Data.gov.uk goes public today, and we’ve very proud that it is using CKAN, our open source registry of open data, to list official UK government datasets (as we announced in October):
We’ve been working closely with the Cabinet Office team to get this out the door, and over 2500 datasets have been released via the site!
In the Cabinet Office press release, Sir Tim Berners-Lee says:
Making public data available for re-use is about increasing accountability and transparency and letting people create new, innovative ways of using it. Government data should be a public resource. By releasing it, we can unlock new ideas for delivering public services, help communities and society work better, and let talented entrepreneurs and engineers create new businesses and services.
The new launch has received lots of press coverage – even making the front page of the BBC news website! Below is a selection:
- Tim Berners-Lee unveils government data project, BBC News
- Public data – free at last?, BBC Technology
- Web founder helps government launch official data website, Telegraph
- Britain follows US with national data website, Guardian
- Our manifesto for government data, Tim Berners-Lee and Nigel Shadboldt in the Guardian
- Britain frees its data, Telegraph
- UK Launches Open Data Site; Puts Data.gov to Shame, ReadWriteWeb
- Tim Berners-Lee launches UK public data website, Guardian
- ‘OK, let’s do it’: How Britain’s official data was freed, Guardian
Related posts:
- Data.gov.uk Launched – and it’s Using CKAN The UK Government’s public sector data site launched last week in a private beta — and it’s using CKAN as its backend for storing all its dataset info! They’ve got more than a 1000 existing data sets, from 7 departments,...
- Where is the nearest bus stop? UK Department for Transport adds NaPTAN data to Open Street Map The UK’s Department for Transport (DfT) has recently released data from the National Public Transport Access Node (NaPTAN) database to be put on Open Street Map (OSM). As it says on the NaPTAN website: NaPTAN provides a unique identifier for...
- Opengov.se – a registry of open government data in Sweden Opengov.se is a registry of open government data in Sweden: Opengov.se is an initiative to highlight available public datasets in Sweden. It contains a commentable catalog of government datasets, their formats and usage restrictions. It makes a note of what...
admin
Rufus Pollock
jwalsh
ianibbo
Jonathan Gray
jordanhatcher
Friedrich Lindenberg
Daniel Dietrich
Stefano Costa
James Gardner
beckyhogge
francis
davidjones
lisa
mhholloway
oovrebo
saul
Sara Wingate Gray
timcowlishaw
countculture
kathryncorrick
Guo
Jason Kitcat
Adrian Pohl
Mark MacGillivray
psychemedia
Nils Toedtmann
Stefan Wehrmeyer
theodora
Lucy Chambers
James Harriman-Smith
Hauke Gierow
wwaites
Kat Braybrooke
trio3o
Mark Brough
Robert Harm
Velichka Dimitrova
Laura Newman
Pingback: uberVU - social comments
This is great news. I was wondering has anything been written up about how you are doing the technical integration between data.gov.uk and ckan.net? I’m curious if you are dumping the data, or if some sort of web apis, feeds, etc are being used.
Hi Ed,
Expect linking up of the two sites soon, now that data.gov.uk is public.
If you’re looking to get hold of a dump of all the government metadata then we’re distributing it at http://ckan.net/dump/
David Read, OKFN
Do you have a list of which data sets of the 2500 are new releases of information, and which are data that has been / would have been published anyway?
It’s really great to have a directory of all the data, and I hope it starts populating search results so people can find data more easily.
But quite a lot of he 2500 seem to be ONS data sets which have been around for a while. I’d like to pick apart the new data that might be of a different nature!
Pingback: Avoin data -hankkeen eteneminen Isossa-Britanniassa « Sorvipenkki
@Ed to follow up David’s comment: in the current set up, data.gov.uk is talking to a CKAN instance using CKAN’s API
@Francis: this is a really good question – and one we don’t know the exact answer to! While we’ve been working with the data.gov.uk team to get datasets into the data.gov.uk CKAN instance, given the pace of work, we ourselves haven’t been able to look through the datasets in detail yet! Some datasets that I’m certain are newly available (or at least in the form found there) include the traffic count material and the edubase DB.
@Rufus interesting, so if an instance of ckan is running at data.gov.uk does that mean the ckan api is available there as well?
Pingback: Open Knowledge Foundation Blog » Blog Archive » Sources of data on data.gov.uk
Pingback: inkdroid › data.gov.uk and rdfa
Pingback: Welches Potential steckt in data.gov.uk? | Open Data Network
Pingback: Open Knowledge Foundation Blog » Blog Archive » Interested in making an open data catalogue? Virtual meeting on 11th February 2010
Pingback: Open Knowledge Foundation Blog » Blog Archive » Mapping open government data initiatives around the world
@Rufus interesting, so if an instance of ckan is running at data.gov.uk does that mean the ckan api is available there as well?
@Ed, Metin2: the basic answer is currently no as the RESTful JSON API on the CKAN backend is not being exposed by the data.gov.uk frontend. However, there are plans afoot to a) expose the API on the frontend b) sync all the dataset info from data.gov.uk onto ckan.net where you will be able to get at it with the ckan.net API.
In the mean time, if you’d be willing to get the data in bulk there’s a nightly dump of all data.gov.uk packages/datasets at http://ckan.net/dump/
@metin2hileleri interesting, so if an instance of ckan is running at data.gov.uk does that mean the ckan api is available there as metin 2 the?
Wow just seen this and thought wow you let the UK government use your opensource software! Surely they would have over paid you for it like they would do for most things? Sadly the property prices are not being released
But quite a lot of he 2500 seem to be ONS data sets which have been around for a while. I’d like to pick apart the new data that might be of a different nature!
opensource will power the world one day
Good job on getting the government on board
opensource is the way forward so many implementaions accurate discisions
very nice application, I support the government’s transparent application.
@Rufus interesting, so if an instance of ckan is running at data.gov.uk does that mean the ckan api is available there as well?
The UK government seems to be quite progressive in the OpenSource, Crowdsourcing, Altruism etc arena – I read the New Scientist and it must be about every two issues you read something by the UK governement (directly or funded by) launching an open data set, or collaboration initiative.
Makes up for some of the crap things they’re doing!
Well done you guys