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Joint DATA.GOV-ONTOLOG "Big Open Data" Session - Thu 2012_05_10

Session Topic: "Fostering 'Big Open Data' in government through Open Collaboration - invited presentation on NYCFacets and introduction to New York City's 'Open' initiatives"

Session Co-chair: JeanneHolm (Data.gov / NASA-JPL) & PeterYim (Ontolog / CIM3) - slides

Panel Briefings from:

  • ChrisMusialek (Data.gov / GSA) - "Empowering City Developers with Federal Data" - slides
  • AndrewNicklin (New York City) - "Opening up municipal government data: past, present, and future" - slides
  • JoelNatividad (Ontodia) - "Smart Cities and Big Open Data" - slides

Archives

Conference Call Details

  • Date: Thursday, 10-May-2012
  • Start Time: 9:30am PDT / 12:30pm EDT / 6:30pm CEST / 5:30pm BST / 16:30 UTC
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Abstract

Fostering 'Big Open Data' in government through Open Collaboration - invited presentation on NYCFacets and introduction to New York City's 'Open' initiatives

This is the first of two sessions jointly organized by the US federal data.gov initiative and Ontolog. This follows quite naturally from a few very exciting recent events, notably:

  • (a) the recent US federal government's thrust toward developing and leveraging 'Big Data'
  • (b) the 3-month long Ontology Summit 2012 series of events that just finished a few weeks ago that was focused around the theme 'Ontology for Big Systems' and
  • (c) New York City's award of their 'Big Apps 3.0' grand prize to NYCfacets (developed by a member of this community, in an applications that leverages ontology and semantic technologies); and the City's 'open data' initiative that followed.

During today's session, we will look at the NYCfacets app, the New York City open data initiative and contemplate how open collaborative community effort can help foster 'Big Open Data'.

Agenda

Fostering 'Big Open Data' in government through Open Collaboration

  • Session Format: this is a virtual session conducted over an augmented conference call
  • 1. Opening (chair) - Jeanne Holm [10 min.] ... [ slides ]
  • 2. Panel briefings [20 min. each]
    • ChrisMusialek - "Empowering City Developers with Federal Data"
    • AndrewNicklin - "Opening up municipal government data: past, present, and future"
    • JoelNatividad - "Smart Cities and Big Open Data"
  • 3. Q & A and open discussion [All: ~30 min.] - (moderated by the chair) -- please refer to process above
  • 4. Wrap-up / Announcements - (chair)

Proceedings

Please refer to the above

IM Chat Transcript captured during the session

see raw transcript here.

(for better clarity, the version below is a re-organized and lightly edited chat-transcript.)

Participants are welcome to make light edits to their own contributions as they see fit.

-- begin in-session chat-transcript --

Peter P. Yim: Welcome to the

Joint DATA.GOV-ONTOLOG "Big Open Data" Session - Thu 2012-05-10

Session Topic: "Fostering 'Big Open Data' in government through Open Collaboration

- invited presentation on NYCFacets and introduction to New York City's 'Open' initiatives"

Session Co-chair: Jeanne Holm (Data.gov / NASA-JPL) & Peter P. Yim (Ontolog / CIM3)

Panel Briefings:

  • ChrisMusialek (Data.gov / GSA) - "Empowering City Developers with Federal Data"
  • AndrewNicklin (New York City) - "Opening up municipal government data: past, present, and future"
  • JoelNatividad (Ontodia) - "Smart Cities and Big Open Data"

Session page: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ConferenceCall_2012_05_10

Mute control: *7 to un-mute ... *6 to mute

Can't find Skype Dial pad? ... it's under the "Call" dropdown menu as "Show Dial pad"

Proceedings:

Peter P. Yim: Attention ALL: because of time constraints from some of our panelists, we will have to

start promptly today. ... therefore if you have any logistics questions, please be ready to ask them

as soon as you get online, and before we mute everyone!

anonymous morphed into Ed Dodds

anonymous morphed into AndrewNicklin

Peter P. Yim: Hi Andrew!

anonymous morphed into JoelNatividad

Peter P. Yim: Hi Joel, Hi Terry ... and everyone!

anonymous morphed into jgabriel

jgabriel: Hi everyone!

JoelNatividad: Howdy everyone!

anonymous morphed into Deirdre Lee

anonymous1 morphed into Hasan Sayani

anonymous morphed into Jeanne Holm

anonymous morphed into David Mason & MarieJeanMeurs

anonymous1 morphed into Sami Baig

David Mason & MarieJeanMeurs: hey all

Jesse Wang: Hi, all! Good morning, afternoon, evening!

Sami Baig: Hi all

anonymous morphed into chrismusialek

anonymous morphed into Tom Tinsley

anonymous1 morphed into Ed Dodds

anonymous1 morphed into sdupd_glenn

Jack Park: Hi

Peter P. Yim: == Jeanne Holm presenting the intro slides now ...

anonymous morphed into BobLojek

Peter P. Yim: == ChrisMusialek presenting ...

Jeanne Holm: ChrisMusialek is now presenting Empowering City Developers with Federal Data. Slides can

be downloaded at the session page (above)

Jesse Wang: what is the search engine used in data.gov? did you develop your own text/query

analyzer/parser?

Jeanne Holm: Jesse--we are using Bing as the search engine as part of USA.gov's search capability.

one of the things we all want to improve on Data.gov is the search capability. It's currently

limited by both the complexity of the queries you can build, as well as the fact that it only

searches the metadata of the data tool or dataset. We are moving toward a federated model that would

allow us to search the metadata or other attributes of the tools and data sources that are made

accessible.

Jack Ring: Has Data.gov calibrated the false positives and false negatives achieved with keywords?

Jeanne Holm: Jack--I'll have to check on the false positive and false negative calibration.

anonymous morphed into Denise Warzel

Deirdre Lee: Latest W3C Editor's draft of Data Catalog Vocabulary (dcat) (managed by W3C Government

Linked Data (GLD) WG): http://dvcs.w3.org/hg/gld/raw-file/default/dcat/index.html

anonymous1 morphed into MarkDixon

AndrewNicklin: Will data.gov look at third-party API key & rate management tools instead of rolling

your own?

Jeanne Holm: Andrew--Data.gov is definitely looking at third-party API tools and any emergent

standards in this area. The intent is that we are a connector amongst a set of data of national

interest, even beyond just the federal government.

Peter P. Yim: == AndrewNicklin presenting ...

anonymous1 morphed into Elizabeth Florescu

AndrewNicklin: The site I mentioned for NYC open data standards is http://www.nyc.gov/datastandards

Peter P. Yim: == JoelNatividad presenting ...

Jack Ring: What will be the relevance of Ward Cunningham's expedition into Federating wiki's?

Jack Ring: Jeanne, Pls do clarify the FP-FN results because both are likely to be dismal.

Jeanne Holm: Jack--completely agree. Just need to verify what's been done.

Ed Dodds: I saw a story about crowdfunding movies this a.m. (passer.by) and it got me thinking: are

there any crowdfunded open data efforts anybody has heard of? Any fellowships sponsored by

foundations?

Jeanne Holm: Ed--like a Kickstarter for open data? Interesting...

DeborahMcGuinness: i like this idea and would be happy to point our students to such a call. I would

also be willing to help sell such a message

Ed Dodds: Yes, I've seen a few stories proposing crowdfunding for investigative reporting

recently--haven't seen if they were actually successful

Jack Park: @Jeanne, re federation: I will be giving a talk at a bigdata meetup with these slides

http://www.slideshare.net/jackpark/big-datasciencemeetup-final

Jeanne Holm: Jack--Very interesting presentation. Is the meeting open for others to attend?

Jack Ring: Jeanne, when you are ready to escape the limits of key words and rapidly assay data with

respect to large, complex, interconnected cominatorial networks I will be happy to offer some

insights. Long buried in highly classified systems but now patented in soon to be implemented in a

chip equivalent to 3,600 microprocessors on a grid.

Jack Park: @Jeanne, afaik it's sold out but contact me jackpark[at]topicquests.org -

http://www.meetup.com/Big-Data-Science/events/51766642/

Jeanne Holm: Thanks Jack.

Jack Ring: @JackPark, I think your slides evidence great work. Thank you. Pls consider joining us at

the Symposium in July at San Jose, particularly the Sunday workshop. http://isss.org/world/index.php

Jack Park: @JackRing I would love to attend isss but it's just not in the budget; my friend Judith

Rosen is giving a tutorial I'd really like to attend. Your workshop, if it's open, I'll try to

attend. Many thanks

Jeanne Holm: Are there any questions for the speakers? We are about to go to question and answer...

Peter P. Yim: when we start, we will ask people to click on their "hand" buttons (lower right) ... and

queue folks up for Q&A and remarks ... amke sure you test your voices first, and start by telling us

who you are.

Deirdre Lee: I have to head out now, but thanks for lots of interesting presentations

Jeanne Holm: Thanks Deirdre!

Leo Obrst: Thanks all, must leave.

Peter P. Yim: == open Q&A and discussion now ...

anonymous morphed into Pavithra Kenjige

Jeanne Holm: Peter P. Yim: Presentations were fantastic. Congratulations to federal people who started

the movement in opening up government data; to NY developers for providing open data; and to Joel

and everyone who provided technology in helping Joel's app stand out from the crowd.

Jeanne Holm: Peter P. Yim: Next week's discussion will focus on the technical details of implementing

some of these solutions.

Jack Ring: Is anyone concerned with cybersecurity/privacy?

AndrewNicklin: Jack Ring: there are two aspects to our approach to security. First is not letting out

sensitive info (comparatively easy); Second is - potentially - evaluating whether our data, when

combined with outside information poses more risks.

sdupd_glenn: We'd love to see some case studies of municipal opendata in order to pitch to

management the benefits of a public-facing GIS system coupled with ERP data (merged visually with

other public data)

sdupd_glenn: a lot of our staff understands the potential of all this, but are unable to articulate

its benefit to the higher ups who control the purse

Jeanne Holm: Are challenges a good way to get developers to focus on and consume government data? Are

there better ways?

Jeanne Holm: JoelNatividad responded: The first time we submitted to a challenge was just to do

something with our partners. The second time was really to accomplish something. It wasn't about the

money, but the recognition and ability to build something useful was what drew us.

sdupd_glenn: sdupd_glenn: For the private sector, yes. For public agencies, the challenge is how to

incentivize the action of making data public in the first place

Mike Bennett: I have to go now - thanks for great presentations

Jeanne Holm: Thanks Mike!

Ed Dodds: It might be that the start up weekend or hackathon model of drawing everyone together

geographically for 48 hours (though I much prefer virtual innovation clusters such as Ontolog) might

be a tactic, especially if you could find sponsorships from firms who are likely to consume the

data, add their own and make a profit.

Ed Dodds: Nonprofits, community foundations, united way types also stand to benefit and could have

skin in the game

JoelNatividad: And to Ed's point, that is what we want to do at Ontodia. We want to collaborate Open

Data with all kinds of databases, both public and private.

JoelNatividad: And do what Bloomberg did for Finance data, and do it for Open Data.

Jeanne Holm: Ed--The hackathon model is good, but as you point out it's really important to have a

business model that brings those ideas to a sustainable service.

AndrewNicklin: @JeanneHolm, Ed Dodds: in terms of sustainability, we've also (informally,

unofficially) considered tiering access to our services such that the costs of operating open data

platform can be recovered from high-volume commercial users.

Terry Longstreth: @JeanneHolm - I agree that sustainability needs to be considered. Moreover, data

ages quickly, and there's little in today's talks about maintaining data qualilty and timeliness

JoelNatividad: @TerryLongstreth, in NYCFacets, that's why we derived "extrametadata" to characterize

and score each dataset

AndrewNicklin: @TerryLongstreth that's why automation is really important.

Ed Dodds: @JeanneHolm, all: strenuously agree. Caveat: just because something *should* be valuable

doesn't mean the market has "eyes to see" at the time a product is launched

JoelNatividad: [in our "extrametadata"] we score it along freshness, sparseness, uniqueness, no of

downloads, views, etc., and we plan to make the scoring algorithm transparent and not opaque, so

publishers can respond; and in the future, we do plan to do time series as well, but not yet.

JoelNatividad: @TerryLongstreth, we're actively tracking the wikidata effort and will sync up with

that

JoelNatividad: so "facts" and unstructured free form text are separated

anonymous1: In regards to competitions concerning opengov-- Chicago recently held a contest to

encourage app development and recieved a toyal of 60 submissions. Chicago's he open data portal

stats include:

328 datasets 470,000+ embeds 1000 + user views 50+ apps

Ed Dodds: Toronto's @buzzdata tries to socialize static data sets (streams too maybe?) marketing,

news gathering, conferences, higher education all could benefit; but I think until we get a mass of

aggregated micropayments for data feeds the challenge to fund will continue

Jack Park: Great conference. Many thanks to the speakers.!

Kingsley Idehen: Please upload the slides to slideshare etc..

Jeanne Holm: @Kingsley the slides are at

http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ConferenceCall_2012_05_10 for today's call.

Kingsley Idehen: @JeanneHolm: I've seen the presentations, but just suggesting slideshare for broader

audience etc..

Ed Dodds: + 1 Kingsley

JoelNatividad: We will upload the nycfacets overview to slideshare as well

Ed Dodds: There may be a few up at http://www.slideshare.net/eddodds/ already

Jack Park: A thought: having slides up at slideshare means they can be viewed without downloading.

sdupd_glenn: slideshare, yes please

sdupd_glenn: Can I please suggest that someone or agency put together a series of webinars for

agencies that know opendata is crucial but cannot get C-suite or management approval to get an

opendata program started in the first place (all of us local municipalities and districts)!

Peter P. Yim: thank you all, great session!

JoelNatividad: Thanks everyone! Special mention to Peter for all the great work to make this

possible!

Sami Baig: Thank you all!

anonymous morphed into lisa h

sdupd_glenn: we local municipalities feel like we get to applaud the state and federal efforts but

have no funding or champions to help us get off the ground. We can't participate without your help!

Jeanne Holm: @sdupd_glenn I'm happy to help out with providing discussions on the value of open data

to cities and municipalities. Part of Cities.Data.gov (coming soon!) will be to do that as well.

Feel free to reach out to me at jholm@jpl.nasa.gov

sdupd_glenn: Jeanne Holm: Great I'd love to discuss with your team. We've been in touch with you

already via Barbara Moreno

Peter P. Yim: come back, same time next week, when we will cover the technical aspects of the same

subject next Thursdau (May-17)

Peter P. Yim: -- session ended: 11:18am PDT --

-- end of in-session chat-transcript --

... More Questions

  • For those (who are members of the Ontolog community) who have further questions or remarks on the topic, please post them to the [ontolog-forum] so that everyone in the community can benefit from the discourse.
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Additional Resources

  • Join us, same time next week, when we will feature a sequel to today's session. Next Thursday's (2012.05.17) session is entitled: "Implementing 'Big Open Data' in government through Open Collaboration" - case examples and possibilities" where we will spend a bit more time on the technical details, and expose the community on some of the state-of-the-art in implementations.

Audio Recording of this Session

  • To download the recording of the session, click here
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  • Conference Date and Time: 10-May-2012 9:34am~11:18am PDT
  • Duration of Recording: 1 Hour 37 Minutes
  • Recording File Size: 11.1 MB (in mp3 format)
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    • Take a look, also, at the rich body of knowledge that this community has built together, over the years, by going through the archives of noteworthy past Ontolog events. (References on how to subscribe to our podcast can also be found there.)

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