Saturday, August 21, 2010

Putting Water District assets online, and on Google Earth

Something that I've mentioned before and wanted to document here as an important additional step for Water District transparency is to make it possible to find online all of the property that the Water District owns. All the property, all the buildings, all the infrastructure, and all the easements should be available online for the public to know about.

Making it available on the District website is a good idea, but in addition it should be viewable in some kind of mapping function. Google Earth could provide an excellent framework, where anyone could simply click a button, see what property the District owns in Santa Clara County, and then scan it in detail or click through for more information about a particular property.

I understand that a perfect mapping function onto Google Earth may be difficult, but to give a general idea of what the District owns and where shouldn't be too hard, and will help the public control and monitor what we all own together.

-Brian

1 comment:

  1. Great Idea. This should apply to all gov't agencies and cities.

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