Month: July 2009

  • Writing: EveryBlock Statement in Support of Open Data Standards in New York City

    Today, on behalf of EveryBlock, I wrote and submitted the following statement to New York City Council: EveryBlock strongly supports the introduction of a Local Law to create open data standards in New York City. EveryBlock is a neighborhood news site serving 15 cities, including New York. You can see our work at http://nyc.everyblock.com/, where we combine public records from New York…

  • Chicago Sun-Times Editorial re: CityPayments:”You too can track city spending”

    Here’s an editorial from today’s Sun-Times.www.suntimes.com/news/commentary/1653034,CST-EDT-edit06b….July 6, 2009Ever hear about the City of Chicago spending money on something and think to yourself, that’s just goofy?Just the other day, Ald. Ed Burke griped about the city paying a contractor $915 every time it hauls a body to the morgue, while noting that other cities pay far…

  • The Launch of CityPayments

    Today I helped launch CityPayments. Here’s a snippet from the launch blog post: Take a look at CityPayments, a database of all vendors, contracts, and payments that have been posted by the municipal government of the City of Chicago to the Vendor, Contract, and Payment Search lookup tool maintained by the Department of Procurement Services.