Monday, June 25, 2012

Opening Data.Gov with a new open source version, Open Government Platform (OGPL)

Data.gov - Data.gov Releases Open Source Software

The General Services Administration (GSA) announced on May 21 that Data.Gov partnering with the Government of India National Informatics Centre has produced an open source version of Data.gov that is being made available today, the third anniversary of Data.gov. The open source product, called the Open Government Platform (OGPL), can be downloaded and evaluated by any national Government or state or local entity as a path toward making their data open and transparent.

Based on Drupal, the core software includes a data management system, web site, and social networking community support. This full package, in early release, is now available for public download, comments, and open source development. The combined U.S. and India team is helping expand the global open government movement by making open data software and services available to developing nations, cities, and governments around the world. Prior to this announcement, 30 other national governments have launched their own versions of open government websites. In addition, U.S. states and local governments continue to deploy open data portals.

In using an open source method of development, the OGPL community will provide future technology enhancements, open government solutions, and community-based technical support. OGPL exemplifies a new era of diplomatic collaboration that benefits the global community by promoting government transparency and increasing citizen engagement.

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Open Government Platform (OGPL)

OGPL is a joint product from India and United States to promote transparency and greater citizen engagement by making more government data, documents, tools and processes publicly available. OGPL will be available, as an open source platform. By making this available in useful machine-readable formats it allows developers, analysts, media & academia to develop new applications and insights that will help give citizens more information for better decisions.

In using an open source method of development, the OGPL community will provide future technology enhancements, open government solutions, and community-based technical support. OGPL has become an example of a new era of diplomatic collaborations that benefit the global community that promote government transparency, citizen-focused applications, and enrich humanity

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github - opengovplatform

The Open Government Platform (OGPL) is a growing set of open source, open government platform code that allows any city, organization, or government to create an open data site.

Below you'll see the first code for the Website, its CMS, Data Management System (DMS) and Visitor Relationship Management (VRM). The Open Government Platform (OGPL) is a joint product from India and the United States to promote transparency and greater citizen engagement by making more government data, documents, tools, and processes publicly available through a freely available, open source platform.

By making this available in useful machine-readable formats it allows developers, analysts, media, and academia to develop new applications and insights that will help give citizens more information for better decisions.

In using an open source method of development, the OGPL community will provide future technology enhancements, open government solutions, and community-based technical support. OGPL has become an example of a new era of diplomatic collaborations that benefit the global community that promote government transparency, citizen-focused applications, and enrich humanity.

The code below is the alpha code base for an OGPL instance. We are currently seeking pre-alpha testers and experienced open source developers to provide recommendations as additional modules are released to the open source community.

If you are interested in being part of OGPL, please contact us at opengovplatform.org or on Twitter at @OGPL

While this is a MySQL/PHP based project and so pretty far outside my comfort zone, I still thought this cool. If you're a government, country, state, city or local, and want to share your data but aren't sure where to start, you should check out this project [insert "don't reinvent the wheel" here]

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