At a lunch in Chicago this fall, Deputy Chief Technology Officer for Open Government Beth Noveck encouraged a group of civic sector techies to make recommendations about open government and data transparency for various bureacracies. Noveck referenced the recently issued White House Open Government Directive (for more see the excellent analysis by TechPresident), and noted that they were interested in organizations pledging what they would build / do if the government did __blank__.

Since he took office this spring, I've had the privelege to see Asst. Sec. for Fair Housing John Trasviña speak a number of times. On every occassion he references the importance of taking fair housing "online", but to date his comments have focused on enforcement activities his office might take.

In response to this call and because we believe that there are a number of non-enforcement tech opportunities for HUD in general and Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity in particular, MoveSmart.org has been working with two large fair housing organizations to craft a set of tech recommendations for HUD and their office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity (FHEO). While they're not ready for release just yet, the Directive's aggressive time frame and our holiday plans compel us to give you a sneak peek.

Below are the data-focused recommendations (in short form) from the forthcoming document. We hope that HUD will consider these ideas during the next few weeks as they craft their initial plans to comply with the Directive, whose first deadline is in late January.

3.  HUD should create an electronic data collection system for Fair Housing Initiatives Program (FHIP) and Fair Housing Assistance Program (FHAP) recipients so performance data can be collated and reported to Congress and others.

6.  HUD should build a database and API of affordable housing locations and availability information.

7.  HUD should create a national transit data API as part of the Sustainable Communities Initiative.

10.  HUD should publish quarterly data on the number of complaints filed both with the agency and through grantees, broken down by HUD region, protected class, type of violation, zip code, and census tract.

11.  HUD should put all of its HUDUser.gov data into Data.gov and standardize the metadata.

There will be eleven recommendations in total accompanied by short explanations. Watch for the full list just after our break in early January.