Thanks to the city’s innovative open data law, city agencies are publishing a tremendous amount of information to the city’s open data portal, but finding the right information can get a little tricky. Professional researchers and large businesses have the resources needed to make sense of city data, but smaller businesses, journalists and the vast majority of residents often do not.
Fortunately, the city created the Commission on Public Information and Communication (COPIC) with a chartered mandate to ”educate the public about the availability and potential usefulness of city produced or maintained information and assist the public in obtaining access to such information.” Unfortunately, information on COPIC is hard to find. It seems to lack an official website or an active Twitter. Go figure?!
As Public Advocate, I will reconvene COPIC and build apps that make New York City Open Data more useful and valuable for New Yorkers.
I’ve already started normalizing lots of city data at DataBook.WeGov.NYC.