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

Thu May 2 21:21:24 UTC 2013

I have a list of NZ public bodies. I have the larger list of everything
which is subject to the Official Information Act, which includes schools
and so forth. My gut says I'd want to strip those out and just get the
purely governmental bodies. Does that sound right?

Rowan

On 3 May 2013 01:36, todd.d.robbins at gmail.com <todd.d.robbins at gmail.com>wrote:

> I'll get on the US side ASAP.
>
>
> On Wed, May 1, 2013 at 4:17 AM, Rufus Pollock <rufus.pollock at okfn.org>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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>
>
>
> --
> Tod Robbins
> Digital Collections Librarian, MLIS
> todrobbins.com | @todrobbins <http://www.twitter.com/#!/todrobbins>
>
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