Open Knowledge Foundation Blog » News http://blog.okfn.org Mon, 06 Sep 2010 10:51:28 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.7 en hourly 1 Jordan Hatcher talk on Open Data Licensing at iSemantics http://blog.okfn.org/2010/09/06/jordan-hatcher-talk-on-open-data-licensing-at-isemantics/ http://blog.okfn.org/2010/09/06/jordan-hatcher-talk-on-open-data-licensing-at-isemantics/#comments Mon, 06 Sep 2010 10:51:28 +0000 Rufus Pollock http://blog.okfn.org/?p=3759
  • Interview with Jordan Hatcher on legal tools for open data
  • Slides from Open Data Session at ISWC 2009
  • Guide to Open Data Licensing
    • ]]>     Last week, the Foundation’s legal expert Jordan Hatcher, was at iSemantic conference in Graz to give a session on open data licensing (especially for linked data). Here are the slides:

    Linked Data Licensing: Introduction - I-Semantics 2010

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    1. Interview with Jordan Hatcher on legal tools for open data
    2. Slides from Open Data Session at ISWC 2009
    3. Guide to Open Data Licensing

    ]]>     http://blog.okfn.org/2010/09/06/jordan-hatcher-talk-on-open-data-licensing-at-isemantics/feed/     New UK transparency board and public data principles http://blog.okfn.org/2010/06/28/new-uk-transparency-board-and-public-data-principles/ http://blog.okfn.org/2010/06/28/new-uk-transparency-board-and-public-data-principles/#comments Mon, 28 Jun 2010 10:19:32 +0000 Jonathan Gray http://blog.okfn.org/?p=3260
  • Opening up e-Government in Europe: accessibility, transparency and the ‘right to reuse’
  • UK Government announces lots of new open data!
  • Data.gov.uk goes public - and its using CKAN!
    • ]]>     On Friday the data.gov.uk team announced the first meeting of a new Public Sector Transparency Board:

    The Board will drive forward the Government’s transparency agenda, making it a core part of all government business and ensuring that all Whitehall departments meet the new tight deadlines set for releasing key public datasets. In addition, it is responsible for setting open data standards across the whole public sector, listening to what the public wants and then driving through the opening up of the most needed data sets.

    Chaired by Francis Maude, the Minister for the Cabinet Office, the other members of the Transparency Board are Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, Professor Nigel Shadbolt from Southampton University, an expert on open data, Tom Steinberg, founder of mySociety, and Dr Rufus Pollock from Cambridge University, an economist who helped found the Open Knowledge Foundation.

    They also released a new set of principles for public data, building on those announced by the previous government in December 2009:

    • Public data policy and practice will be clearly driven by the public and businesses who want and use the data, including what data is released when and in what form – and in addition to the legal Right To Data itself this overriding principle should apply to the implementation of all the other principles.
    • Public data will be published in reusable, machine-readable form – publication alone is only part of transparency – the data needs to be reusable, and to make it reusable it needs to be machine-readable. At the moment a lot of Government information is locked into PDFs or other unprocessable formats.
    • Public data will be released under the same open licence which enables free reuse, including commercial reuse – all data should be under the same easy to understand licence. Data released under the Freedom of Information Act or the new Right to Data should be automatically released under that licence.
    • Public data will be available and easy to find through a single easy to use online access point (data.gov.uk) – the public sector has a myriad of different websites, and search does not work well across them. It’s important to have a well-known single point where people can find the data.
    • Public data will be published using open standards, and following relevant recommendations of the World Wide Web Consortium. Open, standardised formats are essential. However to increase reusability and the ability to compare data it also means openness and standardisation of the content as well as the format.
    • Public data underlying the Government’s own websites will be published in reusable form for others to use – anything published on Government websites should be available as data for others to reuse. Public bodies should not require people to come to their websites to obtain information.
    • Public data will be timely and fine grained – Data will be released as quickly as possible after its collection and in as fine a detail as is possible. Speed may mean that the first release may have inaccuracies; more accurate versions will be released when available.
    • Release data quickly, and then re-publish it in linked data form – Linked data standards allow the most powerful and easiest re-use of data. However most existing internal public sector data is not in linked data form. Rather than delay any release of the data, our recommendation is to release it ‘as is’ as soon as possible, and then work to convert it to a better format.
    • Public data will be freely available to use in any lawful way – raw public data should be available without registration, although for API-based services a developer key may be needed. Applications should be able to use the data in any lawful way without having to inform or obtain the permission of the public body concerned.
    • Public bodies should actively encourage the re-use of their public data – in addition to publishing the data itself, public bodies should provide information and support to enable it to be reused easily and effectively. The Government should also encourage and assist those using public data to share knowledge and applications, and should work with business to help grow new, innovative uses of data and to generate economic benefit.
    • Public bodies should maintain and publish inventories of their data holdings – accurate and up-to-date records of data collected and held, including their format, accuracy and availability.

    The government are encouraging people to comment on the principles, and have put a copy on the data.gov.uk wiki.

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    Related posts:

    1. Opening up e-Government in Europe: accessibility, transparency and the ‘right to reuse’
    2. UK Government announces lots of new open data!
    3. Data.gov.uk goes public - and its using CKAN!

    ]]>     http://blog.okfn.org/2010/06/28/new-uk-transparency-board-and-public-data-principles/feed/     Panton Principle authors win SPARC Innovator prize! http://blog.okfn.org/2010/06/23/panton-principle-authors-win-sparc-innovator-prize/ http://blog.okfn.org/2010/06/23/panton-principle-authors-win-sparc-innovator-prize/#comments Wed, 23 Jun 2010 15:33:10 +0000 Jonathan Gray http://blog.okfn.org/?p=3225
  • Launch of the Panton Principles for Open Data in Science and ‘Is It Open Data?’ Web Service
  • Introducing the Panton Papers
  • SPARC Europe Seal for Open Access Journals
    • ]]>     We are delighted to announce that the authors of the Panton Principles have been awarded the SPARC Innovator prize!

    The principles are currently maintained by the Open Knowledge Foundation’s Working Group on Open Data in Science.

    From the announcement:

    Science is based on building on, reusing, and openly criticizing the published body of scientific knowledge. For science to effectively function, and for society to reap the full benefits from scientific endeavors, it is crucial that science data be made open.

    That’s the belief of four leaders who have put forth a groundbreaking set of recommendations for scientists to more easily share their data – The Panton Principles – and who have been named the latest SPARC Innovators for their work. [...]

    The authors advocate making data freely available on the Internet for anyone to download, copy, analyze, reprocess, pass to software or use for any purpose without financial, legal or technical barriers. Through the Principles, the group aimed to develop clear language that explicitly defines how a scientist’s rights to his own data could be structured so others can freely reuse or build on it. The goal was to craft language simple enough that a scientist could easily follow it, and then focus on doing science rather than law.

    The Panton Principles were publicly launched in February of 2010, with a Web site at www.pantonprinciples.org to spread the word and an invitation to endorse. About 100 individuals and organizations have endorsed the Principles so far.

    “This is the first time we’re seeing diverse viewpoints crystallize around the pragmatic idea that we have to start somewhere, agree on the basics, and set the tone,” says Heather Joseph, Executive Director of SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition). “The authors are all leading thinkers in this area – as well as producers and consumers of data. They each approached the idea of open data from different directions, yet with the same drive to open up science, and ended up on common ground.”

    According to Pollock, “It’s commonplace that we advance by building on the work of colleagues and predecessors – standing on the shoulders of giants. In a digital age, to build on the work of others we need something very concrete: access to the data of others and the freedom to use and reuse it. That’s what the Panton Principles are about.”

    Further details, including more background information and comments from other leading voices in the open science community, are available at:

    Alma Swan comments, quite rightly, that:

    Coming up with the Principles is not going to cut the mustard by itself. They will need to be advocated and promoted so that scientists are interested in debating them.

    If you’re interested in helping to promote the principles to scientists in different domains, to research funding bodies, or to the general public, please introduce yourself on our open-science mailing list.

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    Related posts:

    1. Launch of the Panton Principles for Open Data in Science and ‘Is It Open Data?’ Web Service
    2. Introducing the Panton Papers
    3. SPARC Europe Seal for Open Access Journals

    ]]>     http://blog.okfn.org/2010/06/23/panton-principle-authors-win-sparc-innovator-prize/feed/     Emergency Budget, Deficit and Cuts: Visualized http://blog.okfn.org/2010/06/22/emergency-budget-deficit-and-cuts-visualized/ http://blog.okfn.org/2010/06/22/emergency-budget-deficit-and-cuts-visualized/#comments Tue, 22 Jun 2010 15:37:05 +0000 Rufus Pollock http://blog.okfn.org/?p=3218
  • Can You Close the Deficit Gap?
  • Putting the cuts into context: where is that £6 billion going to come from?
  • New mockups for “Where Does My Money Go?”
    • ]]>     Today in the UK the Conservatives/Liberal Democrat coalition presented their Emergency Budget.

    Collaborating with David McCandless, Where Does My Money Go? have created a simple visualization to help you understand and contextualise the budget, and answer some basic questions such as: How much impact will the emergency budget have on the £156bn budget deficit? And what will those mind-boggling billion pound amounts actually mean?

    budget cuts

    Embed

    Want to use this graphic in your own site or in the news? We’re happy for you to do so as long as long as you explicitly credit us and have a link back to this url. Here’s an html code snippet to do this:

    Want a higher-res version, e.g. for print? You can get it here: http://static.wheredoesmymoneygo.org/i/deficit_budget_print.pdf

    Credits

    A Where Does My Money Go? visualization by David McCandless / InformationIsBeautiful, research by Lisa Evans and Tim Hubbard using on information from the Institute for Fiscal Studies and HM Treasury.

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    Related posts:

    1. Can You Close the Deficit Gap?
    2. Putting the cuts into context: where is that £6 billion going to come from?
    3. New mockups for “Where Does My Money Go?”

    ]]>     http://blog.okfn.org/2010/06/22/emergency-budget-deficit-and-cuts-visualized/feed/     Can You Close the Deficit Gap? http://blog.okfn.org/2010/06/21/can-you-close-the-deficit-gap/ http://blog.okfn.org/2010/06/21/can-you-close-the-deficit-gap/#comments Mon, 21 Jun 2010 18:42:38 +0000 Rufus Pollock http://blog.okfn.org/?p=3205
  • Emergency Budget, Deficit and Cuts: Visualized
  • Putting the cuts into context: where is that £6 billion going to come from?
  • Alpha Release of Where Does My Money Go? Prototype
    • ]]>     Where Does Your Money Go? challenges you to beat the Chancellor to it before tomorrow’s budget and close the UK’s financial deficit. Will you increase taxes, make cuts or a mix of both? No decision is going to be popular but are some more palatable than others, you decide.

    Application Image

    More information:

    The application was created by the Where Does My Money Go? team. Researched by Lisa Evans and Tim Hubbard using many figures from the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Visualized by Rufus Pollock and Tim Hubbard using the thejit and jquery.

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    1. Emergency Budget, Deficit and Cuts: Visualized
    2. Putting the cuts into context: where is that £6 billion going to come from?
    3. Alpha Release of Where Does My Money Go? Prototype

    ]]>     http://blog.okfn.org/2010/06/21/can-you-close-the-deficit-gap/feed/     Bibliographica, an Introduction http://blog.okfn.org/2010/05/20/bibliographica-an-introduction/ http://blog.okfn.org/2010/05/20/bibliographica-an-introduction/#comments Thu, 20 May 2010 16:22:19 +0000 Rufus Pollock http://blog.okfn.org/?p=2853
  • CERN opens up bibliographic metadata!
  • Workshop on Open Bibliographic Data and the Public Domain
  • The Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network (CKAN) Launched Today
    • ]]>     It’s time to talk a bit about Bibliographica, a new project of the Open Knowledge Foundation.

    Bibliographica is designed to make it easier for scholars and researchers to share and collect information about work in their field. It provides an open source software platform to create and share semantically rich information about publications, authors and their works.

    As readers of the Open Knowledge Foundation blog will know we have a long-standing interest in open bibliographic data - from our efforts starting in 2005 to build a database of public domain works, our coordination of the response to the Library of Congress’ Future of Bibliographic Control (2007) and the recent creation of a new working group on open bibliographic data in March this year.

    Bibliographica itself, is a long-held dream of Jonathan Gray, OKF’s Community Coordinator - a commons of open data surrounding scholarly communications. Thanks to collaboration and support from IDEA Lab at the University of Edinburgh, the dream is a bit closer to reality.

    The primary “technical” features of Bibliographica are:

    • Rich (FRBR-based) domain model
    • Semantic web and linked open data to the core providing for very flexible metadata and easy integration of external material
    • Wiki-like revisioning of all changes enabling easier and freer collaboration
    • Software and a Service
    • Designed to be installed and run by others
    • Distributed — can run different nodes with pull (and push) of data between them

    But what needs of users does Bibliographica aim to satisfy?

    Easy collaboration by scholars and librariains in creating bibliographies and enhancing catalogues

    Often the people who know most about what is published in a given field are the researchers who are active in that field. Bibliographica will enable scholars to directly collaborate on annotated bibliographic indexes for their subject area. A revisioned (wiki-like) approach to adding metadata allows for more open collaboration, and a semantic web base means support for rich metadata with a good standard structure.

    We think that letting researchers directly add or edit details about publications in their field — which they can then export, publish, or do whatever they like with — is a good way to keep this information accurate and up to date.

    Easy creation of publication lists for different uses

    Bibliographica will provide either directly, or via integration with existing tools, an easy way to create and annotate lists of publications. Create a reading list for an undergraduate course, a bibliography for a book or article that you are writing, or a detailed list of works about a given person.

    Open software and service so anyone can run their own copy

    Bibliographica will be a fully open service. All the code will be open source and by default all the data will be openly licensed. Just as projects like WordPress allow anyone to set up their own copy (rather than depending on a centralised and possibly proprietary third-party service), so institutions and groups of researchers will be able to set up and run their own instance of Bibliographica, which they can customise and extend.

    More sophisticated data models and searches

    We plan to harness the specialised knowledge of researchers in particular domains to richly annotate information in the database so that one can provide (good) answers to questions like: “What was published on Nietschze in English between 1950 and 1975?”

    Linked Data vocabularies allow wide range of statements to be made about a work or author. We’re starting with the Dublin Core and SKOS vocabularies, and defining some of our own for expressing the types of things that can be said about works or authors.

    Once a substantial amount of such information has been collected it will become possible to use inferencing techniques to provide answers to more subtle and interesting questions than would be answerable by the usual bibliographic metadata alone.

    Get involved

    We’ll be writing more in the coming weeks about the roadmap for the Bibliographica service and some of the specifics around the use of Linked Data to describe scholarly communications.

    It would be great to hear from those of you who’d like to get involved - helping to refine the data models, suggest vocabularies we should be re-using, contributing research resources to the version at bibliographica.org or testing out your own instance of the Bibliographica software.

    Please get in touch, or join us on the Open Knowledge Foundation’s open-bibliography mailing list.

    Resources

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    Related posts:

    1. CERN opens up bibliographic metadata!
    2. Workshop on Open Bibliographic Data and the Public Domain
    3. The Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network (CKAN) Launched Today

    ]]>     http://blog.okfn.org/2010/05/20/bibliographica-an-introduction/feed/     Warwickshire County Council launch new open data site! http://blog.okfn.org/2010/04/30/warwickshire-county-council-launch-new-open-data-site/ http://blog.okfn.org/2010/04/30/warwickshire-county-council-launch-new-open-data-site/#comments Fri, 30 Apr 2010 19:01:58 +0000 Lisa Evans http://blog.okfn.org/?p=2645
  • How to open up local data: notes from Warwickshire council
  • Open Definition Advisory Council launched
  • B-Open: Open Data from Bristol City Council
    • ]]>     Warwickshire County Council pinged us earlier this week to let us know about the launch of their new open data site!

    warwick-open-data

    The site hosts a range of data sets - available in CVS or XML. For example there are details about education in the region, including:

    There is also a selection of data on Warwickshire councillors such as the council election results for 4th June 2009, 5th May 2005 and 7th June 2001. There is a blog and a strategy blog associated with the main website giving the latest news on the latest datasets as they are added.

    The most recent blog post explains that data will soon be available on areas such as school exclusions, traffic, car parking, council buildings and Warwick County Council finance. There are also plans to allow the site visitors to post notes about the data, make requests for new data or changes, plus a showcase for web sites and applications that make use of the data.

    So congratulations to Warwickshire County Council for the new release! We hope other local authorities are encouraged to follow suit.

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    Related posts:

    1. How to open up local data: notes from Warwickshire council
    2. Open Definition Advisory Council launched
    3. B-Open: Open Data from Bristol City Council

    ]]>     http://blog.okfn.org/2010/04/30/warwickshire-county-council-launch-new-open-data-site/feed/     OKCon 2010 Nearly Here: 24th April 2010 in London http://blog.okfn.org/2010/04/14/okcon-2010-nearly-here-24th-april-2010-in-london/ http://blog.okfn.org/2010/04/14/okcon-2010-nearly-here-24th-april-2010-in-london/#comments Wed, 14 Apr 2010 16:31:35 +0000 Sara Wingate Gray http://blog.okfn.org/?p=2528
  • OKCon 2010 tomorrow in London!
  • Aid Information Challenge, London, 10th April 2010
  • Open Knowledge Conference (OKCon) 2009: London, 28th March 2009
    • ]]>     It’s April, and in the UK the sun has, at last, been sighted! To add to the cheer, The Open Knowledge Foundation’s 5th Open Knowledge Conference (OKCon) takes place in ten days time on Saturday 24th April in London.

    Tickets for OKCon 2010 are selling rapidly, so for those who’d like to ensure their place should register now:

    http://www.okfn.org/okcon/register/

    The event will see a whole host of individuals descend on London for a full day of sessions and workshops spanning the Open Knowledge spectrum including:

    • State of the Nation Keynotes
      • Matthias Schindler, Wikimedia (Germany) on Bibliographic Data and the Public Domain
      • Glyn Moody, on the Post-Analogue World
      • Peter Murray-Rust, on Recent Developments in Open Science
      • Chris Taggart, on Open Local Government Data
      • Sören Auer, on Linked Open Data
      • Jordan Hatcher, on Open Licensing for Data
    • Ideas and Culture with talks on analyzing Dickens Letters and Making the Physical from the Digital
    • Open Bibliographic Information with talks on the Itinerant Poetry Library and the Journal Commons
    • Community Driven Research with talks on Climate data and Open Archaeology
    • Civic Information with talks on Using Open Government Data to Profile Politicians and the Straight Choice
    • Open Government Data and PSI in the EU which looks at the current state of play in France, Norway, Germany, the UK and elsewhere
    • Tools with talks on Large-scale data handling and revisioning with the Genome, Ontowiki, CKAN and more
    • Open Data and the Semantic Web with talks about South Korean DBPedia and Thesaurus Management Tool ‘Pool Party’

    We’re also delighted to have a wide variety of short and lightning talks:

    http://wiki.okfn.org/okcon/2010/lightning

    And we’ve still got space for more, so if you’re interested in a giving a lightning talk sign up on that wiki page.

    Full Programme information for OKCon 2010 is available at:

    http://www.okfn.org/okcon/programme

    More information:

    We look forward to seeing people in a sunny London in April and making OKCon 2010 an event to remember!

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    Related posts:

    1. OKCon 2010 tomorrow in London!
    2. Aid Information Challenge, London, 10th April 2010
    3. Open Knowledge Conference (OKCon) 2009: London, 28th March 2009

    ]]>     http://blog.okfn.org/2010/04/14/okcon-2010-nearly-here-24th-april-2010-in-london/feed/     Nat Torkington joins OKF Advisory Board! http://blog.okfn.org/2010/04/02/nat-torkington-joins-okf-advisory-board/ http://blog.okfn.org/2010/04/02/nat-torkington-joins-okf-advisory-board/#comments Fri, 02 Apr 2010 12:50:11 +0000 Jonathan Gray http://blog.okfn.org/?p=2411
  • Chris Corbin joins OKF Advisory Board
  • Hans Rosling of Gapminder joins the OKF Advisory Board!
  • Glyn Moody and Mark Surman join OKF Advisory Board!
    • ]]>

    We’re delighted to welcome Nat Torkington to the Open Knowledge Foundation’s Advisory Board!

    You may have seen his two recent pieces on O’ Reilly Radar on the future of open data: Truly Open Data and Rethinking Open Data (also co-posted on the OKF blog).

    His thoughts on the topic have a lot in common with our approach here at the Foundation - especially regarding applying open source software development methodologies to the collaborative development of data, the importance of community, compelling exemplars, and so on. His project management and event organising experience in the world of open source software will be invaluable for us at the OKF.

    A brief bio:

    Nat Torkington ran the first production web site in New Zealand back when you had to convince people to use “the World-Wide Web” instead of the more popular Gopher. This led to ten years in America before moving back to NZ in 2005. He cowrote the bestselling Perl Cookbook, was a trend-spotter for O’Reilly Media, and ran many conferences including OSCON and Where 2.0. He runs Kiwi Foo Camp and started Open New Zealand, an organisation that develops and hosts projects around transparency, participatory democracy, and making central and local government useful to citizens and businesses.

    A list of current Advisory Board Members is available at:

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    Related posts:

    1. Chris Corbin joins OKF Advisory Board
    2. Hans Rosling of Gapminder joins the OKF Advisory Board!
    3. Glyn Moody and Mark Surman join OKF Advisory Board!

    ]]>     http://blog.okfn.org/2010/04/02/nat-torkington-joins-okf-advisory-board/feed/     Ordnance Survey opens up UK mapping data! http://blog.okfn.org/2010/04/01/ordnance-survey-opens-up-uk-mapping-data/ http://blog.okfn.org/2010/04/01/ordnance-survey-opens-up-uk-mapping-data/#comments Thu, 01 Apr 2010 11:10:02 +0000 Jonathan Gray http://blog.okfn.org/?p=2397
  • Ordnance Survey to open up UK geospatial data
  • Response to the consultation on opening access to Ordnance Survey data
  • Mapping open government data initiatives around the world
    • ]]>     Subsequent to the recent consultation on Ordnance Survey data and Gordon Brown’s commitment to opening up (an unspecified amount of) the data in a speech last week - today the UK’s mapping agency is releasing a significant portion of their data for free use by the public.

    More information is available in the following report, published yesterday by Communities and Local Government:

    The datasets which have been opened up include:

    • OS Street View
    • 1: 50 000 Gazetteer
    • 1: 250 000 Colour Raster
    • OS Locator
    • Boundary-Line
    • Code-Point Open
    • Meridian 2
    • Strategi
    • MiniScale
    • OS VectorMap District (available in May 2010)
    • Land-Form PANORAMA

    We’re glad to see that it looks like the data will be available under an open license:

    this licence will allow the data to be used and re-used for free by the public, including for commercial use. (p. 17)

    The official link to the data on their website has been overwhelmed all morning (which surely says something about public demand!). Some downloads are available from mySociety at:

    Big kudos to the folk at Ernest Marples, who did a great job in encouraging people to respond to the consultation and facilitated nearly a third of submissions through their online tool.

    More information is available at:

    This is excellent news - and we very much look forward to learning more about the details as they unfold. We sincerely hope (given the date) that its not an elaborate joke!

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    1. Ordnance Survey to open up UK geospatial data
    2. Response to the consultation on opening access to Ordnance Survey data
    3. Mapping open government data initiatives around the world

    ]]>     http://blog.okfn.org/2010/04/01/ordnance-survey-opens-up-uk-mapping-data/feed/