[okfn-labs] Update on PublicBodies.org - a URL for every part of Government

Thu May 2 09:13:49 UTC 2013

Hi,

Will look at it. Actually I have a source for public bodies in Austria I
might want to put in.

Michael

On Wed, May 01, 2013 at 11:17:48AM +0100, Rufus Pollock wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
> This is an update on PublicBodies.org - a Labs project whose aim is to
> provide a "URL for every part of Government":
> <http://publicbodies.org/>
> 
> Full post here:
> <http://okfnlabs.org/blog/2013/05/01/publicbodies.org-an-update.html>
> 
> PublicBodies.org is a database and website of "Public Bodies" -- that
> is Government-run or controlled organizations (which may or may not
> have distinct corporate existence). Examples would include government
> ministries or departments, state-run organizations such as libraries,
> police and fire departments and more.
> 
> You run into public bodies all the time in projects like OpenSpending
> (either as spenders or recipients). Back in 2011 as part of the
> "Organizations" data workshop at OGD Camp 2011, Labs member Friedrich
> Lindenberg scraped together a first database and site of "public
> bodies" from various sources (primarily FoI sites like WhatDoTheyKnow,
> FragDenStaat and AskTheEU).
> 
> I and Friedrich have recently re-done the site converting the sqlite
> DB to simple flat CSV files:
> 
> - Main github repo: <https://github.com/okfn/publicbodies>
> - Example raw CSV: <https://raw.github.com/okfn/publicbodies/master/data/gb.csv>
> 
> The site itself is now super-simple flat-files hosted on s3 (build
> code [1]). Here's an example of the output:
> 
> - European Parliament: <http://publicbodies.org/eu/european-parliament.html>
> - Associated JSON API (with CORS!)
> <http://publicbodies.org/eu/european-parliament.json>
> 
> The simplicity of CSV for data plus simple templating to flat-files is
> very attractive. There are some drawbacks such as changes to primary
> template resulting in a full rebuild and upload of ~6k files so,
> especially as the data grows, we may want to look into something a bit
> nicer but for the time being I think this works well.
> 
> Thoughts and suggestions very welcome!
> 
> [1]: https://github.com/okfn/publicbodies/tree/master/site
> 
> ## Next Steps
> 
> There's plenty that could be improved e.g.
> 
> * More data - other jurisdictions (we only cover EU, UK and Germany) +
> descriptions for the bodies (this could be a nice crowdcrafting app)
> * Search and Reconciliation (via nomenklatura)
> * Making it easier to submit corrections or additions
> 
> The full list of issues is on github here:
> <https://github.com/okfn/publicbodies/issues>
> 
> Help on these most definitely wanted! Just grab one of the issues or
> get in touch ...
> 
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