"Some agencies have either outdated data online or have presented it in a way that makes it difficult to collect, analyze, synthesize, and storify. These include a data journalist’s worst nightmare — figures published on PDFs instead of spreadsheets. The government’s need to improve data content curation and filtering mechanisms can be also compared to what Nicholas Sparks once explained as the difference between situational overload and ambient overload. He describes situational overload as a “needle-in-haystack problem” — you can’t find what you want amid the rubbish. Ambient overload, on the other hand, is having far too much of what you want: a haystack-sized pile of needles."

- An excerpt from my latest Insights piece at abs-cbnNEWS.com, Philippines: Open data, open government (via copyeditor)

(via copyeditor)