New Data Set Suggestions: Property Values, Sex Offenders, Crime Reports

[schnuerle]

I'd like to offer up some new data set suggestions, based on ones our brigades in Kentucky would like to see opened up. Most of these are also gathered at the state level in many other states too.

Property Values
Our property assessors are in each county, but they are run at the state level. I think NY is similar. I know they roll up their data to the state PVA (Property Valuation Administrator) office. Currently if you want the data you get it on a per county basis by paying for it. Louisville, KY's costs $10,000 each time you want a refresh, and you can't share it.

Sex Offenders
These are tracked at the state level across all the US. I don't know of many states that let you download the raw data, though most, like KY, let you browse it. You have to pay a large sum for the data if you want the raw data now.

Crime Reports
The KY State Police have a vendor system that collects every individual police report from each county and stores it at the state level. It's called KYOps. You can request this data from state police, but there is no way to view it online or download it. I'm sure other states have a similar system. Would be better to get all the data across the state at once instead of asking for it from each city and county gov.

Individual Political Contributions
KY has a way to download individual's contributions to any political races across the state, even local races. It's horribly cumbersome but works, kinda. Not sure what other states have.

[waldoj]

Oh, we're not lacking for ideas of datasets to inventory. The trick is inventorying them for every one of 50 states. :) But when we finish this process, that'll be our chance to stop back and reconsider whether we selected the right datasets, whether we used the right criteria, and what additional datasets should be added down the line. Thanks for these suggestions!