[euopendata] Idea: screen scraping sprint -> 19.3.2011

[Chris Taggart]

Off the top of my head, I'd say (and some of them overlap):

1) Democratic data: elected members, committee membership, meetings,
minutes, agendas, electoral districts
2) Financial data: spending, accounts, budgets, contracts
3) Geographic data: boundaries (inc electoral districts), buildings,
assets (e.g. schools, hospital, depots)
4) Demographic data (often held by national statistics bodies)
5) Performance data - education, social care, road maintenance, etc,
which is often delivered at the local level.
6) Policy data: forward plans, zoning/planning approvals
7) Transport data

I'd love to see OpenlyLocal be the focus of some of this, in part
because it makes sense, in part because we've done a lot of the work
and could avoid reinventing the wheel, in part because it would be
nice to get other countries' data in there, and in part it would be
nice to get some EU funding for what up to now has been entirely
self-funded ;-)

We've also been pretty successful at doing scoreboards that make a
difference (over 70 UK councils now with open data sections).

Chris

-- 
-------------------------------------------------------
OpenlyLocal :: Making Local Government More Transparent http://openlylocal.com
Blog: http://countculture.wordpress.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/CountCulture

On 2 March 2011 16:01, Jonathan Gray <jonathan.gray at okfn.org> wrote:
> *Great* idea, Richard. Big +1. In general I'm a big fan of starting to
> build more data checklists to serve as inspiration for people working
> with public datasets. For example, based on the kinds of things that
> public bodies characteristically have, based on input from civic
> society, developers, journalists, experts inside/outside government
> etc. On that note...
>
> (Looping in Chris Taggart of OpenlyLocal.com)
>
> Chris: do you have any cunning ideas for where we might get
> inspiration for lists of information assets commonly held by
> local/regional public bodies? Would you be willing to provide a very
> quick list off the top of your head, based on your experiences with
> OpenlyLocal?
>
> All the best,
>
> Jonathan
>
> On Wed, Mar 2, 2011 at 4:48 PM, Richard Cyganiak <richard at cyganiak.de> wrote:
>> Hi Antti,
>>
>> Is there any specific data that is to be the target of this event? I understand it's data about your local city, but that's still very general.
>>
>> Maybe it would be good to have something like a checklist for your city:
>>
>> * city budget
>> * city parliament/council + results of last election
>> * demographic statistics
>> * city government meeting minutes and decisions
>> * public tenders
>> * planning applications
>> * ...
>>
>> Ideally, every item on the list would have obviously useful applications if they were available in structured form. A city's data could be considered “clean” if all of the items are scraped (or already available in structured form from official sources)
>>
>> Best,
>> Richard
>>
>>
>> On 2 Mar 2011, at 14:37, Antti Jogi Poikola wrote:
>>
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> Some months ago I send this list an idea about screen scraping day. The global event is still planned, but as many of us are quite busy right now we decided to start with small and organise 19th March a twin event in two cities Prague (Czech) and Jyväskylä (Finland). I will organise small "five guys and pizza" -type of event in Jyväskylä and Jindřich Mynarz will make a bit bigger one in Prague.
>>>
>>> The idea is to have this as a preparatory event so that in may or june we could organise really nice global screen scraping day. For now we would need some helping hand in setting a wordpress blog... OKF has reserved the domain  bigclean.org
>>>
>>> Also if some other cities would like to join in on 19th of March, you are more than wellcome.
>>>
>>> BR, Antti "Jogi" Poikola
>>>
>>> http://blog.okfn.org/2010/11/10/announcing-the-big-clean-spring-2011/
>>>
>>> On 1 October 2010 13:50, Antti Poikola <antti.poikola at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>  Hi people,
>>>
>>> I just got an idea that we could organize maybe even global screen scraping day/camp/sprint with the idea to create open API:s to government data by programming screen scrapers to existing public, but technically not open data sources?
>>>
>>> So far just a vague idea... anybody interested to brainstorm it further?
>>>
>>> -Jogi
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> euopendata mailing list
>>> euopendata at lists.okfn.org
>>> http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/euopendata
>>
>>
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>
>
>
> --
> Jonathan Gray
>
> Community Coordinator
> The Open Knowledge Foundation
> http://blog.okfn.org
>
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>