Headline Dec 17, 2014/

OPEN SESAME : 

''' THY CITY AND DATA '''

EVERY PAKISTANI City,  -I get to visit, I ask for the City data. And what follows is my ambush, for an utter exasperation. Two in one, -to say nothing more...........

O'' Sires.

When one fine day, you get wise to the ways of the world, and start looking back to historical data,  you are going to find some very fascinating discoveries. This is all I can say for the moment!

Mike Flowers, the chief analyst officer in New York.  says that if a property has a tax lien on it there is a   *nine fold increase*   in the chance of a catastrophic fire there.

And businesses that have broken licensing rules are far more likely to be selling cigarettes smuggled into the city in order to avoid paying local taxes.

Over in Chicago, the city knows with mathematical precision that when it gets calls complaining about rubbish bins in certain areas, a rat problem will follow a week later. 

Thanks, to Chicago's chief information officer, it is just so easy to discover a great deal about the city.

For three months, last year, for example, 5,973  vehicles were moved; since the start of  2011,  72,687  complaints about faulty lights have been reported;

And in the first half of  2012  the tourist-information website was apparently unavailable for  5,870 minutes. The city says that this was caused by a fault in the monitoring software.

Many cities around the US, for example, San Francisco, New York, Philadelphia, Boston and Chicago are or soon will be sharing the grades that health inspectors give to restaurants with an online restaurant directory.

One great way of attempting to do all this is simply to publish the raw data and hope that others will figure out how to use them. This has been particularly successful in Chicago, where  computer nerds  have used open data to create many entirely new services.

And then the next step is to use these predictions to inform policymaking. New York is already doing this,  for example by deciding where to send its cigarette-tax inspectors.

Chicago is not quiet at this point yet, but is ambitiously trying to build an  ''open source predictive analytics platform''. 

This means that it will publish as many data as it can,  as close to real time as possible,  in a way that it will allow anyone to mine them for useful insights into the city.  

Applications are now available that show which streets have been cleared after a snowfall, what time a bus or train will arrive and how requests to fix potholes are progressing.

New York and Chicago are bringing together data from departments across their respective cities in order to improve their decision-making. 

When a city holds a parade it can combine data on street closures, bus routes, weather patterns, rubbish trucks and emergency calls in real time.

Moreover, the  software Chicago plans to create will be made public, allowing other cities to use it to set up similar systems of their own. New York keeps its analysis behind closed doors and uses proprietary technology. 

It is a big job and means cleaning up 10 billion lines of unstructured data. the hope is that new services will emerge, as well as a great deal of new intelligence about how the city works.

All these data will allow public to scrutinise just about anything, as well as the top man and his officials more closely than ever before.

And if a developing country like, Pakistan, attempts   -the above enumerated approach seriously, it will gain benefits all around and in addition,  thousands of students will find a meaningful career.

Great Governance,  -without the right use of tools and technology, would be impossible to say the least. To say nothing!

With respectful dedication to the leaders of the developing world. See Ya all Your Excellencies on !WOW!   -the World Students Society Computers-Internet-Wireless:

''' By The Numbers  -We Go '''

'''Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless