Government Technology

"Communities that are poor in data, as well as the individuals living in those communities, may fail to thrive," Castro wrote in the report. "Rather than being the new oil, data may be the new oxygen."

The 2014 Best of the Web winners share collective insights to be used as a resource for state and local government agencies in website planning going forward.

"We feel that as we’re starting to have all this data in one place, the stuff we can do with it just grows exponentially."

This lesson of building great products and great platforms applies to the business world and also to government agencies seeking to use data analytics to improve performance, reduce costs and better serve their customers.

The new web portal https://apply.mt.gov/ lets Montanans check their eligibility and apply for the following programs and benefits.

It’s time to shift the conversation about open data away from transparency to economic value.

"We had a lot of people surveyed and we wanted something for the public to use that was intuitive and much easier to use."

"Data becomes more valuable when you can link it with other data sets. It can result in insights you wouldn’t have had before."

In Duluth, Minn., open data helped city residents decide if the local bus offers a better alternative to driving. The result: Bus ridership is up 12 percent, traffic congestion is down and the cost of transportation has dropped for many passengers. In 2012, San Francisco opened up access to real-time transit data, resulting in 22 percent fewer 311 calls, saving the city $1 million.

Former federal CTO Aneesh Chopra says the dissemination of government data can lead to big things