RE: Ed and Outreadch Opportunity

Brian,

 

One option to consider might be XForms (and XSLTForms in particular).
Although I'm not familiar with the school district financial data, it seems
like publishing an XForm on a central website and mandating that school
districts fill it out would be easy to create, maintain, and implement.  The
output files could then be posted centrally and/or locally.    

 

I'm working with Owen Ambur and several others on something like this for
StratML.  Check out http://www.xmldatasets.net/XF2/stratmlxform3.xml.   It's
still being developed but it might serve as an example.  The idea is to
provide a way to create, import, update, display, and finally catalog
StratML fles across the web.    

 

Joe

 

 

From: public-egov-ig-request@w3.org [mailto:public-egov-ig-request@w3.org]
On Behalf Of Novak, Kevin
Sent: Tuesday, January 26, 2010 12:13 PM
To: Brian Gryth; eGovIG IG
Subject: RE: Ed and Outreadch Opportunity

 

Brian,

 

I am here to help you.

 

I can provide input and opinion on the piece you are developing. I concur
with your assessment of PDF. Other options in addition must be considered.

 

Kevin

 

From: public-egov-ig-request@w3.org [mailto:public-egov-ig-request@w3.org]
On Behalf Of Brian Gryth
Sent: Tuesday, January 26, 2010 12:08 PM
To: eGovIG IG
Subject: Ed and Outreadch Opportunity

 

Good day all,

Members of the Colorado General Assembly introduced legislation recently
that would mandate school districts to publish certain financial data in a
down loadable format.  The bill is HB10-1036 and is available at
http://legislink.org/us-co?HB10-1036.  This is a good thing on the surface.
What concerns me is the fiscal impact statement associated with the
legislation.  The concerning part of the fiscal impact statement focuses on
the information being released in PDF or in an image format (e.g. JPEG,
TIFF, GIF), but does not talk about other formats.  The fiscal note is
available at http://bit.ly/80RBiu.  As has been discussed by this group and
in other places, PDF only publication is not the best method of publishing
government data.

 

Therefore, I saw this as a perfect opportunity for some education and
outreach.  I am planning on putting some summarized information together
that will discuss data publication methods to sent to the bill sponsors and
other members of the Colorado legislature.  I also plan on speaking at the
Senate hearing for the bill as a concerned citizen.

 

I would appreciate the assistance of anyone wishing to help me out.  Please
feel free to e-mail me and I will share a Google Doc I will be using to
draft the materials.

Thanks
Brian