OpenMuni.md

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OpenMuni	/OpenMuni/

2010-08-26: This site was formerly the OpenMuni wiki, but is now part of Civic Commons with an expanded, non-city-specific purpose. Everything below this line is the old OpenMuni home page.

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Facilitating collaboration and cataloging case studies, best practices, and standards for open governance, open data, and open source on the local municipal level:

OpenMuni is a resource to spread knowledge and connect localities to better provide open channels of information to improve quality of life, increase civic engagement, and make local government more effective. The website will be much like an encyclopedia documenting best-practices and open standards for file formats, APIs, open source software, and supporting policies and licenses that are pertinent to the municipal level. Furthermore, there will be case-studies documenting the process of opening-up city agencies and building closer partnerships with their constituents and software developers.

OpenMuni is a collaboration between many cities and organizations including OpenPlans, Code for America, and CityCamp.

Please [sign-up for updates](http://openmuni.org/signup/) to be notified of the official launch of this project.

Open Government Guidebook -------------------------

The Open Government Guidebook describes step-by-step processes for opening government. This is a work in progress and as a wiki we encourage you to contribute case studies and references to this material. The processes are organized into the following sections:

• Build Alignment
• Develop Policy
• Manage
• Derive Value
• Sustain

See also the Open Gov Playbook wiki for the Open Government Directive

Open Government Initiatives by City

United States

• Ann Arbor
• Arvada
• Austin
• Boston
• Chicago
• Manor
• New York City
• New Orleans, LA
• Portland, Oregon
• San Diego
• San Francisco
• Seattle
• Washington D.C.
• Lexington, KY - NEW

Canada

• Calgary - NEW
• Edmonton
• London, ON - NEW
• Mississauga
• Nanaimo
• Ottawa
• Toronto
• Vancouver

United Kingdom

• London
• Lichfield - NEW
• Warwickshire - NEW

Open Governance Policies

• Open Governance Policy (broad openness and civic engagement policies)

Transparency

• Open Data Policy
• Open Data Guidelines

Participation & Collaboration

• Social Media Policy
• Open Source Policy

Accessibility

• Open Standards Policy
• Terms of Use

Sharing Policy

• See recommendations and precedents for how to share policy, on the Sharing Policy page.

Open Data Initiatives

Cities

• Washington D.C. (terms)
• Nanaimo, B.C.
• Vancouver, B.C. (terms)
• San Francisco (terms)
• New York City (terms)
• Toronto (terms)
• London (terms)
• Edmonton (terms)
• Seattle (terms)
• Portland (terms)
• Ottawa (terms)
• Chicago (terms)
• Arvada (terms)
• Boston (terms)
• London, ON (terms and Board of Control Ordinance)

Community Run

• Montreal

States, Provinces, and other Regions

• California, USA
• Utah, USA
• North Dakota, USA
• Maine, USA
• [http://www.michigan.gov/som/0,1607,7-192-29938_54272---,00.html Michigan, USA]
• Massachusetts, USA
• Rhode Island, USA
• New Jersey, NJ
• Texas, USA (State Comptroller) and Texas, USA (Texas.gov)
• Mecklenburg County, NC, USA
• British Columbia, Canada
• Basque Government, Spain
• New South Wales, Australia
• Oregon, USA
• [Illinois, USA] - Pending Updates

Community Run

• Colorado, USA and Overall summary with Chief Data Officer
  • Government Data Advisory Board - Official
• Metro Chicago Information Center
• Greater New Orleans Community Data Center
• Indiana Coalition for Open Government (ICOG)
• Washington Coalition for Open Government

Nations

• United States of America (terms)
• United Kingdom (terms) - built on the CKAN source code
• New Zealand (terms)
• Australia (terms)
• Kenya (About) [Note: Terms did not actually exist yet]
• Denmark
• Norway
• Ireland StatCentral and Open Data Northern Ireland

Community Run

• Sweden
• Slovakia
• Canada
• Israel
• OpenGovData.ru and GovWeb.ru in Russia
• Japan

Intergovernmental Organizations

• United Nations
• The World Bank
  • terms
  • API
  • Data Catalog
  • The Goals of Open Data at the World Bank

Other Open Government Data Resources

• http://wiki.opengovdata.org
• http://wiki.sunlightlabs.com/Government_data_catalogs
• http://www.guardian.co.uk/world-government-data - Another gateway to all of the data repositories in the world.
• http://opendatalinks.com/
• http://opengovernmentdata.org/
• Open Data @ CTIC
• Open government data catalogs by Antti Poikola
• Public Sector Information (PSI) Data Catalogues (by governments)
• lists of local data catalogs
• openmuni+datacatalog and CityCamp+datamine on delicious

Idea Sourcing for Data and Apps

• Data.gov Insights Uservoice (by iStrategyLabs)
• Washington D.C. Uservoice
• Toronto DataTO
• NYC BigApps Uservoice, Uservoice CSV, BigApps Suggestions, BigApps RFEIs, and wishlist
• Boston Uservoice
• San Francisco DataSF Ideas
• Edmonton Uservoice
• Austin Open Austin
• Manor Manor Labs
• Portland CivicApps Ideas
• Ottawa DataOTT
• See also: http://opengovtracker.com/

Open Source Data Catalog Platforms

See main article at Data Platform

• CIVX (source)
• CivicDB (source)
• Openly Local (source)
• Citizen DAN and structWSF at OpenStructs
• Microsoft Open Government Data Initiative - OGDI (source)
• OpenGov Sweden (source) - Directory
• Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network (source) - Directory
• National Data Catalog (source) - Directory
• GovKit - Ruby client library for US federal & state open government datasets
• DataCamp - Codebase used for Datanest, a community-run Slovakian open data catalog

Directory denotes that the system links-to and provides metadata about data hosted elsewhere rather than acting as a repository for the data itself.

App Catalogs

• See App Catalogs for information on catalogs from app contests and information related to city app catalogs including listings of open source projects.

Open Source

• Procuring Open Source
• Releasing Open Source
• Open Source Policy
• Open Source Case Studies

Data Standards

See Civic Software for standards by data type

• Standards Case-Studies
• Standards Frameworks
• Standards Priorities
• Open Standards Policy

Case Studies

• Leveraging Open Data: Washington D.C.
• Developing an open standard: GTFS
• On the ground civic engagment: FixMyStreet et al
• Open Policies
• Engaging the developer community: Boston MBTA
• Multi-city collaboration: Open311
• Social Media Engagement: BART
• Apps Contests
• Real Time Data
• Open Source: Portland
• Open Data Study - Commissioned by the Transparency and Accountability Initiative and Soros Foundation, primarily looking UK and the U.S.
• Open Data to advance competition and save costs, from Denmark
• Open Data in Germany Analysis of eParticipation and Web 2.0 Applications in Germany’s 50 largest cities and 16 federal states. Study illustrates that while eParticipation is on the agenda, states and municipalities still have a long way to go to fully engage in it.
• Shah (2007), State of Masschusetts Case Study on Data Policies
• NASCIO (National Association of CIOs) Open Data Report
• A Case Study of Three Cities in Norway

Regional Alliances

• eCityGov - 45 Cities in Washington State
• Colorado Government Association of Information Technology (CGAIT) - 50+ members in Colorado

Other References

• http://www.ipublic.org/wiki/
• http://www.talkstandards.com/open-forum-standardization-and-egovernment-3/
• http://www.osor.eu/ (European Open Source Observatory and Repository)
• http://www.futuregov.net/articles/category/localgov/
• http://govfresh.com/category/local/
• http://www.govtech.com/pcio/
• http://opengovdirective.pbworks.com/
• http://www.opencongress.org/wiki/Third_Party_Websites_That_Transform_Government_Data
• http://ideas.topplabs.org/wiki/Open_Government_in_a_Box#Local_Level
• http://pages.e-democracy.org/Tools_for_transparency
• http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Government-Online.aspx (Pew Report, 2010)
• http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~egovinst/Website/PDFs/U%20S%20%20Municipalities%20E-Governance%20Report%202008.pdf and 2010 review
• http://www.egovmon.no/upload/downloads/d2.1.2-final-v1.0.pdf - State-of-the-art review: transparency indicators by Lasse Berntzen et al eGovMon project, Norway
• http://www.insidepolitics.org/egovt04city.pdf - E-government Report 2004 by Darrell West (reviewed 1800 cities)

Related White Papers

• Open Data is Civic Capital: Best Practices for "Open Government Data"
• IT Governance Capability: Laying the foundation for government interoperability
• A Call to Action for State Government: Guidance for Opening the Doors to State Data
• Open access policies, practices and licensing : a review of the literature in Australia and selected jurisdictions
• A review of Plan Avanza for Spain and EU policies on good governance
• OECD Study all cities around the world with open governance and civic engagement or (in scribd format) - A very detailed account on economic growth, civic engagement, and collaboration.
• Informing Communities: Sustaining Democracy in the Digital Age (by the Knight Foundation) - The Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy has created what it hopes will be a helpful framework for seizing these opportunities and providing a vision for “informed communities.” Informing Communities is the Commission’s articulation of community information needs and the critical steps necessary to meet them.
• Code for America

Organizations Covering Civic Information Technology

• MySociety
• OpenPlans
• Code for America
• E-Democracy.org (CityCamps et al)
• National Association of Government Webmasters
• Center for Future Civic Media
• Senseable City Lab
• EU CitiLab, Innovative City
• Public Technology Institute
• International City/County Management Association & Alliance for Innovation - Transforming Local Government
• National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors
• National League of Cities
• United Cities and Local Governments
• Digital Local Agenda
• IT4ALL - Network of Local Authorities for the Information Society
• Global Cities Dialog
• GOSCON (Government Open Source Conference)
• Open Source for America
• Expert Labs ("...an independent non-profit organization that helps policy makers in our government take advantage of the expertise of their fellow citizens.")
• Participatory Politics Foundation (OpenCongress and OpenGovernment projects)
• Sunlight Foundation (Focused on transparency. Note the .com -- they don't have the .org.)

Likeminded Efforts

• CivicCommons (What the Open Muni wiki is about to become; see the CivicCommons page for more.)
• Gov2.0 Best Practices
• Open-Government.info
• CivicTEC
• OSOR (Open Source Observatory and Repository for European public administrations)
• MISA/ASIM (Canadian Municipal Information Systems Association)
• MuniGov 2.0 (Web 2.0 for federal/state/local/municipal/intl governments)
• Metropolitan Information Exchange
• LGov.org

News

• New government transparency rules strike chord with public - Budgetary Spending among government officials and their families in China
• Open Government Report from RightNow
• Colorado Chief Data Officer Micheline Casey Discusses State Data Sharing Strategy