To that end, we here at the Department of Commerce are excited to support the development of voice recognition tools such as the Amazon Alexa Skills Kit, which further democratize access and open public data for everyone’s benefit.
Commerce Secretary Pritzker has made the President’s Open Data vision a pillar of her “Open for Business” strategy for the department. Given all of Commerce’s incredible data, the vision has been to make this data more consumable, and to bring a data-driven approach to our own operations.
On Oct. 7–8, software developers and civic hackers are invited to build innovative solutions that connect open data with voice recognition.
The “Alexa Skills Open Data Challenge” will be held at Amazon’s headquarters in Seattle, Washington. To support participants, Commerce will showcase its vast, open datasets and provide in-depth technical assistance through the Department’s digital service shop, Commerce Data service, along with support from bureaus like the U.S. Census Bureau.
By leveraging Commerce’s extraordinary open datasets, the following scenarios are possible with data from the National Weather Service, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the Bureau of Economic Analysis, and the U.S. Census Bureau:
- Agriculture: Plan a crop harvest more effectively by understanding weather forecasts
- Recreation: Plan a fishing trip or surfing recreation by understanding tide and marine conditions
- Innovation: Determine which cities generated the most patents
- U.S. Demographics & Economics: Ask questions related to population, median income, and more