[euopendata] [open-government] Feedback on the EU Open Data Portal

Fri Jul 5 21:30:10 UTC 2013

Hi Christian -

Some comments from an outsider looking at the portal for the first time. In
order to maximise reuse, perhaps there could be a number of usability tests
to evaluate what layout and features are likely to lead to the greatest
uptake?

*
Right hand menu*
I'm not sure that it's immediately clear what this does. Perhaps change the
right hand-side menu to have a heading of "Filter by", then change the
boxes to "Keyword" "Format", "Publisher"?

I dislike the use of the term keyword here though. While is great that
resources have been tagged with terms such as "EEC owned data", which are
likely to resonate much more than geek-centric tags such as
"eec-owned-data", multi-word tags are not keywords. I wish I wasn't
bothered by this!

*Add symbols to common licences?
*
Where a common licence has been used, such as CC-BY, perhaps include the
symbols which may be easy to recognise?*

*
*Home tab
*
The Data tab actually feels like a much better Home tab than the current
one. I wasn't sure where to start at first.

*Make resources the priority*
Within a dataset's page, such as
http://open-data.europa.eu/en/data/dataset/02UX0b5MzKefvG3jhWcHQ, the
resources are quite far down the page. I recommend moving Publisher to
below the resources list and removing the title for Description. That way,
it will be immediately clear what the focus of the page is.

*Suggest a dataset weakness*
I know in New Zealand, there has been quite a lot of work to make the
"Suggest a dataset" a strong focus of http://data.govt.nz. While the site
invites people to email the administrators at the end of the video and the
About page, it is not clear if this would lead to much action.

*Reuse stories
*
Perhaps it would be interesting for the portal to be able to cite examples
of reuse of particular datasets. That is, as a report writer, I could email
in to let the administrators know of some material which I am producing.
This could then be linked to from the data portal.
**
*
*

On 29 June 2013 04:45, Christian Villum <christian.villum at okfn.org> wrote:

> Dear All,
>
> We are currently *putting together a summary on the EU Open Data Portal
> (EU ODP) <http://open-data.europa.eu/>* that was launched earlier this
> year - as a single point of access to a growing range of data from the
> institutions and other bodies of the European Union.
>
> By providing easy and free access to data, the portal aims to promote
> their innovative use and unleash their economic potential. It also aims to
> help foster the transparency and the accountability of the institutions and
> other bodies of the EU.
>
> For the summary, which will be presented to the European Commission, we
> are *inviting feedback from the community*; specifically we would be
> interested in hearing about:
>
> - General opinions on the EU ODP and it's ability to fill the
> above-mentioned aims
> - Uses of the data from the EU ODP; existing case stories or planned
> future uses
> - The launch; was the portal announced properly and appropriately and in
> the right channels?
>
> Please help us by voicing your opinion, so we can provide good and useful
> feedback on the portal.
>
> -Christian
>
> --
>
> Christian Villum
>
> Community Manager, Open Government Data + Local Groups Network
> skype: christianvillum  |  @villum <http://www.twitter.com/villum>
> The Open Knowledge Foundation <http://okfn.org/>
> *Empowering through Open Knowledge
> *http://okfn.org/  |  @okfn <http://twitter.com/OKFN>  |  OKF on Facebook<https://www.facebook.com/OKFNetwork>
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>
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