Technology

Victory for open data advocates in Tel Aviv

In an Israeli district court decision, the municipality of Tel Aviv has been ordered to publish its 2011 budget in machine-readable format, following a legal ba...

Federal News Network Staff

July 8, 2010 4:10 pm

1 min read

Open data advocates gained a victory Monday in Tel Aviv, Israel, when a district court there issued a ruling that orders the municipality to publish its budget in a machine-readable format, Movement for Freedom of Information in Israel Director Roy Peled wrote in an e-mail, TechPresident reports.

The municipality was already publishing its budget in book and PDF form. The decision applies from the 2011 budget onward, according to Peled. The municipality has already agreed to publish this year’s budget in a machine-readable format.

“The story begins a year ago when the opposition in the city council asked the muncipality to get a copy of its budget in a machine-readable file (XLS, CSV or the likes),” Peled wrote in an e-mail to the FOIAnet listserv. I checked in with him to verify that the words were, in fact, his. “The municipality refused, based on two claims – 1. that the law does not oblige them to do so and that the publication of the book itself and the PDF file meets legal requirements; 2. that the old mainframe systems the municipality is working with do not have this option and doing so would require unreasonable resources.”

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