Open Data by Default Proclamation - City of Palo Alto - Feb 3, 2014

We now have a special proclamation to do tonight from the city and it regards Open Data by default. And Jonathan, do you want to come close to the mic and I will read this out loud and then the mayor is going to come down and present it to you. Where is the city of Palo Alto? Here, after the city commits to improving the community by making government functions more transparent, participatory and accountable and whereas open government includes removing barriers to access to government information whereas the city commits to working to enable data captured and used by the city to be more easily accessible by people and machines while at the same time protecting privacy and the rights of others. Whereas the work of publishing public data for easier consumption by people and machines is known as open data and whereas an increasingly robust open data program will help foster public engagement, improve delivery of public services and create new opportunities for innovation and whereas the city commits to work toward a future in which important government data and information will be open data by default. Therefore, I'm reading this for Nancy. I, Nancy Shepherd, Mayor on behalf of the City Council, do hereby issue this proclamation support of you tonight and let's applaud. Jonathan Great. Great. And would you care to say a few words?

I would. Thank you so much sir. Jonathan Reichental, Chief Information Officer I'd like to just say thanks to a few folks and then just make a few quick comments, first of all to the City Council for your vision, support and commitment to open government. I'd like to thank also City Manager Keane. If it wasn't for him being a leading champion of civic innovation, Open data would still be an academic discussion here. City Hall. I also want to thank City Attorney Molly Stump who has provided sound advice to staff and helped all of us maneuver through the many and important legal and ethical considerations of this. And finally, I want to thank my colleague Michael Tsao behind me who does much of the day to day operations related to open data. So Michael, just raise your hand. Thank you very much. So I wanted to say I believe that what we're doing on our journey to make data more easily available and accessible and machine consumable transcends other technology related initiatives we're going to take because it's data that underpins almost every decision we make and every project we do. This is the technology related initiative that best aligns with all our city efforts, our democracy building, community trust and later on economic opportunities. Coincidentally, it aligns very well with the President's digital government agenda which has three objectives and I just wanted to read one of them. It's Objective 3 and the Federal digital government agenda says to unlock the power of government data to spur innovation across our nation and improve the quality of services for the American people. And it goes on to say we must enable the public, entrepreneurs and our own government programs to better leverage the rich wealth of data to pour into applications and services by ensuring that data is open and machine readable by default. So our action here in Palo Alto tonight should inspire, I hope it does, other cities across America to do exactly the same. I can't overstate the importance of this proclamation to our community and to others. And I want to thank you very, very much for that. Thanks, Johnson. It.