[epsi-coord] Fwd: [open-government] Open Government data in Portugal

Wed Aug 31 08:27:41 BST 2011

Hey Tom

this might be a good starting point...

Daniel

Begin forwarded message:

> From: ricardo lafuente <bollecs at sollec.org>
> Subject: [open-government] Open Government data in Portugal
> Date: 30. August 2011 22:34:57 MESZ
> To: open-government at lists.okfn.org, euopendata at lists.okfn.org
> 
> Hello lists,
> [apologies in advance for cross-posting]
> 
> I've been lurking in here and thought it would be appropriate to let you know what's been going on in the Portuguese open data front. I noticed that Portugal is usually one of the very few EU countries missing from most open data initiatives.
> 
> Around September last year, a group was formed in the city of Porto -- named Transparency Hackday Porto -- to break with the apparent non-existence of any open data efforts in this country*. We hosted several hackdays in a hackerspace, including one two-day hackathon (joining the global transparency hackathon initiative), where we focused on parsing and normalising data on the Portuguese Parliament.
> 
> One project that began on that hackathon and is now in Beta is http://demo.cratica.org, a frontend to access this data. There, we focus on MP info and Parliament transcripts, providing a simple and straightforward interface to allow anyone to go through it. We got wonderful feedback, especially regarding the contrast with the official Parliament site, where it's rather hard to reach Parliament transcripts (and they're not indexed by search engines).
> 
> Sadly, we're using HTTPS meaning that Google Translate can't get through (we're discussing about changing that). However, here are a few links so that you can see what's where:
> 
> List of MPs:         https://demo.cratica.org/deputados/
> MP info:             https://demo.cratica.org/deputados/4166/
> Transcript calendar: https://demo.cratica.org/sessoes/2010/
> Session transcript:  https://demo.cratica.org/sessoes/2010/6/17/
> 
> There are still many glitches and details that we're working on, but you can see the gist of it -- our main concern was to reduce complexity wherever possible, and provide a straightforward design that makes it easy -- and dare I say, interesting -- to read what's going on in Parliament.
> 
> Oh, and the Demo.cratica code is free software (AGPL), and we'd be delighted to help in porting this application to other countries. It's all done using free software as well.
> 
> There is also another great project by an accomplice of this group based in Lisbon, this time around public state spending: http://www.despesapublica.com/
> 
> Right now, the Transparency group is off for holidays, but we're beginning to cook other open data projects. If there's anyone on this list interested or involved in open data projects, we'd love to hear from you!
> 
> Cheers,
> Ricardo Lafuente
> 
> * There were a few, but most initiatives have been inactive for a while, and we're not aware of active efforts as of today. Drop me a line if you know of any!
> 
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