This started as a standard “why don’t agencies release more open data?” discussion but Michael Frumin of the MTA summed up the nagging problem I had with this session way more eloquently than I ever could. His argument was that we can sit around and list all the reasons that agencies are reluctant to open up their data, rehashing the same discussions that have been happening at events like TransportationCamp DC over the last five years, but the people from agencies who need to hear those discussions generally are never in the room. How do things really change? Politics - the tried and true method of lobbying the decision makers at the top that open data is important so that the staff within the agencies who can actually make open data happen have an institutional mandate to do so. The arguments are the same but each battle is specific - coordinated campaigns to reach out to the people who matter like council members and general managers - to convince them that this is important. I think the challenge for events like TransportationCamp is that there isn’t a lot of institutional memory across events quite yet, so we spend a lot of time rehashing introductory discussions. Which is not to say that great work isn’t happening at TC on this front, but I think we can do even better.
— Great summary of three sessions at TransportationCamp DC from Brian Ferris, in I had a lot of good conversations at TransportationCamp DC…. Check his full post for details of the Standards Throwdown and the provocatively-titled “Does it really matter?”
