Guest post | Open Knowledge Foundation Blog

You are browsing the archive for Guest post.

Effectopedia – An Open Data Project for Collaborative Scientific Research, with the aim of reducing Animal Testing

February 14, 2012 in Guest post, Ideas, Interviews, Metadata, Open Access, Open Data, Open Science, Open Standards

The following post is by Velichka Dimitrova, Coordinator of the Open Economics Working Group and Hristo Alajdov, Associate Professor at Institute of Biomedical Engineering at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.

One of the key problems in natural science research is the lack of effective collaboration. A lot of research is conducted by scientists from different disciplines, yet cross-discipline collaboration is rare. Even within a discipline, research is often duplicated, which wastes resources and valuable scientific potential. Furthermore, without a common framework and context, research that involves animal testing often becomes phenomenological and little or no general knowledge can be gained from it. The peer reviewed publishing process is also not very effective in stimulating scientific collaboration, mainly due to the loss of an underlying machine readable structure for the data and the duration of the process itself.

If research results were more effectively shared and re-used by a wider scientific community – including scientists with different disciplinary backgrounds – many of these problems could be addressed. We could hope to see a more efficient use of resources, an accelerated rate of academic publications, and, ultimately, a reduction in animal testing.

Effectopedia

Effectopedia is a project of the International QSAR Foundation. Effectopedia itself is an open knowledge aggregation and collaboration tool that provides a means of describing adverse outcome pathways (AOPs)¹ in an encyclopedic manner. Effectopedia defines internal organizational space which helps scientist with different backgrounds to know exactly where their knowledge belongs and aids them in identifying both the larger context of their research and the individual experts who might be actively interested in it. Using automated notifications when researchers create causal linkage between parts of the pathways, they can simultaneously create a valuable contact with a fellow researcher interested in the same topic who might have a different background or perspective towards the subject. Effectopedia allows creation of live scientific documents which are instantly open for focused discussions and feedback whilst giving credit to the original authors and reviewers involved. The review process is never closed and if new evidence arises it can be presented immediately, allowing the information in Effectopedia to remain current, while keeping track of its complete evolution.

How can this coordinate better scientific research?

The type of knowledge needed in Effectopedia requires a paradigm shift in the way research is conducted: from phenomenological to more hypothesis driven. Instead of testing an individual chemical with results often applicable only in the context of the specific experimental design, Effectopedia is targeted at defining the conditions under which certain knowledge can be transferred to other species, levels of biological organization, exposure routes, exposure durations, chemicals and so on. A key element to make this approach work is to provide a common framework where scientists with different backgrounds can contribute and encode their knowledge. Since adoption of a new multidisciplinary data representation format could be quite challenging, an ontology-enhanced natural language interface for encoding this knowledge is envisioned.

Entering the results of one’s research in a machine-readable format could enable a sharing platform with a holistic concept, which could unite scientists from different academic backgrounds in a multidisciplinary research framework. The data format of chemical scientists, biologists and toxicologists may be different, but if there is a unified data format, there can be “a common language” in science. Additionally, this could serve as a platform for students in the natural sciences to download the datasets of previous research in order to learn about working with and analysing data.

How can this enable wider access to scientific research?

Many universities in the developing world and in transitional economies are not able to pay the full subscription fees to access published work, which keeps them out of the mainstream up-to-date scientific discussions. Other experienced scientists with a lot of relevant expertise who are either retired or no longer affiliated with an academic institutions may be able to contribute their knowledge in an open online encyclopaedia. Making this encyclopedia semantic would also allow the development of multi-lingual support, enabling academic exchange between scientists who don’t even speak the same language.

How could this reduce animal testing?

The simplest way Effectopedia is envisioned to help in the reduction of unnecessary animal testing is by providing a centralized repository for open, easily searchable access to the existing knowledge. Effectopedia could also aid the design of alternative test methods by providing statistical information of what are the most used and needed tests. Once established, the adverse outcome pathways themselves could become an invaluable tool for discriminating when simple chemical or assay-based test can be used to predict whole animal effects for one or more species, eliminating the need for actual testing. Much of the research which has already been done on cells and animals could be extrapolated to other species, as many have evolved in similar ways and therefore have similar functions. Therefore, cross-species extrapolation could reduce the need for further animal testing, as scientists could use information about research that has already been done.

I am interested. How can I get involved?

If you come from the chemical, pharmaceutical, flavoring, cosmetics or many other industries, the products your company creates are often subject to regulations. A system like Effectopedia could dramatically reduce the cost for development and registration of new products without compromising your competitive edge. The ability to store your data on your own in-house server in the same format as the public data allows you to mix them during the product research phase and then send them for registration using the same format. Without spending any additional resources you can also create a better public image by publishing information that no longer provides any competitive advantage or that you are required to publish by governmental policies. You can also reduce the cost of building your in-house knowledge management system by concentrating your efforts on the custom and company specific modules, while sharing the cost and resources of development of the common modules with all involved stake holders.

Large organizations like OECD, WHO and agencies like EPA had already expressed interest in the development of Effectopedia as a tool for development and documentation of adverse outcome pathways that meet the standards for regulatory acceptance. If you or your organization see the benefit of such system please contact us and see how you can help establish Effectopedia as a an open standard for representation of adverse outcome pathways.

If you are scientist you can help us to form the initial expert panels creating the guidelines for all future adverse outcome pathways contributions. Your feedback is also valuable to us in these beta stages of development so please fill free to contact us with any comments ideas and suggestions.

Contact: aladjov [at] qsari.org

Sourceforge Link

The adverse outcome pathways (AOPs) describe the molecular interactions of a chemical with biological systems and the biological response models that document how molecular effects lead to adverse effects many levels of biological organization. ↩

Tags: Effectopedia, Open Data, science 2 Comments »

by theodora

Linked Open Data and Low Carbon Development

January 27, 2012 in External, Guest post, Open Data

The following guest post is by Denise Recheis from reegle, the clean energy info portal.

Offering multiple explanations for a concept increases understanding and using LOD allows both humans and machines to semantically connect related content. This is a huge advantage in our increasingly complex world!

Especially in the field of clean energy, the increasing availability of LOD is really beneficial. To make sense of the often complex factors contributing to climate change and the highly technical solutions thereof, as well as rapid development in national and international policy regarding these factors, access to high quality and timely information is crucial.

The clean energy info portal www.reegle.info and the energy info wiki www.openEI.org see themselves as gateways to a wealth of information regarding renewable energy, energy efficiency and climate change issues. They are hosted by REEEP (Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership – where I work) and NREL (National Renewable Energy Laboratory) respectively. Both organizations have a strong commitment to the idea of Linked Open Data (LOD) and have been integrating the core principles of LOD into their online portals.

In an effort to increase awareness about the possibilities associated with publishing and consuming LOD, we organized a well-attended workshop in Abu Dhabi in January 2012. Alongside the event, we brought out a publication explaining the basics of LOD, as well as the first steps for any organization considering joining the LOD cloud. “Linked Open Data: The Essentials” (published by Semantic Web Company and REEEP) is available as a downloadable PDF, as well as a booklet which can be ordered.

“Linked Open Data: The Essentials” also highlights some best practice examples, two of them being reegle and OpenEI. Reegle’s country energy profiles are a prime example of mashed up open data. These dossiers present the reader with statistics, maps, general facts and policy and regulatory details in a pleasant design. The information is provided by LOD providers such as DBpedia (Wikipedia), the UN and the World Bank, OpenEI and other highly trusted sources. Reegle has also developed an extensive thesaurus covering clean energy and climate compatible development with full liked data capabilities, which is available for free to re-use as a widget or word press plugin, and which is currently used as the basis for a brand-new API. Of course reegle provides all its datasets as Linked Open Data free for re-use and provides datasets in RDF (Resource Description Framework) format and via a SPARQL endpoint on our data portal.

OpenEI (Open Energy Information) has always seen sharing as one of its key missions. The data is available in RESTful API, RDF and SPARQL, for integration into external websites. But even when browsing the site, users benefit from a variety of LOD sources which enhance and increase the information presented. For example, several definitions offered in the glossary are collected from different LOD sources and OpenEI’s country pages feature information from a variety of sources, including reegle’s country energy profiles. This is easily possible when organizations rely on LOD, because when several websites describe the same things they can all be connected and give users a more rounded picture of sometimes difficult subjects.

Our expected end-users include the educational sector, helping students across the world study laws and regulation, efficient engineering, and the latest ideas in clean energy from many different authoritative sources in a single gateway. Specialists and project developers can quickly gather valuable information about specific regions and areas focusing on energy-relevant issues.

Integrating the principles of LOD has had a pleasant side-effect which has been highlighted in the recent workshop in Abu Dhabi: sharing data is often a starting point for fruitful collaborations between organizations with a similar agenda. Sharing data very often also means sharing the work burden. Each organization can then focus on their specific areas of expertise, while freeing up resources from areas that can be taken over by other organizations. Sharing the results of such targeted efforts generates high-quality content, and makes it available to all stakeholders in renewable energy, energy efficiency and climate adaptation/mitigation.

We are committed to increasing the share of information available as LOD, and will continue to actively support other organizations thinking of joining the LOD cloud.

No Comments »

by theodora

LODLAM-NZ Round Up

December 20, 2011 in Guest post, WG Cultural Heritage, WG Humanities, WG Open Bibliographic Data

The following guest post is by Jon Voss, whose projects include History Pin and Civil War Data 150.

I recently traveled to Wellington, New Zealand to take part in the National Digital Forum of New Zealand (#ndf2011), which was held at the national museum of New Zealand, Te Papa. Following the conference, the amazing team at Digital NZ hosted and organized a Linked Open Data in Libraries, Archives & Museums unconference (#lodlam). The two events were well attended by Kiwis as well as a large number of international attendees from Australia, and a few from as far as the US, UK and Germany.

When it comes to innovative digital initiatives in cultural heritage, the rest of the world has been looking to New Zealand and Australia for some time. Federated metadata exchanges and search has been happening across institutions in projects like Digital NZ and Trove. I was able to learn more about the Digital NZ APIs as well as those from Museum Victoria, Powerhouse Museum, and State Records New South Wales. In fact, the remarkable proliferation of APIs in Australasia has allowed us to consider the possibilities of Linked Open Data to harvest and build upon data held in databases in multiple institutions.

Given the extent to which tools for opening access to data have been developed here, I was surprised by the level of frustration that exists around copyright issues. There’s a clear sense that government is moving too slowly in making materials available to the public with open licensing. We talked a lot about the idea of separately licensing metadata and assets (i.e. information about a photo vs the digital copy of the photo), as has been happening across Europe and increasingly the United States. There are strong advocates within the GLAM sector (galleries, libraries, archives & museums) here, and demonstrating use cases utilizing openly licensed metadata will go far in helping to move those conversations forward with policy makers.

To that end, a session was convened to explore the possibilities of an international LODLAM project focused on World War I, the centennial commemoration of which is fast approaching. The Civil War Data 150 project we’ve been slowly moving forward in the US may provide a rough framework to build from. At least a half dozen or more libraries, archives and museums have expressed interest in participating in a WWI project already. First steps may be identifying openly licensed datasets to be contributed, key vocabularies and ontologies to apply, and ideas for visualizations that would leverage the use of Linked Open Data. For anything to happen here, someone will need to take the lead in organizing (not me, we’re still trying to build some tools around the Civil War Data 150 concept!). Good notes were posted on the LODLAM blog about the conversation and how to convene future conversations. Anyone who gets involved with this, please spread the word and keep the LODLAM community apprised of your progress and ways to contribute.

We also had a workshop on using Google Refine by Carlos Arroyo from the Powerhouse Museum, with props to the FreeYourMetadata crew. Some lively sessions dug into just what and how Linked Data is and some of the pitfalls and potentials. Another session explored the importance and potential of local vocabularies, and how they can contribute to Linked Data implementations. One great example was the vocabularies surrounding Maori artifacts (Taonga) at Te Papa, and how publishing those datasets can aid other museums around the world to better describe and provide digital access to Maori collections.

As I’ve attended various LODLAM meetups since June, I’ve noticed clear momentum from one to another as these conversations progress rapidly, with those further along helping those of us just learning. After LODLAM-DC I realized the importance of including library, archive, and museum vendors in all of these gatherings. At LODLAM-NZ I could see the potential of bringing together developers in the GLAM sector and those utilizing Linked Data in commercial settings. In places like San Francisco, where commercial interests are already leading the charge on Linked Data (which is not a bad thing) and there’s an active Semantic Web developer community, the GLAM sector may be playing catchup. But the sheer number of datasets potentially available as open data coming from the GLAM sector, together with the expertise of managing massive amounts of structured data, creates a space ripe for collaboration and experimentation, and these lines will continue to blur.

No Comments »

by theodora

Opening Government Data in Bulgaria

December 16, 2011 in Guest post, Open Government Data, WG EU Open Data, WG Open Government Data

The following guest post is by Boyan Yurukov, blogger and open government data activist.

In the beginning of 2011 some open data was released by the Bulgarian government on www.parliament.bg. Visitors could export information of bills and members of parliament as XML or CSV. They could also download the votes of individual MPs or parliamentary groups as Excel files. While what data was useful and an important step forward, I found problems in the format and the exported files. Also, one could find a lot more information on the website, that could not be exported as open structured data.

So I started a project to scrape the website, fix the available data, refine, enrich and link it. After several versions of the schema, the final dataset was released in the beginning of December. It contains over 11,000 data points and over 1.12 Gb of data. The items are as follows:

Profiles for each MP – general biography, previous parliamentary terms, participation in parliamentary groups, committees, “friendship groups” and delegation, supported bills, absences, external consultants, questions during plenary meetings.
Data on bills – laws, legislative proposals, decisions and official declarations.
Parliamentary groups and committees – current members and member history, proposed bills, external consultants, meeting schedule, agenda, transcripts and reports.
Parliamentary delegations and “friendship groups” – current members and member history.
Parliamentary sittings – program for the sitting with questions and legislative proposals; transcripts; voting history for each MP on each discussion point.
Parliamentary procurements – description, topic, procurement registry code.

The dataset can be downloaded as two ZIP files together with the XSD schema. The scraping scripts are also open sourced in GitHub. You can find all this open Bulgarian Parliament data on the DataHub.

Although refined, this data is not without its flaws. Some historical data on MPs’ biography and questions is missing. Also, transcripts are not structured, but in free text, making it almost impossible to parse. There is some hope that the parliamentary administration will release the transcripts in XML, but I’m not holding my breath. Currently the transcripts go back 20 years, and those back to the ’70s are being parsed and will be released soon. All other data is since 2001, except individual votes, which are since 2009.

This data can be quite useful for parliamentary journalism, but in itself consists only of raw XML files. This is why another project is being set up that aims at building a platform for analyzing and visualizing the refined dataset. It will be targeted at data journalists and visualization experts. It is sponsored by the Institute for Public Environment Development and all results will be released as open data. I hope that in the first quarter of 2012 the first beta will come out.

3 Comments »

by theodora

SNCF launches a debate on open transport data in France

December 15, 2011 in Guest post, Open Data, WG Open Transport

The following guest post is by Pieter Colpaert from iRail npo and Pierre Chrzanowski, and was reviewed by Regards Citoyens. Pieter and Pierre are both members of our brand new Working Group on Open Transport – watch this space for a full announcement of the working group’s activities and details on how to get involved!”

At first sight, you may think that data.sncf.com is the new open data website of the SNCF, the National Corporation of French Railways. Not yet. The company preferred to launch a consultation website before opening up its data. Anyone can add their thoughts on open transport data on data.sncf.com.

In a country struggling to involve the transport industry in the open data movement, this initiative is most welcome. After the release of data.gouv.fr, we hope transport data will soon be part of the available datasets. The lack till today of open transport data in France led independent initiatives to extract the data without authorisation, placing them in legal insecurity. A change by SNCF is therefore really welcome.

Although SNCF seems to be ready for open data, other public transport operators in France are still reluctant. RATP, the state-owned subway operator for Paris area, recently refused to let other app developers use its map for free. This inspired CheckMyMetro, a startup which was forced to remove the RATP map from its smartphone application, to organize a subway map design contest.

As a lot of organizations are launching similar debates on open data, it is important that they rightfully apply the word “open” and that while doing this they know how to gain an added value for themselves and their customers. Data.scnf.com is a great opportunity to remind the SNCF and other transport actors in Europe of the actual meaning of the word “open” and to help introduce a productive open data policy.

Open data for multimodal transport

Today, commuters use different types of transport to go to work or to travel across Europe. For them, access to timetables, networks maps and real-time transport data is the key to organize their journey or to get informed of disruptions. Multimodal transport is part of the last European Commission transport policy which has announced the launch of a contest for the best European multimodal journey planner. The software behind these intermodal journey planners can be as intelligent as can be, but when there is no data, the software is useless.

Some countries are already doing their part. The UK Government recently committed itself to the release of high-value transport data. Which also seems to provide a good input to answer the data.sncf.com consultation. Here is the comprehensive list of transport data soon to be released: - Rail timetable information on a weekly basis - Real-time running data from Network Rail - Location about Great Britain Rail Network and GB rail network stations - Traveline National Dataset on a weekly basis (Great Britain buses) - Next Buses API of planned and real-time information at 350 000 GB bus stops

There are already many journey planner apps offered either by transport companies or developed by independent developer teams, but only a few can help you to organize your journey across the whole EU – deutschebahn offers the closest. Furthermore, with open data, there are new services to come that transport companies did not think about.

Transport innovation through real open data

By starting a debate on open data, data.sncf.com wants to take the first steps towards clearing the path for innovative services. The definition of open data is clear and not debatable. As defined by the Open Knowledge Foundation: “A piece of content or data is open if anyone is free to use, reuse, and redistribute it – subject only, at most, to the requirement to attribute and share-alike”. This means data need to be released for free in an open license and available in open formats. The French statements on open data also give a clear definition of what “open” means. SNCF could then choose to open its datasets either under the new French Open License or among other open licenses available like the ODbL, already in use in different French cities. On open formats, the 5 star-ranking of the W3C is a good reference. But open transport data is part of an industry and a new market. If we want to help developers to develop multimodal apps, the respect of standards is required.

Let’s hope this initiative from the SNCF is the beginning of a real shift towards open transport data in France and beyond.

You can participate to the SNCF debate here

The ePSIplatform is also working on a report on the re-use of transport data in Europe. You can reply to their questionnaire here.

1 Comment »

by theodora

Open Data – Destination Hackney

December 14, 2011 in Guest post, Open Data

The following guest post is by Duncan Ray, from Destination Hackney.

In Summer 2012, the borough of Hackney in London will be opening its doors to millions of visitors flocking to the Olympic games. It’s an exciting time for this part of London, and through the Race for Apps competition it’s a fantastic opportunity for open data too!

Race for Apps is a competition to crowdsource mobile apps from the digital community to showcase Hackney’s area and talent to journalists and businesspeople coming into the local Hackney area next year during the Olympics. It’s a collaboration between Hackney Council, the Technology Strategy Board and Digital Shoreditch.

Race For Apps from race for apps on Vimeo.

From the beginning the organisers were very conscious of how releasing data openly could lead to the creation of innovative apps, and that data could provide a big differentiator for the competition.

We carried out research, talking to various developers, and got the strong impression of ‘find my nearest’ and ‘what’s on’ guides as being the key data sets. We have maintained an open dialogue with developers as the competition has gone live, and are still picking up with our internal IT team where data is being requested as the foundation for a new app entrant.

The website Destination Hackney (www.destinationhackney.co.uk), launching in January, showcases Hackney for visitors to the area next year.

Fortunately they had a ready-made data set covering local businesses and events.

Unfortunately the data sets weren’t open: they weren’t licensed for third party commercial use, which made app development a bit of a non-starter.

To resolve this we are now establishing a new dataset, hosted on Destination Hackney’s site, that can be freely used by app developers, and we will be updating this via RSS. The dataset is licensed under the attribution-only Open Government License for Public Sector Information. This will go live from January 2012 for Race for Apps entrants and the data set will build as more businesses come on board. Benefits for businesses and events are substantial, with those apps using Destination Hackney data providing a plethora of new marketing channels for businesses to use to get to visitors next year.

The competition is now on, and you can enter your ideas, finished apps, or apps reworked for the local context in four categories of “Finding Your Way”, “Making Connections”, “Citizen Journalists”, “Fun and Games”, and “Wild Card” on the Race for Apps site. Or you can hold out for the release of the Destination Hackney dataset in the New Year!

No Comments »

by theodora

Public Domain Day: January 1st 2012

December 13, 2011 in COMMUNIA, Events, Guest post, Public Domain, Public Domain Works, WG Public Domain

The following guest post is by Juan Carlos de Martin, from the the Politecnico of Torino, Italy, one of the organisers of the annual Public Domain Day of which the OKF is a proud supporter.

Every January a growing number of people throughout the world gather to celebrate the new year. But not for the usual reasons. They meet because every January 1st the works of authors who died decades before – typically, seventy years before – enter the public domain, that is, their copyright protection expires.

Why a celebration for such an apparently technical reason? Because as the new year starts, the works of those selected authors have finally reached the state to which all culture is headed since the earliest times. I am talking of the state that automatically allows any human being to sing, play, translate, summarize, adapt what other human beings have thought before them. Wish to produce a big print edition of your favorite poetry? Now you can. Fancy translating into Sicilian dialect a play you love? Now you can. Possessed by the desire to illustrate, manga style, the ideas of your preferred political scientist? Now you can. Longing to publish a more correct version of a score riddled with typos that the publisher never cared to correct? Now you can.

In principle, all the above activities are perfectly possible even before the expiration of copyright. On condition, however, that one asks for permission the copyright owner (assuming that they can be located: let’s ignore here the huge problem of the so-called “orphan works”) and pays whatever is requested. Noting that very often the copyright owner is not the author (or his/her descendants), but a for-profit publishing house.

Consequently, many activities do not take place because either the copyright owner does not like the idea (no manga, for instance), or because the wannabe new author cannot afford to pay what is requested by the copyright owner.

Such restrictions, introduced, in their modern form, about three centuries ago to provide – for the common good – incentives to authors, now last an unprecedented seventy years (in Europe and in many other countries) after the death of the authors.

A shockingly long time, which an increasing number of scholars, NGO’s and citizens are asking to reduce. To know more about the current debate on copyright reform and the role of the public domain, see for instance the Public Domain Manifesto and the brand new, Brussels-based COMMUNIA association for the digital public domain, or check out the OKF’s Working Group on the Public Domain.

But as we work towards copyright reform, every January people who care about the public domain get together and welcome the works of a new batch of authors. In recent years, public domain day celebrations have taken place in cities throughout the world, from Zurich to Warsaw, from Torino to Haifa, from Rome to Berlin. The volunteer-staffed website http://publicdomainday.org provides an information hub for such celebrations.

The celebrations typically take place in libraries, universities or cafés. People read – or sometimes perform – the work of the new authors. It is often a moving experience, as great men and women from the time of our grand (and great-grand) fathers come back to life under our affectionate gaze.

During the month of January 2012 people will gather again. Celebrations have already been announced in, among other places, Warsaw, Zurich, Torino and Rome. We hope that others will follow the example. Welcoming the works of some of our great writers, musicians, painters, poets, journalists, scholars is a most gratifying way to start the new year and also a great way to enhance the knowledge of our common cultural roots.

If you’re interested in organising an event in your area, you can join the pd-discuss list.

No Comments »

by theodora

Wanted – Open Data practitioners to work with Charities for an ‘Open data-day’

November 30, 2011 in Events, Guest post, Open Data, WG Development, WG Open Government Data

The following guest post is by Ed Anderton from the Nominet Trust, who provide support to organisations to increase access to the internet, online safety and education.

The Nominet Trust is providing funding for a set of 10 ‘data-days’ with a range of UK Charities – more details of our offer to Charities can be found here. We’re looking for Open Data experts to match with these Charities: ideally we’re after a combination of experience of building open data applications and working with civil society organisations. So far we’ve had expressions of interest from Charities in the South-West, West Midlands, North-West, East of England and the South-East, so it would be great to find Open Data experts based in different parts of the country. Tim Davies from Practical Participation has kindly put together some helpful guidance for Charities (see below) on how they might best use an ‘open data-day’: this is also intended to give you a good idea of what the role of the open data consultant may involve.

I am managing the project and will be providing support throughout, including setting objectives, drawing up contracts and documenting what happens on each of the 10 days.

If you are interested please drop me an email or find me on Twitter – @ejanderton

Planning an Open Data Exploration Day

How can open data make a difference to the charity sector?

An open data day offers a quick-fire way to find out, and is designed to identify how charities can be both publishers and users of open data, giving you the skills to understand, work with and make the most of open data.

The dataset route:

You identify a dataset created or owned by your organisation that you want to do more with. This could be details of members of your networks; data from a survey you conduct; performance statistics; a research dataset you have put together; or any other dataset used in your day-to-day work.
You work with the ‘open data day’ consultant to identify the potential value of publishing this as open data; to practical steps involved; and the ways it could be used. For some datasets (where there are no personal data or rights issues to deal with), it might be possible to publish them right away, either for a limited pilot just on the day itself, or as a new open data release that you will continue to work with. (For example, the consultant could work with you to release data that was previously published as tables in a written report that were not easy to re-use.)
You work to create some rapid prototypes based on this data, demonstrating the potential of its open release.This could involve the consultant providing hands-on training to a small team of staff in using freely available open data tools like Google Refine and Fusion Tables (for creating maps and bubble charts), or Tableau (for in depth data visualisation). Alternatively, you could challenge your consultant to spend a few hours working on a rapid prototype using more advanced computer programming approaches to present back to you an example of open data possibilities.
At the end of the day you present the results to your colleagues. You might have a new sustainable product, or just a prototype. The learning from the day will be captured in a report which provides a draft roadmap for future explorations of open data in the organisation, and giving a case study of the potential of open data publishing.

The issue route

You identify an issue you are working on where open data from government or civil society could be useful to your work.
The open data day consultant works with you to locate open data sources that relate to this issue.
You work together to create some rapid prototypes showing how this data can be accessed, explored and analysed using open data tools.
You explore ways to build these sources of open data into your day-to-day work and identify a draft strategy for making more use of open data sources.

1 Comment »

by theodora

International Open Data Hackathon, Dec 3rd. It’s coming together.

November 30, 2011 in Events, Guest post, Hackday / Code Sprint, Open Government Data, Open Spending, WG Open Government Data

The following guest post is from David Eaves who is the founder of datadotgc.ca and a member of the OKF’s Working Group on Open Government Data. The post originally appeared on eaves.ca.

So a number of things have started to really come together for this Saturday Dec 3rd. I’ve noticed a number of new cities being tweeted about (hello Kuala Lumpur & Oakland!) and others adding themselves to the wiki. Indeed, we seem to be above 40 cities. It is hard to know how many people will be showing up in each given city, but in Vancouver I know that we already over 20 registered, while in Ottawa they are well above 40. If other cities have similar numbers it’s a great testament to the size of the community out there interested in playing with open government data.

A few thoughts to share with people as we get ready for the big day.

1. Leverage existing projects.

I’ve mentioned a few times that there are some great existing projects out there that can be easily leveraged.

In that vein I’ve noticed the good people at the Open Knowledge Foundation, who are behind OpenSpending (the project that powers WherDoesMyMoneyGo.org) have not only made their software easier to use but have put up some helpful instructions for creating your own instance up on the wiki. One hope I have for Saturday is that a number of different places might be able to visualize local budgets in much easier to understand ways. OpenSpending has the potential of being an enormously helpful tool for communities trying to understand their budget – hopefully we can provide some great examples and feedback for its creators.

In addition, the folks at MySociety have provided some helpful advice on the wiki for those interested in spinning up a version of MapIt for their country.

2. Get Data Now, Not on Saturday!

Here in Vancouver, my friend Luke C. asked if we could get bicycle accident data for the city or province as he wanted to play around with it and maybe visualize it on December 3rd. It just so happened I had a contact at the Insurance Company of British Columbia (ICBC) which insures every vehicle in the province. I reached out and, after going through their request process, now have the data set to share with Luke.

The key piece here: now is the time to check and see if data you are interested in is available, investigate what is out there, and request it from various stakeholders if it is not.

3. Share Your Code, Share your Data

Indeed, one advantage of having the BC bicycle accident data early is that I can start sharing it with people immediately. I’ve already uploaded the data set (all 6400 lines) onto BuzzData’s site so others can download it, clone it, and share their own work on it. That way, even if Luke and I get separated, he’s still got something to hack on!

So please do let people know where they can find data you are hacking on, as well as project you’re hacking on. The Open Data Day Projects 2011 wiki page currently sits empty (as should be expected). But take a swing by the page 2010 project page, notice how it is quite full… I’d love to see us replicate this success. I’m hoping people link to not just their projects, but also Github repos, scraperwiki creations, DataHub datasets or BuzzData accounts and other places.

If you have a project and you think people in open data day hackathons in other cities might be interested, put it in the project page and tweet about it using the #odhd hashtag. You may discover there are people out there who feel as passionately about your project as you do!

4. Let’s Get Connected

Speaking of sharing, my friend Edward O-C, who is organizing the hackathon in Ottawa, did a great job last year setting up some infrastructure so people from different hackathons could video conference with one another. This year I think we’ll try using Google hangouts on google+. However, there is a non-trivial risk that this will not scale super well.

So…

Edward also suggested (brilliantly) that people create YouTube videos of whatever they create during the hackathon or in the days and weeks that follow. Please post those links to the Open Data Day Projects 2011 wiki page as well. There were a few projects last year that had youtube videos and they were very helpful, particularly when a project isn’t quite ready for prime time. It gives us a taste of what will be available. It also becomes something we can point people to.

5. Have Fun, Do What Is Interesting

Remember, Open Data Day is about meeting people, learning about open data, and working on something that you feel passionate about. This is all very decentralized and informal – no one is going to come and save your hackathon… it is up to you! So make sure you find something you think is worth caring about and work on it. Share your idea, and your passion, with others, that’s what makes this fun.

Can’t wait to hear what people are up to. Please feel free to email or tweet at me what you’re working on. I’d love to hear about it and blog about them.

No Comments »

by theodora

International Open Data Hackathon Updates and Apps

November 16, 2011 in Events, Guest post, Hackday / Code Sprint, Open Government Data, Open Spending, WG Open Government Data

The following guest post is by David Eaves who is the founder of datadotgc.ca and a member of the OKF’s Working Group on Open Government Data. The post originally appeared over on his blog.

With the International Open Data Hackathon getting closer, I’m getting excited. There’s been a real expansion on the wiki of the number of cities where people are sometimes humbly, sometimes grandly, putting together events. I’m seeing Nairobi, Dublin, Sydney, Warsaw and Madrid as some of the cities with newly added information. Exciting!

I’ve been thinking more and more about applications people can hack on that I think would be fun, engage a broad number of people and that would help foster a community around viable, self-sustaining projects.

I’m of course, all in favour of people working on whatever piques their interest, but here are a few projects I’m encouraging people to look at:

1. Openspending.org

What I really like about openspending.org is that there are lots of ways non-coders can contribute. Specifically finding, scraping and categorizing budget data, which (sadly) is often very messy are things almost anyone with a laptop can do and are essential to getting this project off the ground. In addition, the reward for this project can be significant, a nice visualization of whatever budget you have data for – a perfect tool for helping people better understand where their money (or taxes) go. Another big factor in its favour… openspending.org – a project of the Open Knowledge Foundation who’ve been big supporters and sponsors of the international open data hackathon – is also perfect because, if all goes well, it is the type of project that a group can complete in one day.

So I hope that some people try playing with the website using your own local data. It would be wonderful to see the openspending.org community grow.

2. Adopt a Hydrant

Some of you have already seen me blog about this app – a project that comes out of Code for America. If you know of a government agency, or non profit, that has lat/long information for a resource that it wants people to help take care of… then adopt a hydrant could be for you. Essentially adopt a hydrant – which can be changed to adopt an anything – allows people to sign up and “adopt” what ever the application tracks. Could be trees, hydrants, playgrounds… you name it.

Some of you may be wondering… why adopt a hydrant? Well because in colder places, like Boston, MA, adopt a hydrant was created in the hopes that citizens might adopt a hydrant and so agree that when it snows they would keep the hydrant clear of snow. That way, in case there is a fire, the emergency response teams don’t end up wasting valuable minutes locating and then digging out the hydrant. Cool eh?

I think adopt a hydrant has the potential of become a significant open source project, one widely used by cities and non-profits. Would be great to see some people turned on to it!

3. Mapit

What I love about mapit is that it is the kind of application that can help foster other open data applications. Created by the wonderful people over at Mysociety.org this open source software essentially serves as a mapping layer so that you can find out what jurisdictions a given address or postal code or GPS device currently sits in (e.g. what riding, ward, city, province, county, state, etc… am I in?). This is insanely useful for lots of developers trying to build websites and apps that tell their users useful information about a given address or where they are standing. Indeed, I’m told that most of Mysociety.org’s projects use their instance of MapIt to function.

This project is for those seeking a more ambitious challenge, but I love the idea that this service might exist in multiple countries and that a community might emerge around another one of mysociety.org’s projects.

No matter what you intend to work on, drop me a line! Post it to the open data day mailing list and let me know about it. I’d love to share it with the world.

No Comments »