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Chiming into a [Twitter conversation](https://twitter.com/mheadd/status/645982065767411712) today about the quality of open data portals, I wanted to explore further. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/mheadd">@mheadd</a>, I'm curious to know the outliers here. Where are the positive deviants?</p>— Ryan Wold (@randw) <a href="https://twitter.com/randw/status/646081720509313024">September 21, 2015</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script> Mark replied that [OpenDataPhilly](https://opendataphilly.org) was a strong example of what an effective data portal could look like. So, I went looking for other data portals. How can I get a quick understanding of the current state of data portals? Googling yields CKAN, and a few commercial solutions. The most canonical list of open data portals that I found was kindly provided as an open data-set by the [Sunlight Foundation](https://sunlightfoundation.com). I wrote a small script to screenshot 162 open data portals and published the [results on Flickr](https://www.flickr.com/photos/14165420@N04/albums/72157658948007355). Here's the code. <script src="https://gist.github.com/afomi/a969163fa08d17253b4d.js"></script> <a data-flickr-embed="true" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/14165420@N04/albums/72157658948007355/with/21427539310/" title="Open Data Portals"><img src="https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5648/21427539310_1b9a01be1c.jpg" width="496" height="500" alt="Open Data Portals"></a><script async src="//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js" charset="utf-8"></script> --- Quick, self-referential shot-out to [auto_screenshot](https://github.com/afomi/auto_screenshot), which is a Ruby .gem I wrote and like to use to document web projects ; ) Check it out! --- But thus far, we've just created a new, derivative data-set. A dataset of images based on the homepages of a given set of public data portals, at a given time. What interests me in open data is the opportunities it creates to interact with and understand information in a new way. In this case, seeing many examples of data portals at a glance, helps me form an impression about a current state of affairs. In some respects, data can enable a higher-resolution view of the world; or at least a tiny, temporary aspect of it.
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