Public Data
power in our hands
Show of hands, folks. How many of you are trained statisticians? How many of you would rather have oral surgery than
work with data? Thought so.
But here’s the rub. Data are the lingua franca of government. Our activities and lives are their raw material. They
determine whether many of us get more government benefits and which states and communities get grants. They are cited as
the rationale for legislation, good and bad.
I’m issuing a tough-love challenge today: if you and I really want to play a substantive role in government -- not just in
campaigns -- we must become comfortable dealing with data.
Fortunately, the Web 2.0 era presents us with an incredible opportunity to both gain access to government data and
understand and use it to become empowered to really play substantive roles in government.

In the past, you and I couldn’t even get at government data. Once collected, m