Where’s the data? A ten year old problem, city CTO says
For all the city information technology issues that Allan Frank addresses daily, its perhaps the availability of transparent city data that plagues him most publicly.
Sure, IT consolidation efforts mandated by mayoral executive order — which have transformed the Division of Technology from an agency once one-fifth the size it is now — have been a priority for Frank, the city’s Chief Technology Officer.
But often, the cry from the city’s industrious technology community has been one caused by a national intrigue in government transparency that tech can facilitate.
Cities like New York — which opened an impressive amount of city datasets for public use, and sponsored a $20,000 contest to attract software developers to create interesting technology applications and web apps — are pressing ahead with new data initiatives.
But Philadelphia lags behind. The city’s first big data win came when SEPTA released raw data around station geolocation and schedules, well after developers took their own stab at collecting data — by scraping HTML pages. Since, we’ve seen little movement from either developers or the city.
When we first covered Frank in May last year, he spoke before a crowd of Refresh Philly attendees and gave them a charge to come up with data they wanted. The effort dwindled, due in part to a lack of movement in the community and too, on actionable steps from the city.
Now, as Frank enters his first fiscal year with a serious $120 million capital investment in city technology, we’re wondering what’s next.
Late last week, we met with the CTO to discuss problems plaguing the department around opening those datasets and followed-up with Frank about how things have been for the last year, his first in public office. After the jump, that conversation.
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