The SpotCrime standard and guidelines for open crime data
There are already methods for agencies to share information among each other like N-Dex, NEIM, GJXDM. But what about sharing information openly with the public?
Currently, Baltimore shares data differently than Baltimore County who shares it differently than Annapolis, MD who shares it differently than Arlington, VA who shares it differently than Dallas, TX who shares it differently than LA who shares it differently than Vancouver, BC who shares it differently than London, England. Until now.
We’ve created the SpotCrime Open Crime Data Standard to encourage police agencies throughout the world to keep crime public data uniform, simple, and ubiquitous. We’ve also created the standard to set guidelines for making public crime information open and accessible to the public.
Similar to LIVES with health inspection data or GTFS with transit data, the SpotCrime Open Crime Data Standard will allow agencies to report the same kind of information to the public openly, causing less confusion from agency to agency.
‘Open’ data means the information is available to anyone in machine readable format without restriction on ability to use, consume, or share.
We believe applying this standard will not only help agencies collaborate, but will help close the gap between desire and ability for developers and residents. It will also allow for local crime data to be easier understood at any level whether it’s locally, countywide, regionally, statewide, nationally, or internationally.
Some additional benefits of standardizing and releasing data openly includes saving on costs associated with mundanely responding to public records requests and inquires by interested residents or the media. It will also eliminate costs associated with hiring a vendor to display information to the public. And, most importantly, it will allow developers to write apps consuming the data in a ‘pretty’ format (think crime maps!) - for free! Philadelphia is a great example of a city that releases crime data and has received multiple free crime mapping apps in return.
We think this is a work in progress, but feel that the process needed to be initiated.
Let us know what you think.