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Daily Archives: August 1, 2015

State and local government sharing more data via Github

By sharing code, jurisdictions can cut IT development costs and better use resources. But it’s “a matter of cultural change. When the city of Chicago decided to publish open source code that could be used to predict critical health code violations at local dining establishments, they did something unusual with it: They published it to GitHub. The move, made at the end of 2014, was essentially made as a dare to data wonks to improve Chicago’s public health. By publishing code on Github, the city of Chicago hoped online strangers could refine their code and improve their prediction models. Chicago is just one of a number of state and local governments using Github, a repository for source code and software project management that’s a mainstay of the private sector tech world. Overcoming a government IT culture that prizes keeping data in closed silos and avoiding unexpected complications, Github has slowly but surely been making inroads in the relatively conservative world of government tech. According to the Silicon Valley-based company, the number of county, state, and local government organizations using GitHub has jumped from 30 in 2012 to 250 in 2015. There are also 300 federal organizations on GitHub, as well as a large number of foreign government entities.”

OECD Health Statistics 2015

“Many European countries saw further reductions in health spending in 2013, according to OECD Health Statistics 2015, released on July 7, 2015. Health spending continued to shrink in Greece, Italy and Portugal in 2013. Most countries in the European Union reported real per capita health spending below the levels of 2009. Outside of Europe, health… Continue Reading

New Report Finds Economic Conditions in Cities Are Improving

“Even as economic conditions in cities have improved in the years since the Great Recession, a new study from the National League of Cities (NLC) found that many factors — including lack of affordable housing, poverty, and skill and achievement gaps — are impeding the long-term economic sustainability of cities. Cities and Unequal Recovery, an analysis based… Continue Reading

Aclima – Google Partner to Map Outdoor Air Quality

TechCrunch: “If a city knows what intersections are full of smog, it could add trees or change stop light schedules to improve the air its citizens breathe. Google Earth’s Outreach program that equips nonprofits and public-benefit organizations with data wants to give the world these insights. So today, Google revealed that it’s been working with… Continue Reading

President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing Final Report

Final Report of the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, May 2015. “Law enforcement culture should embrace a guardian—rather than a warrior—mindset to build trust and legitimacy both within agencies and withthe public. Toward that end, law enforcement agencies should adopt procedural justice as the guiding principle for internal and external policies and practices… Continue Reading