first published week of: 10/20/2014
Officials from local, state and federal governments are still probing what it means to “open data.” Benefits of machine readable government data are ample, and include data-based business creation, cost reduction by efficiency, insights in health, civic apps and government accountability.
Despite well-publicized advantages, however, open data has many unknowns. For example, there are no unified publication standards yet, data formats vary by jurisdiction, and data comes with no guarantees that projects will do more than just provide transparency — a valuable trait, but an investment not always justifiable when budgets are tight. continued…