G-Cloud Open Data API

We ran our first webinar last week, ‘Open Government Canada’, which was great fun and seemed well received.

You can access the replay and all the slide decks here.

Open Government Cloud Computing

My goal was to launch the CBPN with an example of the main objective: To assemble a mixed group of experts to best meet the overall needs of a particular scenario, in this case achieving Open Government compliance in Canada. We’ll be ramping up the number of different solution programs like this, as well as deepening our abilites with Open Government Canada.

The headline message to this was the key idea that different technology ‘camps’, like Open Data and Cloud Computing, aren’t two isolated domains but simply each one part of an overall jigsaw. This hopefully illustrated a practical framework for adopting both, and understanding where and how to apply them, including areas such as :

Web 2.0 and Citizen CRM : Nik Garkusha of Microsoft provides an awesome overview of the new online world and how it might translate into government transformation, including key insights into Open Data.

Data Stewardship Directive : Phil Dana introduced ‘Data Management’, the best practices for managing all aspects of the data lifecycle so that it can be applied into Open Data scenarios, amongst others. This included beginning the introduction to Canada’s forthcoming ‘Data Stewardship Directive’.

G-Cloud Procurement : Andy MacLeod of Cisco then moved us on to Government Cloud Computing, providing an executive overview of the UK Cabinet Office ‘G-Cloud’ initiative for transforming how the UK government buys ICT. This includes introducing the key component parts, like the ‘Apps Store for Government’.

Re-inventing participative Democracy : Sean McGrath provides a brief insight into the exciting progress of Kansas in moving the core of their government workings, the legislative process, into the Cloud.

A Clearer Perspective : Mike Binko, CEO of kloudtrack and our primary supporter in this event, concludes the webinar with an insider’s in-depth analysis of the Federal Government market in the USA, and how their program is structured. He also covers the headline idea of ‘Cloud 2.0′ applications.

Building a City in the Clouds

I’ve started the process of brainstorming our second webinar, and the initial theme idea is ‘Building a City in the Clouds’. In this event we’ll dive deeper into this concept of ‘Cloud 2.0′ applications, and how they can be applied at the municipal levels of government.

Central to this new mode of IT is web-centric integration, and this will include topics like the ‘G-Cloud Open Data API’, as well as case studies of leading innovators in the field, most notably New York, through analysis of their recent Roadmap for the Digital City (65-page PDF). As discussed in this blog, this can act as a transformation blueprint for a city to make the move to Open Data and Cloud Computing, and importantly can play a stimulus role in developing the economy.

They operate over 200 social media channels, blogs, newsletters and mobile applications, and wire these up to citizen interfaces like 311 services, with the heart of this technology described as the Cloud-based Open Data API:

“The single greatest request from the developer community was nearly uniform: a RESTful Read/Write api, or Application Programming Interface, for public data and services. Some commentators added that open source software will ensure that data is easily, lawfully extractable and processable. Developers also advocated for a secure, cloud-based infrastructure to ensure scalability. An api enables different software programs to communicate with each other, supporting an ecosystem of tools and features powered by an application.”

We’ll explore the latest best practices in these areas. Sign up here.