[okfn-labs] Next generation data catalogues.

[Pieter Colpaert]

Hi Ross,

It does! In fact this is one of of the subjects I'm researching at Ghent 
University as part of my PhD. I really like the idea of a new generation 
Open Data portal.

To give direct input, a paper I'm writing atm is describing 5 things, 
ordered by difficulty, that an open data portal should provide, in order 
for data owners to reach their goal (stimulate data reuse concerning a 
specific domain):

* A dataset registry

There should be a list of open datasets which you can search and browse 
through.

** A meta-data provider

The meta-data that is collected should be actively maintained and should 
be made Open Data itself (here: released under an open license and 
described using e.g. DCAT): by doing that, other open data portals can 
harvest this data. At this moment I think CKAN is the best solution for 
this out there.

*** A co-creation platform

The data portal should stimulate communication around data reuse:
  - (open source) tools that are being created should be listed at the 
dataset
  - co-creation events and ideation projects should use the platform to 
"+1" the best ideas, concepts or apps

CKAN has some extensions for this star, yet I think this should be in 
there by default.

**** A data publishing platform

The data itself should be made available through the platform in common 
formats so that the programmers can access it in an easy way (e.g. 
through The DataTank: http://demo.thedatatank.org)

Also, a URI strategy should be made.

***** A common data hub

Provenance, Trust, Feedback cycles, Linking data, and so on. The data 
becomes part of data cycles which everyone can implement. This could be 
made by a "Git for Data", as James Smith wrote in this blog post: 
http://theodi.org/blog/adapting-git-simple-data

(My paper is called "The 5 stars of Open Data Portals")

Kind regards,

Pieter

On 08/26/2013 04:45 PM, Ross Jones wrote:
> Hi,
>
> There was a bit of discussion on the #ckan channel this morning between some developers
> building data catalogs around what a next-generation data catalog would look like.  It was
> noted that it might _not_ look like CKAN, and so we booted up the catalog-ng organisation
> on github (https://github.com/catalog-ng) as a place to work on some ideas and proof-of-concepts
> around what we think would be included in a new data catalog using the knowledge gained
> working with CKAN.
>
> There really isn't a plan yet, certainly the intention isn't to damage CKAN in any way, but more
> of a way to experiment with building catalogs without any of the baggage involved with a
> mature product - what would you build today with the new tech available and the experience
> of working with CKAN.  Rather than go through the process of doing this outside, I thought it might
> be useful to do this as part of labs and keep it inside OKF, and possibly keep it on a OKF mailing list.
>
> Does this belong in OKFN-labs? Does the idea of building something new in that area sound
> vaguely interesting to anyone (other than those of us with work with CKAN day-to-day)?
>
>
> Ross.
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