[okfn-discuss] Update on data.gov.uk

Fri Nov 27 12:07:17 UTC 2009

Below is update on data.gov.uk from Richard Stirling at the UK Cabinet
Office. Includes:

"CKAN – As you know we are working with the Open Knowledge Foundation
and using CKAN as our meta-data repository. At the moment we are
running a separate instance while the site is behind the
username/password barrier. Once this has been dropped we want to
become a full, load carrying, node of CKAN. This of course brings with
it a whole host of benefits, not least a well formed API to query our
data."

-- 
Jonathan Gray

Community Coordinator
The Open Knowledge Foundation
http://www.okfn.org

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From:  <Richard.Stirling at cabinet-office.x.gsi.gov.uk>
Date: Fri, Nov 27, 2009 at 11:32 AM
Subject: [uk-government-data-developers] Update 1.3 - So what next?
To: uk-government-data-developers at googlegroups.com

Over the last few weeks we have been focussing on getting the project
moving  forward within Government and helping individual data owners
identify datasets for release.  This culminated in the meeting last
week in which Tim and Nigel briefed the Prime Minister, Liam Byrne,
Stephen Timms and others and the announcement by the Prime Minister
and the Department of Communities and Local Government about Ordnance
Survey data.

In the next phase of our work we will be focussing on:

Licensing - We are looking at how to drop the transactional element of
the current licence and move closer to something like CC-BY.

Data - We have identified a number of new datasets from departments
and hope to put some of those live shortly (including a number through
the ONS)

Site - There are number of usability and functionality issues that we
know about and again we will be doing a fuller blog post shortly on
this. We are reading all your comments and factoring them in into the
contents of the next release.  There will be a blog post from the team
shortly on improvements that went live last week and trailing some of
the others in the pipeline.

Wiki - One of the things we had to drop from the initial preview was
the wiki for our data. This is currently being worked on by our
designers: the aim is to give each dataset an associated wiki page.
This would be a great home for sharing community knowledge – for
example sample queries, who is using the data in what way.

Meta-Data richness - We are improving the meta-data we collect
(inspired in part by the work of Australia and New Zealand) and are
looking at how best to represent that.

Search - This richer meta-data should allow much better search. At the
moment we are very limited in what we are searching against. We know
that this makes navigating our data a bit of a pain.

SPARQL - Where we have Linked Data, SPARQL queries are available to be
run against it. We are working at joining this up across the stores
which will eventually provide a nice open, flexible, extensible way to
query across our data.

CKAN – As you know we are working with the Open Knowledge Foundation
and using CKAN as our meta-data repository. At the moment we are
running a separate instance while the site is behind the
username/password barrier. Once this has been dropped we want to
become a full, load carrying, node of CKAN. This of course brings with
it a whole host of benefits, not least a well formed API to query our
data.

I know this leaves a lot of questions unanswered but hopefully is a
good starter on: who we are; what we are up to; and where we are
going.

Regards

Richard

Richard Stirling

Digital Engagement
CabinetOffice
020 7276 2071

http://blogs.cabinetoffice.gov.uk

http://twitter.com/rchards

The Cabinet Office computer systems may be monitored and
communications carried on them recorded, to secure the effective
operation of the system and for other lawful purposes.

The original of this email was scanned for viruses by the Government
Secure Intranet virus scanning service supplied by Cable&Wireless in
partnership with MessageLabs. (CCTM Certificate Number 2009/09/0052.)
On leaving the GSi this email was certified virus free.
Communications via the GSi may be automatically logged, monitored
and/or recorded for legal purposes.