Open Baltimore is leading the way towards semi-transparent or semi-opaque government.
You be the judge.
The City of Baltimore is leading in placing hundreds of data sets online.
But is that being semi-transparent or semi-opaque?
Data sets I would like to see:
- City contracts, their amounts and who was successful at bidding on them?
- Successful bidders not be corporate names but who owns them? Who works there? What lawyers represent them?
- What are the relationships, personal, business, etc., between staff, elected officials and anyone who does business with the city?
- Same questions for school, fire, police and other departments.
- Code violations, what are they, which inspectors write them, for what locations?
- Arrests made of who, by which officers, for what crimes, locations and times.
- etc. (these are illustrations and not an exhaustive list)
Make no mistake, I am grateful for the information the city has already provided.
What they have provided took a lot of work and will be useful for a number of purposes.
But I don’t want people to think that a large number of data sets means transparency.
Transparency involves questions of relevant data and meaningful ways to evaluate it and to connect it to other data.
[…] For a similar take, see my: Baltimore – Semi-Transparent or Semi-Opaque? […]
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