Open source, procurement, and gov tech.
Like many open data developers, I’m sick of scraping. Writing yet another script to extract data from thousands of pages of HTML is exhausting, made worse by the sneaking sense that I’m enabling the continuation of terrible information-sharing practices by government. Luckily, it’s becoming more common for government websites to create a sort of an …
Continue reading ““Accidental APIs”: Naming a design pattern.”
The power industry has begun its long-anticipated shift towards demand-based pricing of electricity. Dominion Power, my electric company here in Virginia, has two basic rates: winter and summer. Although the math is a bit complicated, electricity costs about 50% more in the summer than in the winter, averaging 12¢ per kilowatt hour. (One can also pay for sustainably …
Continue reading “Dynamic electrical pricing demands dynamic price data.”
Further to the matter of Sen. Phil Puckett’s retirement, I want to play out the shades of inappropriateness here. While what he has done clearly feels wrong (allegedly quitting his seat in the Senate of Virginia in exchange for a job running a state-chartered organization and a judgeship for his daughter, all done immediately prior …
This evening, the Washington Post’s Laura Vozella covered big political news: Republicans appear to have outmaneuvered Gov. Terry McAuliffe in a state budget standoff by persuading a Democratic senator to resign his seat, at least temporarily giving the GOP control of the chamber and possibly dooming the governor’s push to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care …
Continue reading “Ethics and tobacco meet again in Richmond.”
In Virginia, you can’t just get a list of all of the registered corporations. That’s not a thing. If you dig for a while on the State Corporation Commission’s website, you’ll find their “Business Entity Search,” where you can search for a business by name. But if you want to get a list of all …
Many months ago, my friend Tim Hwang told me that he’d like to see an API created for corporate registrations, because that would enable all kinds of interesting things. Tim runs the semi-serious Robot Robot & Hwang, a legal startup that aspires to be a law firm run entirely in software. I’ve been chewing over this idea …
The last time I started a business was over a decade ago. Good news: it’s gotten a lot easier. There was a lot of overhead in startup costs that have been reduced to little or nothing, due to the rise of internet-based tools. I had to do some research and try a lot of tools …
I’ve joined a new endeavor this week—the U.S. Open Data Institute. Today is just day #2 for me, and for the organization. The US ODI is modeled on the UK-based Open Data Institute, a year-old organization that’s bridging the gaps between government and the private sector. That’s what we intend to do at the US …
This is a piece I wrote about the importance of media outlets sharing the raw data on which their articles are based, as they do with prose (e.g., FOIAed documents) with increasing frequency. →
I’m a smart guy. I’m not bragging. It’s not like I deserve any credit for being smart. I didn’t do anything to make that happen. I’m also tall, but nobody compliments me on that. (Good job being tall!) Intelligence is an immutable characteristic that I have at times capitalized on and at other times let …
Continue reading ““I put Algernon’s body in a cheese box and buried him in the backyard. I cried.””