A golden missed oppertunity

I had a doctors appointment today and while out in the car I was listening to AM radio.  When the local news came on I was surprised to hear that Pittsburgh's new Mayor working in conjunction with City Council was in the process of creating an "open data" bill for the city.

It turns out that Mayor Peduto's definition of  "open data" and mine are far enough apart that not only could Steelers  play a game in an area big that but Mike Tomlin would never have to fear stepping onto the playing field in order to watch the jumbo tron.

I was immediately impressed with the fact that the new mayor was going to embrace the idea of Government 2.0 which I think all governments city, county, state and federal should be implementing as soon as they can.  The key feature to this type of program would be the transparency needed to allow citizens to make informed choices when it comes time to elect the officials that create the laws and rules that most affect their day to day lives.

I was especially anxious to see all of the city budget data placed on line so that taxpayers could see exactly how their hard earned dollars are being spent.  This type of transparency has the potential to go a long way toward getting the average citizen to speak up about restraining government spending.  Imagine if every department in city government had to publish every penny they spent on a web site right down to the box of paper clips they bought.  This has been tried in other states and it does work.

What Mayor Peduto has proposed is to allow the public to see what streets have been plowed when it snows, which ones are scheduled to be plowed and when it is expected to happen.  It would allow residents to report pot holes and monitor any follow up action on their requests.

It would also provide information on scheduled maintenance of city property and applications for building permits among other things.  All of these are admirable goals and should have been put in place years ago.  The effort however, falls far short of what it could accomplish if it were truly an "open data" system that would make the operations of government available to not only the press but the citizens as well.  Please follow the link below to read the entire story in the Pittsburgh Press.

Pittsburgh councilwoman Rudiak introduces open data bill