The Wrong Way to Capture Public Data

Posted March 27, 2007 * Comments(2)

In the wake of the pet food contamination recall crisis, where pets are being poisoned from pet food, a database created by veterinarian Dr. Marty Becker has gotten a lot of attention. Good things:

  • It’s great that someone other than the government is collecting this information
  • It’s great that they link to the FDA site– government/private cooperation

But

  • They only display the aggregate numbers
  • No ability for others to analyze the data
  • No geographic representation of the data

Tools like Google Maps and Frappr make it easy to do more with data. Data presented publicly can be analyzed by the crowd, making for more connections, more thinking. Publicly collected data ought to be displayed publicly.

2 Comments so far

  1. Gina Spadafori on March 27th, 2007

    Thank you so much for your constructive criticism and suggestions for the future. I appreciate any ideas in this direction, since I’m sure this won’t be the last time there’ll be an effort to independently collect information on a breaking story.

    Gina Spadafori
    Executive Editor |Columnist
    Pet Connection
    Universal Press Syndicate
    PetConnection.com
    petconnection@gmail.com

  2. dxo on March 28th, 2007

    Gina:
    Thanks for the comment.
    It must have been crazy for you all on your site when the news hit, and you did what you could.
    I’d be happy to help you analyze/ present the data, if you’re interested…
    DXO

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