We are thrilled to release our new website gastopublico.es after 48-hours of extreme hard work. We are more than proud of the result, the design, the cuantity and cuality of data is amazing. Even if we have been not been able to develop all services we wanted to do still there is so much interesting information that you can search for, comment and vizzualize….
One of the most difficult side has been the scraping of the public web site. Contrataciondelestado.es is one of the most difficult databases to scrap.
Another problem has been the need to understand the specialized glossary for public procurement (I am afraid I dont know the names in english but a good way to understand our difficulties could be to watch this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZBY7rIOrNg)
But we’ve not only had problems, we have enjoyed many other moments..and the proof is in eating the pudding (spanish translate: y para muestra un boton): http://www.flickr.com/photos/jatorre/sets/72157623758617921/
We don want to extend any more, we are going to celebrate it!!!
The middle of the time has gone and we have already experienced several adventures during this short time.
There have been several issues along the day we would like to point out:- First of all, we are increasingly reducing the number of functionalities as the time goes by and we foresee that it is not possible to finish it on time (I hope we are not the only abredatos team that are encountering this problem…). - Javi discovered that Google Fusion Tables is still too much beta and was having serious interface problems so he had to get back to SQL and has delayed him several hours (and that is a big percentage of time in abredatos!)- Sergio had to redesign the home several times and we are still not sure how to implement the participation service of the project- That some people are following our code from the repository almost at realtime!- That everybody is going out at the time we are coming back to the office after dinner…
…but even after all this issues, we are really motivated and are looking forward to continuing our adventure!!
FYI: Next post will be just after www.gastopublico.es will be released.
Enjoy!
We are very excited to announce that Vizzuality is going to participate this weekend in abredatos, a new way to develop web applications based on public data. This initiative is the first one to happen in Spain, following the initiatives from New York City BigApps in the US and showusabetterway in UK.
Abredatos is having already a great success in the community. There are currently more than 45 teams willing to compete. If you also have a good idea, you’d better hurry up, the deadline to participate finishes on Friday 16th April at 12:00 AM.
Vizzuality is going to show its work under the gastopublico.es (public expenses in English). The web based application will present procurement information related to public construction geolocalized, so that anybody can see the public works being done in its surrounding area.
Vizzuality truly believes in active participation of citizens, gastopublico.es will not only be a way to show more transparency on public data, but also to retrieve feedback by the citizens, the real payers of the constructions. The new web will use wikipedia, voota and other participative services to improve public data.
Vizzuality wishes good luck to all participants!
Madrid is full of potholes! And people are reporting them a lot, 90 daily, but this data is not public and there is no way to know how many are out there and when they get fixed. This is the first of some more projects we are working around the idea of Open Government. We would really like to see some of the initiatives from US and other countries, applied in Spain.
We wanted to develop something quick and not complicate. Fortunately at the sametime we were thinking about developing the project, the new Google Fusion Tables API just appeared. With Fusion Tables it is pretty easy to develop truly scalable mapping solutions based on Google Maps. With a bit of code here and there we developed over a weekend a website with no database backend, only mashing up APIs.
On the other hand we are getting more and more into mobile phone development, and with the current Iphones, Androids, etc all equipped with GPS, every mobile is a sensor device! So we are currently developing an Iphone and Android applications to help people submit potholes just in place. Please ask us to enter the beta program.
Expect more and more tools from us about Open Government and Open311 in the next months. Meanwhile report potholes in Spain!
