[Bessig] Fwd: Preserving open government data: Data Rescue event this weekend at University of Colorado

[Cathy]

I understand the desire to save data but why have a hackathon? Government orgs like the one I'm in can direct people to how best to get the data and save it along with documentation. I have not seen any email to our group from these efforts requesting how to get the data, how it is documented or if we have more data we could make public that isn't now. Data without any context is much less useful. 

Webpages are a different thing and saving them makes some sense. Though if no one is releasing new data about animal treatment, how will people be able to get that with any hackathon of old data. 

Cathy 


----- Original Message -----

From: "Daniel Ziskin" <ziskin at ucar.edu> 
To: "Cathy" <besthiker at comcast.net> 
Cc: bessig at lists.esipfed.org 
Sent: Wednesday, February 15, 2017 10:54:45 AM 
Subject: Re: [Bessig] Fwd: Preserving open government data: Data Rescue event this weekend at University of Colorado 

I think this is more of a political response to the possibility that public access to government data will be rescinded because it doesn't support a particular ideology. To that end, I endorse the effort. 

The USDA has already shut down access to its records of animal abuse by agribusiness[1] and the Dept of Education has already shut down a website that explains protections for disabled students[2]. What's next? 

1. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/02/wildlife-watch-usda-animal-welfare-trump-records/ 
2. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/devos-disabilities-web-site_us_58a0fd7ae4b094a129ec35b8 

On Wed, Feb 15, 2017 at 9:46 AM, Cathy via Bessig < bessig at lists.esipfed.org > wrote: 



Not to be too annoying, but why are they having a hackathon to get the data? They can just ask for it. Data that has not been preserved is likely behind firewalls and on local storage devices. Accessing them in a government system is illegal. Also, even if you were to get it, you would probably not be able to make sense of it. If someone asked for help getting data, we would help them in our group. And for free! 

NCAR already archives an enormous amount of data. It is doubtful that is going anywhere. And it is well documented. Other institutions around the world already archive public data from the US. 

The real issues with data include data that has not been fully processed and made available. This includes data that is on tape, paper, or cd, etc. Or data that was recorded but not processed and documented. Some of that is worth saving and may be at risk with less funding but a hackathon won't help. And, as a scientist, data streams that are stopped (observing systems) are much more of an issue than saving already public data. This is a particular issue for climate where long, consistent records are needed. The various hackathons out there make it sound like data will be fine but it won't be. 

Cathy 

From: "Neal McBurnett via Bessig" < bessig at lists.esipfed.org > 
To: bessig at lists.esipfed.org 
Sent: Wednesday, February 15, 2017 9:17:08 AM 
Subject: [Bessig] Preserving open government data: Data Rescue event this weekend at University of Colorado 

As experts with data, we know that having access to data is the first requirement. But we face a risk that critical environmental data may disappear from the public domain, for political reasons. 

The folks at Data Refuge ( http://www.ppehlab.org/datarefuge ) are organizing a hackathon event this weekend Feb 18-19 in which volunteers will be trained to search for federal data that hasn't been preserved yet and help do so, partnering with repositories at places like the Internet Archive, datarefuge.org , and a consortium of major research libraries. 

Who knows what important and interesting data you may run across? 

Sign up for the event, to be held at CU Boulder's beautiful Law Library, at 

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/data-rescue-boulder-tickets-31995427184 

Learn more at 

https://www.facebook.com/dataRescueBoulder/ 

End of Term Presidential Harvest 2016 
http://digital2.library.unt.edu/nomination/eth2016/about/ 

This is not the first time that there has been an End of Term Web harvest. See previous ones at: 

http://eotarchive.cdlib.org/ 

Cheers, 

Neal McBurnett http://neal.mcburnett.org/ 
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-- 
Dan Ziskin, PhD 
NCAR - Atmospheric Chemistry Observations & Modeling Laboratory 
MOPITT Data Manager 
303-497-2913 


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