Out of curiosity, I wondered what sort of data my home county (Salt Lake County) kept and if I could get access to it.
It was easy to find... but apparently will cost me $1000 dollars to access it...
Perhaps I don't understand exactly how the Assessor's office works, but it seems pretty wrong that public data from an organization funded by taxpayers isn't freely available for download.
The article doesn't mention it, but it looks like LA County charges as well.
I started a company that works extensively with geospatial data and I often interact with cities from across the country (https://angel.co/civic-insight). Learning how to get access to government data was probably one of most challenging parts of starting up, but I've seen a significant evolution in the thinking of governments in the past few years.
I was a Code for America Fellow in 2012 (I am still heavily involved in the space) and back then any talk of publishing datasets, shapefiles or having "APIs" was thought to be an exotic topic reserved for fancy cities with large budgets like San Francisco and Boston. It was something that smaller cities would love to have but don't have the resources to do anything about it.
But that's not the case anymore. Even a lot of the smaller cities now understand that opening up now gives them access to a new ecosystem of tools and technologies that are rapidly developing.
It is really easy to be cynical about government policies and feel like there is little that can be done to change them, but it seems like what you are doing and orgs within the government, like 18F, are having success in changing the game, at least when it comes to tech.
It depends. Taxpayer dollars may only barely cover the cost of getting the data together, but distributing it could be fairly significant as a budgetary item. To cover that cost they may just charge some fee that has several uses:
- Keep taxes down and only support people who really have a serious need for it
- Cover the cost of packaging and distribution (and other associated costs)
I don't necessarily agree with this, but these are the kinds of justifications that are generally tossed around inside the government about these kinds of things.
A better question for the people that live there is 'are the cost of distributing the data artificially inflated?'.
In my own county the costs of document scanning and record storage were in the 1 to 2 million dollar range for years. Oddly this coincided with the county commissioner having a husband that work for Xerox at the time, the Xerox office also handled the counties scanning and document storage. Amazingly after the time that commissioner was no longer in the office the contracts were renegotiated and the price dropped over 25%. The biggest issue I have seen working at the local government level for over a decade now is very few people without a stake in the game ever review the use of technology by the counties. Politics has far more sway than best practices.
I'm assuming you meant the prices dropped to 1/4 of their previous level. Even then, pretty much any civic minded organization or "citizen scientist" is priced out of the market. In fact, the only people who can access it, in that range, are people who can turn a profit on it, i.e., likely not looking out for the public interest as a primary concern.
Prices didn't drop, but oddly enough they were not excessively priced in the first place, as compared to many other counties. The operations of the records department are funded from the general fund and not self supporting. Still if you were purchasing many thousands of pages like someone in the data sciences would, the cost would be excessive.
In retrospect probably one of the dumber things I've ever done is not keep 2TB of county records from 1850 to 2008 after a company closed down operations. There wasn't any particular reason I couldn't keep them, they were paid for and the company didn't sell them off after closing. The server was likely neglected for years after that and eventually formatted.
In a roundabout way, that answers the original question, doesn't it? This sort of data is so seldom used, that efforts at 'standardizing' and 'broad distribution' don't scale. You didn't see any value or use in the data for years, only in hindsight, maybe, it would have been fun to look at. Because that's what it is - it's fun (for those from outside the field) to read posts like the OP every once in a while, but there's very little actual value in it, and it's too much work for the vast majority of people to do themselves.
I work in geospatial modelling and I use data like this every day; have been for 15 years. So I know a thing or two about availability of this sort of data, how hard it is to assemble and maintain, and how many people actually do something with it. In the EU, there are directives that create obligations for governments to offer all sorts of data freely to everybody. The amount of money this costs is staggering, and although I'm very happy with it (because it has made my life 100 times easier in the data respect), the useful stuff that is done with it by people who didn't have access to it before is minimal; and certainly disproportional to the amount of money that goes into it. The consultants are laughing all the way to the bank, of course (and hey, I get paid indirectly from it as well, so it's not like I'm complaining).
So that makes the 'data should be open' mantra an entirely ideological disposition. I used to believe it as well, but then why shouldn't we also say 'governments can only spend money on vegan stuff because some people believe in 'animals rights'?' I no longer see pet peeves like 'free data' as black and white as I used to. Bureaucracies are expensive, partly because their goal is not efficiency (which is something that is usually overlooked by the naive) and partly because of other effects inherent to them. We need to restrain ourselves in what and how much we demand from them.
A group from Code For America came to my town recently (Tempe, AZ) and they address a lot of the issues with access to public data. Was really glad to see things like this exist. http://www.codeforamerica.org
$1000 doesn't sound expensive to me, for the first request. Somebody has to think about the question whether there is confidential or copyrighted information in there, somebody has to to write a decent disclaimer, think about any security implications, etc.
Having said that, a government nowadays should have an open data policy. You shouldn't need to make a freedom of information request for 'bureacratic' data.
Also, any 'for the people' government should allow the free download of such information, and 'the people' should realize that that costs some money. That, I think, is a problem in the USA, from both sides.
> it seems pretty wrong that public data from an organization funded by taxpayers isn't freely available for download.
One really nice thing about the USA is how much public and open data there is. In Europe you can't even get access to maps, which is why OSM was created in Europe.
Whilst the Open Street Map is free its important to note that the Ordinance Survey maps are some of the most detailed in the world. They offer a free access option and a paid option. Whilst the organisation is operated out of public money I am not opposed to its usage terms that are in effect a tax on business use.
You can get access to a lot of data in Europe, including maps (ordinance survey). In fact the UK has more open data available than the US, according to OpenDataBarometer:
That doesn't appear to be a very good counter point, your own link confirms what the parent said.
There's one country ahead of the US in that list, half of Europe averages middling scores, and the other half is either not even listed (eg Bulgaria, Moldova, Croatia, Belarus) or posts incredibly bad scores (eg Poland, Greece, Hungary, Belgium, Iceland).
The interesting thing with charges like this is that they tend to be decided by one person. (in the case of things like court fees and record access, Clerks of Court often ignore state mandates, because they can) The easiest way to fix this might be to make an issue of this the next time the County Assessor has an election. Which might cost more than $1000, but if it were your main business...
my previous county listed lots, primary owner, and assessed value, when they first went live many years ago. Since then I think they only removed the owner's name; it usually was just last name.
why was it important, having someone who you don't want contact with could determine your home and possible income simply by searching the county tax records.
>Perhaps I don't understand exactly how the Assessor's office works, but it seems pretty wrong that public data from an organization funded by taxpayers isn't freely available for download.
Hear, hear!
I have looked at various online records offices for various properties located in cities across the USA and most every single one was a horrifyingly slow, blast from the past type experience. I'm talking minutes for basic queries to complete. And expensive to boot. Usually $5 to $10 per query.
> Perhaps I don't understand exactly how the Assessor's office works, but it seems pretty wrong that public data from an organization funded by taxpayers isn't freely available for download.
I think those costs are there because the provision of that data is considered above and beyond the mandate of the Assessor's Office.
>>public data from an organization funded by taxpayers isn't freely available
Perhaps it was free, they wouldn't have resources to compile it? Plenty of things that tax payer money supports aren't free, for example suburban swimming pools or perhaps more egregiously sports venues.
It was easy to find... but apparently will cost me $1000 dollars to access it...
Perhaps I don't understand exactly how the Assessor's office works, but it seems pretty wrong that public data from an organization funded by taxpayers isn't freely available for download.
The article doesn't mention it, but it looks like LA County charges as well.