[ok-scotland] Scottish Government Open Data Strategy: Draft document open for comment

Tue Nov 18 22:12:18 UTC 2014

Thanks for posting this Ewan - very interesting and welcome. I have a 
few queries or points for discussion:

1. Who is covered by "all organisations", para 6? Is this the whole of 
Scottish public sector, eg including universities, Health Boards, 
museums and archives...?
" It is proposed that by the end of 2015 all organisations should have 
completed and published an open data publication plan, setting out their 
commitment to make data open and identifying what data they will make 
open. "

2. What does "data" cover? Will organisations have a free choice in 
deciding what to make open? Where does data end and metadata begin? Eg, 
if I have a high resolution photo (in an archive, say), is that data in 
the sense used here? If I describe it with a database record is that 
data or metadata? Presumably if I describe the format of the database 
record that's metadata. I note that some of these questions are left 
open in the document and there are some suggestions about exceptions 
(with Registers of Scotland being explicitly mentioned, for some 
reason). Are these areas likely to be firmed up a bit in a later draft?

3. What's the logic behind choosing the Open Government Licence instead 
of the suite of CC licences?

4. Aiming for 3* data seems a pragmatic plan, but in a way it seems a 
pity that it won't be "living" data, ie directly accessible (eg via an 
API) from the working dataset, rather than a snapshot that gets 
refreshed every so often. Is having a single "Scottish Data Discovery 
Site" the best way forward, or is there a risk of it containing 
fossilised data, abstracted from its context?

Overall, it looks like good stuff to me.

Kate

On 17/11/14 14:39, Ewan Klein wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> the Scottish Government's Data Management Board has commissioned an open data working group to develop an Open Data Strategy for Scotland by December 2014. Information about the working group is available at:
>
> http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Economy/digital/digitalservices/datamanagement/datainnovation/OpenDataStrategy
>
> The working group has produced a draft Open Data Strategy document:
>
> http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Economy/digital/digitalservices/datamanagement/MeetingsandPublications/DMBMeetingFive/DMBMeeting5Paper3
>
> The intention is to publish the final version of this document in December, so any thoughts or comments on the draft would be appreciated by the end of November. You can send these directly to Tabitha.stringer at scotland.gsi.gov.uk. Alternatively, we could have some discussion on this list, and I will compile and forward the discussion to Tabitha.
>
>
> Best regards.
>
> Ewan
>
> -------------
> Ewan Klein
> Open Knowledge Ambassador for Scotland
> Skype:  ewan.h.klein |  @ewanhklein
> Open Knowledge
> http://scot.okfn.org/  |  @okfnscot
>
> _______________________________________________
> ok-scotland mailing list
> ok-scotland at lists.okfn.org
> https://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/ok-scotland
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.okfn.org/mailman/options/ok-scotland
>

-- 
Kate Byrne
School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh
http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/kbyrne3/
location: http://geohash.org/gcvwr2rkb5hd
twitter: @katefbyrne

The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/ok-scotland/attachments/20141118/79323b66/attachment-0003.html>