Bulk Data Downloads: A Breakthrough in Government Transparency - O'Reilly Radar - 0 views
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Even though the data is public, it is very expensive today. The Copyright Database, for example, costs $86,625 for the retrospective and a one-year feed (we harvested this in 2007 as you reported, but this would be much easier if they simply provided an FTP server and rsync!)
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The Congressional Research Service is such a no-brainer. With the exception of classified information, who can afford the luxury of paying for some of the best research in the world and then just bury it! Taxpayer dollars paid for CRS reports and they need to be available.
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In this day and age, you can't say a committee hearing is public if you can't access it on the Internet. Itty-bitty streaming video using some proprietary client/format just doesn't cut it any more. We ran a pilot with 4 house committees to show that this is very doable and makes a huge difference
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