One of the things that is a constant divide in Washington policy communities is the ability to handle, interpret, and use data to make decisions. Among the many Think Tanks, data is king, the central determinant of what makes good policy and where further research should be focused. Yet, on the Hill and in the White House, it’s all too common for data to be eschewed in favor of political ideology and politically based policy prescriptions.
Up until now, the power of data has only been in the hands of policy wonks and Think Tankers with the requisite skills to handle and maneuver massive data sets. For the average Joe – he who lacks in STATA skills (myself included)- we’ve never been able to take a hard look at the numbers ourselves and make our own determinations about the soundness of our government’s policies. Before the White House launched www.recovery.gov, government data had never been presented in an accessible way on the internet for mass consumption.
Now that’s all changing through Government 2.0 initiatives taking hold in various agencies – spearheaded by the White House itself. Undeniably, private industry is going to lead the way in providing technology that facilitates the government’s transparency mandates and initiatives. One of the first to offer a solution is Socrata.
Socrata is taking on the challenge of helping governments (local, state, and federal) make their data more accessible for constituents both to achieve transparency mandates and enhance the way that average citizens are able to engage and consume open data sets. Socrata already has some government clients – the city of Seattle and the State of Washington among others – which makes sense because this socially conscious Gov 2.0 company is based in Washington.
Socrata offers a variety of potentially impactful technology solutions for governments and organizations that want to share their data in a more accessible way. For one – they bring data storage and sharing to the cloud – something that could help the Administration achieve its Federal Cloud Computing Initiative.
Socrata has also created SODA, the Socrata Open Data API, which is intended to make it easier for application developers and governmental IT staff to design and create web apps that will make data available to constituents. SODA may give Socrata a leg-up in their efforts to convince governments to use their service to reach constituents. We will definitely be keeping our eyes peeled for new applications being built on the SODA platform.
The company lists its investors as Frasier Technology Ventures, a Seattle based tech focused venture firm and Morgenthaler Ventures, which is based in Menlo Park, CA. With funding coming from the home of Microsoft and Amazon.com and Silicon Valley, Socrata seems poised to link up with tech power players should their approach prove successful in convincing the government to go social with their data. Only time (and some elections) will tell whether or not the government goes social with their data.
