How to Share Scientific Data The New York Times (08/13/13) John Markoff An inundation of digital scientific data has given rise to a debate over who should access it, how it can be stored, and who will pay to do so. A recent paper published in the journal Science by Google chief Internet evangelist and ACM president Vint Cerf and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute computer scientist Francine Berman recommended sharing the costs of making the data widely available. The paper notes that managing the data would entail a major cultural shift within the government, corporate institutions, and individual researchers. Cerf says storing and sharing digital information is becoming a "crucial issue" for both public and private institutions. The debate could intensify next week when U.S. government agencies are expected to submit proposals for how they would "support increased public access to the results of research funded by the federal government." The challenge will likely be compounded by U.S. Office of Science and Technology Policy director John P. Holdren's edict that such plans be executed using "resources within the existing agency budget." The lack of new money makes addressing the cost issues difficult, according to the National Science Foundation's Alan Blatecky. Cerf and Berman suggest that private companies and corporate and academic labs should invest in new computer data centers and storage systems to prevent the loss of vital research data. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/13/science/how-to-share-scientific-data.html Hackers Called Into Civic Duty The Wall Street Journal (08/13/13) Ben Kesling U.S. cities strapped for cash are tapping civic-minded hackers to inexpensively improve their online services by using city data to build apps for tracking diverse activities. For example, last year Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel signed an executive order mandating the city make available all data not guarded by privacy statutes, and Code for America reports that Chicago now has almost 950 publicly accessible data sets. Among the hacker-developed products used by Chicago is an app that maps house fires and determines if the house has any residents who might require recovery and resettlement assistance from the local Red Cross. Other examples of hacker-generated civic apps is New York City's free Embark program, which tracks train locations in real time and plots out routes for subway riders, and San Francisco's free iPhone app, which lets people use public parks and areas by supplying parking data and class schedules and displaying photos of the green spaces. Hackers also are helping South Bend, IN, mine volumes of unstructured data to extract useful information, while Code for America aims to place programming volunteers in cities that want to put civic data to better use. "It's a year-long commitment, almost like Peace Corps for geeks," says Code for America's Christopher Whitaker. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324263404578613850076916028.html Barry Wellman _______________________________________________________________________ NetLab Director FRSC INSNA Founder Faculty of Information (iSchool) 611 Bissell Building 140 St. George St. University of Toronto Toronto Canada M5S 3G6 http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman twitter: @barrywellman NETWORKED:The New Social Operating System. Lee Rainie & Barry Wellman MIT Press http://amzn.to/zXZg39 Print $22 Kindle $16 Old/NewCyberTimes http://bit.ly/c8N9V8 ________________________________________________________________________