Beginning a Public Open Data Infrastructure: An Interview with OpenAddresses

Address: YYC: 1304, Grant Hutschinson, https://flic.kr/p/4jxrQ6, CC BY-NC-ND

Address: YYC: 1304, Grant Hutschinson, https://flic.kr/p/4jxrQ6, CC BY-NC-ND

We caught up this week with , founder of the OpenAddresses project. OpenAddresses is trying to collect address information for every block all across the United States. They’re doing an impressive job – nearly 30% there. They’ve got a massive database accumulating on GitHub and the Open Data Institute has a temporary “bounty” on new addresses.

This is an important project. I see it as building a public open data infrastructure. It’s a complex task because it doesn’t involve just one dataset, but a combination of thousands of datasets from across the country. Building nationwide datasets like this, from the ground up, will form the next infrastructure of the open data web. Listen for Ian’s thoughts on this and more.

Show Notes

Alex Fink

Editor & Host at The OKCast
In addition to hosting the OKCast, I am a Ph.D. student in Youth Studies at the University of Minnesota. I study methods of making research to document injustice and resistance available to young people to create social change. My particular focus is on the political economy and ecology of data, including data collection, data use, data access/sharing, data economics, and the ideologies surrounding it.
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One comment on “Beginning a Public Open Data Infrastructure: An Interview with OpenAddresses
  1. wonder if it would be beneficial to have all of the shapefiles added into open street maps. perhaps an editathon to kick it off?
    random thoughts.

    Reply

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