowers and delivers for citizens, and advances the ideals of open and participatory 21st-century government”. Launched in 2011, the OGP talks in big numbers and broad commitments: in two years, its membership has grown from eight to 60 countries, together making nearly 1,000 commitments.
A ranking by the Open Knowledge Foundation has attempted to rank countries on exactly this by looking at ten key areas. See which countries perform best and which still have a way to go.
President Barack Obama’s Administration is drafting its own comprehensive consumer data privacy legislation, partially spurred on by proposals advancing quickly in the European Union (EU) and Brazil to massively expand such privacy regulation in those regions.
At the Online News Association conference in Atlanta, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press launched iFOIA, a free online system for creating, sending, and tracking federal and state freedom of information requests.
Commerce.gov is embarking on a fresh redesign to put the user in the driver seat. Drawing on anonymized user input, they have made some significant changes.
As the open data movement has matured, public city-wide vital stats have come to feel more like a citizen’s right than a civic innovation. This is where things should head next: Take all of that data, map it, connect the dots between public health, land use, economics, education, crime and housing. And portray those patterns – and the inequality they often reveal – down to the neighborhood level.
Notable Data Publications
Each week, the APDU Data Update identifies recent statistical data releases of interest to APDU members.
Did you work on a great report that you want your colleagues to know about? Just email us and we’ll include it here.
Calls for Comment
APDU maintains a list of open calls for comment on proposed federal data collections. We periodically alert APDU members to newly added calls for comment. Over the last several weeks, calls for comment on the following proposed data collections wer
