The Open Planning Project

via topplabs.org/civichacker

Amid the ongoing controversy over the M.T.A.'s attempt to block a local blogger's iPhone application for Metro North train schedules, members of The Open Planning Project on Tuesday evening held a New York Public Transit Summit to discuss forging "a positive, mutually beneficial relationship between the M.T.A. and the wider New York development community."

We couldn't make it to the event, but TOPP's Civic Hacker blog has a recap. Apparently there were more than two dozen "transit advocates, mobile and web developers, urban planners, lawyers, and open government supporters" in attendance. No M.T.A. reps showed, although they did give the group a statement on the agency's current licensing policies.

If you're curious about some of the specific topics that were addressed, the group has set up a wiki. They've also taken the issue over to Twitter via the #nytransit hash tag.

openplanningproject.org

Streetsblog's Aaron Naparstek.

At the end of day one of the Personal Democracy Forum Conference, as the majority of attendees mingled with beer and wine in hand during a post-conference cocktail hour, a group of about 20 good-government advocates, Web developers and general techie types gathered for a special session called Hacking the City.

According to the conference materials, the purpose of the event—which was something of a local supplement to the more nationally focused panels that had been taking place all day—was to discuss “how online journalism, advocacy and community-building tools are being used to hack the urban political machine, rewrite city government's operating system and transform city dwellers' relationship to their local politics in New York.”

The conversation was led by members of The Open Planning Project, DIYcity founder John Geraci, and Streetsblog editor-in-chief Aaron Naparstek, who began by opening up the floor to thoughts on Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s announcement earlier in the day of a new contest for Web developers to design online and mobile applications out of city data, which will soon be made available in a programming-friendly format ("opened up").

The contest, called Big Apps, takes a cue from Washington D.C.’s Apps For Democracy challenge, Mr. Naparstek noted. But, he asked, “What can we do” with city data here in New York City?

council.nyc.gov

Brewer.

The Bloomberg administration is generally perceived as progressive when it comes to giving citizens access to municipal data. Dozens of reports and statistics from city agencies are just a click away on nyc.gov, and New York's 311 information service was a significant logistical achievement, even if the technology behind it—the telephone!—now seems a bit archaic.

But there's a growing demand among transparency advocates for a more comprehensive and sophisticated level of data sharing.

The latest sign: a new bill making its rounds in the City Council that would create unprecedented open data standards for New York City government.

The bill, which is being spearheaded by Gale Brewer, who chairs the Council's Technology in Government Committee, is up for a public hearing on June 29. It would compile all of the city’s public data on a single Web site, like data.nyc.gov, as well as making the data available in a raw, machine-readable format so that programmers could develop useful online and mobile applications out of it.