Government Operations committee  Do you mean that particular project?

Government Operations committee  It basically lets you look at all the lobbyists, who receives the greatest amount of money, which companies or organizations they work for, what their goals were, generally speaking, and who they talked to within the city. The question we always posed was this. Who did Walmart

Government Operations committee  The ethics commission of the city asked us to testify in front of them on how the lobbying data could be improved. One of the big problems with it is that it's only released annually, so by the time you actually get the data, most of the decisions have already been made. We rec

Government Operations committee  Actually, we talked directly at a meeting in London just a few months ago, and we talked on the phone maybe two months ago. One of the purposes of the Open Data Institute is to create this network where everyone can learn from each other. I don't know a heck of a lot about Cana

Government Operations committee  It comes from the City of Chicago. The City of Chicago actually had been collecting lobbying data for quite some time. Under Mayor Daley they just didn't release it, and then when Mayor Emanuel came in, he released it within the first couple of months of his term. There were in

Government Operations committee  Well, we've spent a fair amount of time looking through the data, and the vast majority of the data doesn't implicate anyone. Much of the data is about a non-profit hiring a lobbyist to help them get a building permit to add an addition onto their building, or businesses that wan

Government Operations committee  Yes. I like to look at the really big issues, which in my opinion are climate change and medicine right now, at least two of the kind of scientifically oriented areas. There's tremendous activity there. In the climate change area the U.S. federal government has mandated that anyo

Government Operations committee  The Open Data Institute's Tim Berners-Lee founded the group, and he invented the web. The slogan he came up with was: knowledge for everybody. This idea is it's not just the government leaders, not just the corporate leaders who should know intimately what's going on, but ordinar

Government Operations committee  Could I jump in?

Government Operations committee  There are a couple of specific laws in the U.S. related to privacy. One is HIPAA, which is on medical privacy. It was a major issue before we had the Affordable Care Act, because if insurance companies found out you had a particular disease, they would bar you from having insuran

Government Operations committee  The numbers vary. In the City of Chicago everyone always said there were 800 and some data sets, and I just talked to a guy who is in charge of the data sets yesterday and he said there are something like 550 data sets. The Obama administration originally, when they announced dat

Government Operations committee  Well, to get back to the previous point, I was recently at a meeting in the City of Chicago with people who work on the open data portal there. I'll give you an example. The department of housing has data.... I mean, there's housing data in seven different departments. Often the

Government Operations committee  I was sent a few questions, or things you'd like to know about. I have a bunch of notes about those. I don't know if you're going to ask questions related to what you sent. As for my background, I've been active in the open data movement in Chicago for about six or seven years.

Government Operations committee  It's Paul Baker here. I hear you.

Government Operations committee  Sorry I was late. A water main flooded the freeway in Chicago and all the traffic had to leave. It took an hour and 15 minutes for about a 20-minute trip.