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Wolfram Alpha: Computational knowledge for increased transparency?18. May 2009 – 11:05 by Bengt Feil (TuTech Innovation GmbH) |
It is generally accepted that availability of public and parliament data in standardized formats like XML helps to increase transparency. Websites like Recovery.gov, which gives detailed information about the use of public funds to strengthen the economy in the USA, have been praised for being great examples of this kind of transparency increase, but are set up and managed by government organisations. But data availability does not mean but itself that this data is accessible to ordinary citizens in every case. Even though organisations and programmers may be able to make use and sense of data presented in a very rigid and standardized way and make it accessible to the public, ordinary citizens might be overwhelmed and unable to put the data to real use. Last weekend a new platform has been launched which may be the definite answer to this problem.
