[OKFN-AU] CKAN -au User Group

Thu Jul 18 23:41:42 UTC 2013

This is great Alex, and I think you understand what I mean when I say how
important it is that Aus is represented in new features - I had a bit of a
rant to central OKFN the other day about this (I'm tired of there just
being one pin in the OKFN chapter Australia map when there is so much more
happening down here :)

Could I ask that you draft a paragraph (very short) blog post stating the
current state of play in Australia with regards to CKAN (I'd like to make
sure people don't volunteer more than a half hour towards writing posts
(with my own time redoubled to help promote the post)?  I've got several
people I'd like to to start introducing you to so we can start to make a
bit more noise about Open Data in Australia... we might even be able to
expand this group out to Asia as well, Taiwan for example?

I'll send a separate email re login details to the OKFN wordpress platform.

Thanks again Alex.

Kind Regards, Flanders

On 19 July 2013 09:01, Alex (Maxious) Sadleir <maxious at gmail.com> wrote:

> I would be pleased to take on this position! Hopefully I won't take on
> any more positions after this one! I eagerly await the proposed org
> structure to work out where best to fit, be it core group, working
> group, ambassador etc.
>
> Perhaps broadening the title to CKAN and Data Platforms Working Group
> to include things like RDA and the back-office work for getting data
> ready for use.
>
> Clearly the first thing for the group to address is the metadata
> customisation to meet Australian recordkeeping practices. A collective
> approach to pooling resources would be good here.
> One pie-in-the-sky goal could be to enable datasets to be categorised
> and browsed by the function they serve, not by the portfolio of the
> organisation that made them via
> http://www.naa.gov.au/records-management/publications/agift.aspx
> and/or COFOG.
> An agreement on some common subset/mapping of metadata will become
> more important as people start to desire federation including
> potentially not just with State Government data platforms but
> cultural/academic collections and different tiers of data sources.
>
> In terms of monitoring upcoming functionality and sending priorities
> back to UK/EU, the situation seem to be improving with activity points
> like https://trello.com/b/MkqvtXnH/ckan-roadmap-ideas-requests or
> https://github.com/okfn/ckan/wiki/Ideas:-new-feature-requests-&-ideas
> But we still need to track the state of play in Australasia (through
> datacatalogs.org and ckan.org/instances ) and work out where best to
> direct our resources, be it poking Europe or writing patches.
>
>
> On Thu, Jul 18, 2013 at 9:48 AM, David F. Flanders
> <david.flanders at ands.org.au> wrote:
> > I've become increasingly aware of more data.state.gov moving over to
> CKAN,
> > perhaps we considered establishing an Australasia CKAN user/admin/dev
> group?
> > I've three reasons for this (off the top of my head, additional argument
> for
> > and/or against appreciated):
> >
> > a.) legal implications for Australasia will impact feature and functions
> > that need to be developed, e.g. rather than building features in
> isolation
> > pulling resources to build features such as a CKAN export to RDA?
> >
> > b.) community based groups working with these systems and their APIs will
> > want standardisation around datasets, etc. i.e. common use of schema.org
> > metadata elements/URIs so there is a common API across all
> data.state.gov
> > instances?
> >
> > c.) As a group we can better represent our interests back to the core
> OKFN
> > CKAN dev team, i.e. my contacts and understanding of the UK/EU based team
> > might help cut through some of the listserv blackhole that CKAN currently
> > seems to be experiencing, i.e. a letter sent to core CKAN with several
> > signatures requesting prioritization of a bug or a feature?
> >
> > Most importantly, is the question of: is anyone being interested in
> leading
> > this Working Group?  My personal feeling is that it should be someone
> who is
> > somewhat neutral,. e.g. someone not running an instance of CKAN for
> > government.  Or perhaps someone who is associated with a CKAN but feel
> as if
> > they can state their bias clearly while chairing the group?
> >
> > BTW this goes towards the new organisational structure for OKFN that Pia
> and
> > I have been discussing with the CKAN core team, TBA.  In theory the
> > structure has two sets of leaders/ambassadors.  One set to lead local
> groups
> > per city/state/territory (as per Govhack) and the other set to lead
> special
> > interest groups, e.g. data journalism (Craig/Marc), Open Census (Alex),
> > OpenGLAM (Geoff), CKAN (???), etc.
> >
> > Kind Regards,
> >
> > Flanders
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > -------------------------------------------------------
> > Flanders' Channels:
> > blog: http://dfflanders.wordpress.com/
> > twitter: http://twitter.com/dfflanders
> > skype: david.flanders
> > mobile: 0407 821 686
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> > OKFN-AU at lists.okfn.org
> > http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/okfn-au
> > Unsubscribe: http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/options/okfn-au
> >
>

-- 
-------------------------------------------------------
Flanders' Channels:
blog: http://dfflanders.wordpress.com/
twitter: http://twitter.com/dfflanders <https://twitter.com/dfflanders>
skype: david.flanders
mobile: 0407 821 686
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