Earlier today there was some traffic via social media that talked about our office releasing address data via GitHub. The news was genuinely complementary and we certainly appreciated the coverage.

The interesting part to us is that this really wasn’t news at all. You see we’ve been working closely with our counties in Arkansas for a good number of years. We first began publishing address point data in 2009 and have steadily worked with counties since then to get the reminder of our state completed and published. We are not finished yet but the work is steadily progressing. And, we will publish the data when it is completed for others to consume, share, and utilize. It’s really important for public safety and also important for economic development.

This just goes to show that GIO’s in the states are pretty good at coordinating GIS data development but not so good at marketing that information once built.

Like some of you reading this I was extremely excited about the address bounty that was released by the US open data initiative. That bit of effort will help shed light on states where address data is being built coordinated and published. Thanks USODI and thanks to the GitHub community for the kinds words. We’ve been at this for a while and it’s nice to see the acknowledgement.

The real credit goes to those front line workers in the city and county offices across our state and their vendors who have also put in hard work to create this data for a common purpose. Shared in a common platform and publish it for others to use.

For more on why states are doing this head here.