Why are local governments in the Portland area supporting the Open Data initiative?

Support of open source, open data, and open standards is the first step to attaining more open and transparent government. A number of them are working with regional public, private, and non-profit organizations to provide a data platform to enable the good will of others in the community to contribute the best ideas and innovations to address civic needs and solutions to problems. The Design Challenge will help to incentivize the development of applications using the open datasets.