Delaware Open Data Council expands with signing of Executive Order 18

Gov. John Carney made an appearance at The Mill this morning to sign Executive Order 18, which will expand the state’s Open Data Council to include members from all Executive Branch agencies, establishing a statewide data agency that will oversee policies governing the state’s data sharing.

Before the signing, some of Delaware’s tech and data influencers spoke about the importance of EO18, including state CIO James Collins, Government Information Center Director Dana Rohrbough, The Mill founder Robert Herrera and Open Data Delaware founder David Ginzberg.

Open Data Delaware co-founder @DGinzberg gives a speech before Gov. @JohnCarneyDE signs an expansion of open data acces. pic.twitter.com/BYEti24jBr

— Open Data Delaware (@opendatade) February 12, 2018

Since the Open Data Council was established in January 2016 by Executive Order 57, it has launched the centralized Open Data Portal, which has over 3.5 million page views and offers access to more than 200 items, including the State Checkbook, student demographics, public library usage, inspection violations, bike routes and air quality monitoring.

As the name suggests, all data is available for free with no copyright or other restrictions of use.

Open data analysis can be used to identify patterns that may contribute to issues such as dropout rates, unemployment and food insecurity in the state. Such projects are already happening: Compass Red recently partnered with the State of Delaware to use data analysis to help develop programs to reduce gun violence.

With the passage of the bill, Delaware’s civic hackers and members of the public will have access to more state data, making the projects created for events like Open Data Challenge increasingly impactful. This year’s challenge, now a monthlong “data jam” instead of a single frenzied weekend hackathon (“People wondered if a ‘hackathon’ was legal,” said Open Data Delaware’s Ryan Harrington) will begin on April 2. Click here for more info.