Open Knowledge International (OKI) has been awarded funds by the Open Data Institute (ODI) as part of a project to enhance and increase adoption of tools and services for open data publishers in the private and public sectors, reducing barriers to publication. OKI’s focus in this programme will be to create better open data publication workflows by building on our earlier work on the Frictionless Data initiative.
We will be implementing significant incremental improvements to a range of code libraries and tools that are loosely aligned around our Frictionless Data project, in which we are working on removing the friction in working with data by developing a set of tools, standards, and best practices for publishing data. The work will be presented as part of a new toolkit which will be specifically targeted at both technical and non-technical users of data, within the public sector, businesses, and the data community.
We will perform additional user research in government and non-governmental contexts, design and enhance user interfaces for non-technical users, implement integrations of tooling with existing workflows as well as working towards new ones. The reports, research and tools produced will become practical assets that can be used and added to by others, to continue to explore how data can and should work in our societies and economies.
Innovate UK, the UK’s innovation agency, is providing £6 million over three years to the ODI, to advance knowledge and expertise in how data can shape the next generation of public and private services, and create economic growth. The work on improving the conditions for data publishing is one of six projects, chosen by the ODI, in this first year of the funding.
Olivier Thereaux, Head of Technology at the ODI said:
‘Our goals in this project are to truly understand what barriers exist to publishing high quality data quickly and at reasonable cost. We’re happy to be working with OKI, and to be building on its Frictionless Data initiative to further the development of simpler, faster, higher quality open data publishing workflows. ‘
On announcing the funding on 17th October, Dr Jeni Tennison, CEO at the ODI said:
‘The work we are announcing today will find the best examples of things working well, so we can share and learn from them. We will take these learnings and help businesses and governments to use them and lead by example.’
A major focus for the Product Team at Open Knowledge International over the last two years has been around data quality and automation of data processing. Data quality is arguably the greatest barrier to useful and usable open data and we’ve been directly addressing this via specifications and tooling in Frictionless Data over the last two years.
Our focus in this project will be to develop ways for non-technical users to employ tools for automation, reducing the potential for manual error, and increasing productivity. We see speed of publication and lowering costs of publication as two areas that are directly enhanced by having better tooling and workflows to address quality and automation and this is something which the development of this toolkit will directly address.
People are fundamental to quality, curated, open data publication workflows. However, by automating more aspects of the “publication pipeline”, we not only reduce the need for manual intervention, we also can increase the speed at which open data can be published.
To keep up to date on our progress, join the Frictionless Data Discuss forum, or ask the team a direct question on the gitter channel.
Jo Barratt was Delivery Manager and Deputy CEO at Open Knowledge Foundation
