State software should be able to produce open data: Bill Ferguson

Under consideration now in the 2014 Maryland General Assembly is an Open Data Policy that would do two things: codify what state government data ought to be publicly available, and create a Council on Open Data to ensure that such data is made public.
Technical.ly Baltimore interviewed the state senator behind the bill, Bill Ferguson, a Democrat representing Southeast Baltimore city.
One important provision of Ferguson’s bill was highlighted this week by WYPR: a procurement policy that requires that software and computer systems purchased by state government in the future are capable of producing machine-readable information. That is, data available in tabular format that could be easily parsed through using Microsoft Excel or similar computer programs.
Why is that important? As Ferguson mentioned in our interview and during his Wednesday interview on WYPR, state-level data is inconsistent across government agencies. Different departments collect and maintain data using different software, which means it’s difficult to collate state government data in an efficient and comprehensible manner.
Listen to the full WYPR interview here.