Sen. Coons wants in on the Delaware #opendata convo

From a new crime map to meetups to a recently purchased domain name to talk of Delaware as a national leader, we’ve been talking about open data in Delaware a lot lately.
To further prove the time is ripe for open data in the First State, Andrew Dinsmore from the office of Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) wants to let folks know the senator is onboard with open data.
“As an FYI, we like open data too,” Dinsmore wrote in an email.
This fall, Coons co-authored a bill, the Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science Act of 2015, which, if passed, would promote the federal government’s use of crowdsourcing and citizen science to improve scientific research, literacy and diplomacy efforts.
Though the bill doesn’t address making data easily available to the public — the real crux of Delawareans’ issue with local government — it’s another piece of the open data conversation that underscores the topic’s importance.
Sen. Coons pointed out in an opinion piece featured on Wired.com that contributed data has already been helpful to the First State.
“From taking water quality samples of our coastal watershed for the University of Delaware’s Citizen Monitoring Program to counting spawning horseshoe crabs in Delaware Bay to understand how best to protect them, Delawarean volunteers and innovators up and down our state have come together to collect and share data to preserve our coastal ecosystem,” he wrote.