Getting Public Data For Application

[lincolnway]

There are a number of companies that provide public data on subjects such as closed properties. Does anyone have any idea on where you can access this information. Idea would to be build a system like some of these companies have that provide this data. Kind of an odd question for this forum but I thought I would ask in case someone knew.

Thanks if you can help.

[etully]

Often the data is public and free. But it's your job to drive down to the county clerk's office, make a photocopy, bring it home, scan it in, and use OCR or something to convert it to a format that can go into a database and be searchable on your web site.

That's the value added by lots of these web sites that publish free public data. They've done all the leg work.

If the city is going to publish the data in electronic form and pay for the bandwidth for people to obtain it from them, then there has to be some benefit to the city. If there isn't, then you have to drive down to town hall and photocopy it like everyone else.

Your best bet is to pick what kind of information you want to obtain, and then call your town hall and ask them if they have an electronic feed where you can transfer that data from them. You might find that you need to write a scraper to, umm, borrow the data from your town hall's web site.

[etully]

In other words, the city is obligated to make the information free and public. It's not their obligation to deliver it to you in the manner and method that would be just perfect for you - so don't expect very many free data feeds of public information.