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Uploaded: Tuesday, July 31, 2012, 10:55 AM
Palo Alto makes city data public
'Open Data' initiative aims to inform residents and spur app developers to make programs residents can use
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by Gennady Sheyner
Palo Alto Weekly Staff
Palo Alto's data-hungry residents and app-makers now have something new to feast on. The City of Palo Alto has unveiled the latest step in its "Open Data" initiative -- an effort that officials say aims to make the government more transparent.
Following the lead of other cities, including San Francisco and New York City, the city has partnered with the Palo Alto company Junar to create a new platform to display a variety of data sets, including ones pertaining to rainfall, Census data, street trees, bike paths and park locations.
The new cloud-based platform "has enhancement and visualization capabilities that make the data useful even before it is downloaded or consumed by a software application," Jonathan Reichental, the city's chief information officer, said in a statement.
City Manager James Keene called the new platform "a natural complement to our goal of becoming a leading digital city and a connected community."
But he also hopes the data can have practical applications, as was seen in February when a group of Stanford hackers used city data to make a searchable online index of Palo Alto's street conditions.
"Using this data, through challenges and hackathons, non-city employees can develop applications that can be of use to the community at no cost to the city," Keene said at the July 23 meeting of the City Council.
The new platform is available at data.cityofpaloalto.org.Are you receiving Express, our free daily e-mail edition? See a sample and sign-up for Express.
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Posted by Wayne Martin, a resident of the Fairmeadow neighborhood, on Jul 31, 2012 at 11:15 am Trying the link provided in the article:
Web Link
I got--
Oops! Google Chrome could not find www.data.cityofpaloalto.org
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Posted by Wayne Martin, a resident of the Fairmeadow neighborhood, on Jul 31, 2012 at 11:19 am I tried the streetview web-page--
Web Link
Tried two streets that are near downtown--Bryant Street and Addison, getting the following --
No matching or nearby location found!
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Posted by Paco, a resident of the St. Claire Gardens neighborhood, on Jul 31, 2012 at 12:35 pm they provided the website but never guarenteed it would work. maybe thats part of the plan is to have residents fix the site at "no cost to the city" according to Keene.
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Posted by David Pepperdine, a resident of Another Palo Alto neighborhood, on Aug 1, 2012 at 1:12 pm Shameless incompetence on the part of overpaid bureaucrats.
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Posted by Dennis, a resident of the Downtown North neighborhood, on Aug 1, 2012 at 4:35 pm Pretty close - only one street off. I suggest the City open a competition between Gunn & Paly students to design and produce Palo Alto's next assault on the web.
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Posted by Jerryl, a resident of the Adobe-Meadows neighborhood, on Aug 1, 2012 at 5:47 pm The "geographic" selection enticed me until I saw it was just
Google Maps and Street Maps all over again.
I fully expected, given the fanfare, that we were going to be
given access to the CPA GIS database.
I would like to create a neighborhood map of our neighborhood
but not yet I see.
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Posted by paloaltotreewatch, a resident of the Palo Alto Orchards neighborhood, on Aug 1, 2012 at 6:59 pm
Do you think the city is going to fix the issues you raised?
Y'all being used for crowd-sourced debugging.
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Posted by John C. Tran, a resident of the University South neighborhood, on Aug 2, 2012 at 4:20 am Hi,
Thank you for the comments regarding the Open Data site. It is incorrectly linked in the article and I've notified the editor. The correct link is: Web Link.
We hope you take the opportunity to explore the available data sets (linked at the bottom of the page) and your feedback is always welcomed. Also, feel free to contact the City of Palo Alto directly with requests for additional data sets. They are truly working hard to engage with the community to improve transparency, collaboration, and services.
Best,
John C. Tran
Senior Marketing Manager
john.tran@junar.com
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Posted by Paco, a resident of the St. Claire Gardens neighborhood, on Aug 2, 2012 at 1:54 pm Another flawed outsourced city project costing Palo Alto taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars. Thanks go out to city manager Keene and city council members!
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Posted by vladrad, a resident of the Palo Verde neighborhood, on Aug 14, 2012 at 3:23 am WOW this is Awesome!!
I just would like to see more detail in finance data. Tax collection etc. :)
Good work!
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