Collaborate for God's sake!: EVERY organization dealing with data is dealing with these problems. And governments need to work together on this. This is where open source presents invaluable process lessons for government: working collaboratively, and in the open, can float all boats much higher than they currently are. Whether it's putting your scripts on GitHub, asking and answering questions on the Open Data StackExchange, or helping out others on the Socrata support forums, collaboration is a key lever for this government technology problem.
Collaboration is clearly key, but it's not obvious what that means. The suggestion here is a good first step in an organization:
- scripts on github
- asking and answering questions on stackexchange
- and (for data) joining the Socrata support forums
What does it take to get organizations on this path?
And what steps are next once the organization has evolved to this point?