Month: August 2013

Visualizing NYC’s OpenData

Chris M Whong, BetaNYC’s co-Captian, visualized the 1100+ open datasets made available by New York City. This is a force-directed graph generated with the charting library d3.js. NYC’s open data portal runs on the Socrata platform*, and this visualization was created using the “dataset of datasets” and the Socrata Open Data API (SODA).

Chris writes “Why? The point is to show the scale of the portal, and to illustrate which datasets have user-created views. In the future, it would be great to dynamically size the circles by the popularity of the datasets.”

* Chris is employed by Socrata
** GitHub Link

Employers are now required to make sure that potential personnel are not on the no-hire registry.

That makes sense but things got complicated when it came to the technology used in operating the registry.

Center lawyers concluded that the seemingly obsolete technology of faxing provided more security than email, given the possibility of hacker attacks, at least in the short-term.

Agencies may also have limited capacity to send encrypted or otherwise protected email.

“In most cases the Internet right now is not safeguarded to the correct level,” said center spokeswoman Diane Ward.

But all those names, which will run into the hundreds or even thousands during a month, were being funneled through a single fax machine located in a secure room at the center’s Bethlehem headquarters.

That led to an overload of the machine, which in turn necessitated the request that applicant lists be sent between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m.

Fax at 1 a.m.? Forget it – Times Union

Weiner’s campaign calls for technology advances that we already have

Normally, I would keep my mouth shut about the Mayoral campaign’s talking points, but when they are so willfully un-researched, I have to point them out. Yesterday, Anthony Wiener’s campaign announced 61 additional ideas to keep New York the Capital of the Middle Class.
I’d like to point out one…
112 – Make 311 a ‘Big Data’ Treasure Trove 
“Our 311 city help hotline has fielded over 158 million calls in the past decade. The data about the types of calls and the locations from which they are made are closely- held secrets by the city. This information should be released in raw form. Obviously we would remove any personal information, but giving the public and city workers access to the data might yield effective mapping, trend-spotting, and innovative solutions.”
THESE ARE NOT SECRETS. Since March 7, 2012, the City has had one of the most transformative open data laws. Almost since its inception, NYC DoITT has been publishing 311 requests to the City’s Open Data portal. You can access near realtime calls via NYC 311 map (developed by DoITT), follow them on twitter, or even use an Open311 inquiry API to access NYC’s 311. Want to look at 311 data since 2010, visit < nyc.gov/data >.
If any candidate wants to attend any of our hacknights, we’d love to talk about what should be opened… Beyond PLUTO, there are many more datasets we would like to see.