Collaboration

Wikipedia pages are information rich but not easily accessible to data mining because their content is only made uniform by convention, not strict input validation.We present an approach to data-mining large volumes of semi-structured text, such as Wikipedia dump files, using open-source tools. We employ compiler-writing and data-visualization tools in such a way that we always "know what we don't know". This converts a mining task to an incremental process we call "Exploratory Parsing" with many applications in our increasingly open-data rich world.

The open source world benefits hugely from the generosity of thousands of voluntary contributors. Nevertheless it is often difficult to find volunteers to undertake specific activities - especially those outside the normal "geek comfort zone".
This talk suggests that government can maximize the benefits of open source to the economy by investing some of the savings it yields into the open source infrastructure and encouraging staff to become a part of the open source community.

Just about every city wants to build compelling applications to engage their citizens using the Web. Information sources may include open datasets, local news or stories, real-time feeds, municipal government information systems, or crowdsourced data. This desire is commendable, yet there’s too much duplication of spending by cities to begin this process. Moreover, these efforts often may not address the real fundamental problem -- to meaningfully connect information.more...

An open source web content management system (CMS) can cost-effectively empower your agency’s web presence and functionality or it can be an expensive, inflexible tool that hampers your online efforts.  Open source veteran Shaun Walker shares how users can avoid the eight pitfalls of choosing and implementing a CMS and how to maximize the value of the chosen solution.more...

From real-time bus locations to parking management, to multi-modal trip routing, to system planning, many aspects of managing a transportation agency's operations can now be handled using open source software. This session will look at several examples of multi-city collaboration around open source transportation components, including OpenTripPlanner (the world's largest open source transit project) and OneBusAway (one of the Pacific Northwest's most popular transit applications). 

Open-CITIES, Open-eGovern and SAAS: Open Electronic Public Administration, Interoperability and Mutitenancy based on Open Standards. Open Data. Software as a Service.more...

CONNECT is an open source software gateway that allows health organizations to securely exchange health-related information with each other using nationally recognized standards – whether across the street or across the country. Originally built by more than 20 federal agencies, this software solution uses Nationwide Health Information Network standards and governance as a framework to connect providers, insurers, federal agencies, states and others involved in supporting health and healthcare.more...

After more than 20 years of development by the U.S. Government and while still under active development, the BRL-CAD solid modeling computer-aided design system was released as Open Source software in 2004.  While garnering immediate notoriety as one of the oldest Open Source projects around, BRL-CAD has become one of the most popular, successful, and active Open Source projects with more than a million downloads and continually increasing year-over-year development activity.  Embracing and growing BRL-CAD's Open Source community has provided exceptional value to the U.S.more...

The same principles that make open source software projects succeed can help agencies haunted by budget challenges and dysfunctional models of collaboration. Hundreds of thousands of open source software projects are capturing an unprecedented amount of innovation and effort from contributors around the world. The same principles that make for successful open source projects can be applied to your organization.more...

Beginning in 2001, several Oregon counties began developing an open source web mapping system which would enable the public, business and government organizations to access geographic information in support of government business functions. The system has been very successful, contributing to faster, better, cheaper services. Last year the group decided to re-collaborate to upgrade the now aging system. The participants developed new requirements by documenting business and functional use cases.more...