Session Title: Democratizing, Structuring, and Transforming Data

Discussion Leaders:

Bringing in the public: where to start.
Neighborhood getting what they want/need.
challenge for government: info (context-bound) not just data.
P/R ramifications of mash-ups using data without appropriate context vs. Just open it up. There are always bad apples out there who will try to manipulate.
How to deal w/figuring out what "the people want".
How to figure out what level of granularity is appropriate.
Build for worst-case
In seeking access to data, what are the low-hanging fruit?
What is the most constructive way to frame questions for government?
RDFa - A way to describe resources and connections between them. Both humans and machines can reason from the same document.
- Drupal 7 about to release with RDFa built-in support.
- - Drupal Meetup first Tuesday of every month in Boston
Let citizens connect directly from data to a person.
Data files vs. query APIs
Data impact statement for anything the government is collecting data for.
Open Data Kit - Smart forms (via Google Code)
Offer data that folks will use to build a constituency to support scale
Engage the local geeks (hold a hackfest) -- there are a lot of coders willing to help out on the weekends