I am finally getting back to my Knight Foundation funded grant work on Adopta Agency, I'm investing some research cycles into finding some tools that civic, science, journalism and other public data activists can put to use in their critical work. We've seen folks rise to the occasion when it came to climate data, helping migrate vital resources from federal government servers, something I'd like to see happen across other business sectors, as well as continue as an ongoing thing throughout this administration, and beyond.
I have long been a proponent of the private sector sharing the load when it comes to managing public data and APIs. After leaving DC during the 2013 federal government shutdown I began evangelizing the importance of individuals and companies stepping up to help with the heavy lifting of making sure public data is available when we need it most--resulting in my Adopta.Agency work. I feel pretty strongly that the federal government has an important role to play in this conversation, but I also feel that the private sector needs to step up and help--additionally, I also feel that is important that individuals step up and be present in the discussion.
Github plays a central role in my Adopta.Agency work. Any government data I turn into an API lives on Github as JSON, CSV, or other machine-readable format--taking advantage fo the Github platform for managing, as well as helping me eliminate or completely reduce the costs of managing public data. I spend money each month on hosting my public data work (it's my addiction), but I couldn't do it without a place to park it and offset storage and bandwidth costs. With this in mind, I'm spending time trying to find other services that public data and API folks can put to work for them, either eliminating or reducing the cost of managing open public data on the web.
My Adopta.Agency toolkit starts with Github and extends to the open source blueprint for adopting government data (which lives on Github) - now I want to add some additional resources that folks can consider. First on my list is AWS Open Data, where organizations can publish their open data sets, and consumers can deploy datasets for use in their own AWS infrastructure--smart. Next up is Google Public Datasets, where you can browse existing datasets and add your own. That is my list so far. I'm spending some time looking for other services that users can use for free or extremely low costs as part of their public data work, and need your help.
If you know of any other services that users can use let me know. I'm not just looking for storage solutions. Ideally, it would be a full stack services that public data advocates could use to acquire, store, management, and deploy public data as an API--additionally, any services that would help them throughout throught the API life cycle. I'm looking for a more formal and established approach, specifically something with a URL, logo, description and landing page that I can add to my Adopta.Agency Toolbox. If you have any questions let me know, you can leave any thoughts, issues, or suggestions to the Adopta.Agency Github issues.
