[okfn-labs] Bad Data: real-world examples of how not to do data

Fri Nov 22 14:23:52 UTC 2013

On a similar note, the German finance ministry has started its own open
data initiative:

http://www.bundeshaushalt-info.de/download.html

This is really well-intentioned, but for some reason they chose to encode a
lot of critical information in the background color and font size of the
rows. So instead of just converting this to CSV, you actually need to first
turn the colors back into data.

Very artistic.

- Friedrich

On Fri, Nov 22, 2013 at 3:14 PM, Rufus Pollock <rufus.pollock at okfn.org>wrote:

> Great examples!
>
> Love to hear from others if they have any "chestnuts" they've come across!
>
> Rufus
>
>
> On 22 November 2013 14:09, Ivan Begtin <ibegtin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi Rufus!
>>
>> I have great example of official bad data from Russia.
>>
>> List of regional offices of Ministry of Interior -
>> http://mvd.ru/opendata/od1 direct download -
>> http://mvd.ru/upload/site1/opendata/od1.xml
>>
>> This XML file is MS Word XML (
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Office_XML_formats) and it's not
>> even close to be good data. It's just XML formatted bad data but XML format
>> is not more machine-readable than common .DOC file.
>>
>> We discovered at least two government bodies doing that for now.
>>
>> Best Regards,
>>    Ivan
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> 2013/11/22 Rufus Pollock <rufus.pollock at okfn.org>
>>
>>> Hi All,
>>>
>>> I wanted to flag a new mini-project:
>>>
>>> http://okfnlabs.org/bad-data/
>>>
>>> The idea of "Bad Data" is to provide real-world examples of how *not*to publish data. It showcases the poorly structured, the mis-formatted, and
>>> the just plain ugly.
>>>
>>> This is less about being critical and more about educating - by
>>> providing examples of how not to do something we can help show how to do it
>>> right.
>>>
>>> Here are a couple of the examples already up there:
>>>
>>>    - A poorly structured CSV on tube usage from London Datastore<http://okfnlabs.org/bad-data/ex/tfl-passenger-numbers/>
>>>    - An ASCII spreadsheet (with merge cells!) from US Bureau of Labor
>>>    Statistics <http://okfnlabs.org/bad-data/ex/bls-us-employment/>
>>>
>>> *New examples are very welcome*, instructions on how to submit them
>>> here: http://okfnlabs.org/bad-data/add/
>>>
>>> Rufus
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> okfn-labs mailing list
>>> okfn-labs at lists.okfn.org
>>> http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/okfn-labs
>>> Unsubscribe: http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/options/okfn-labs
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> С уважением,
>>   Иван Бегтин
>>
>> Директор НП "Информационная культура"
>> email: ibegtin at infoculture.ru
>> phone: +7 499 500 96 58, +7 910 426 68 83
>> website: http://infoculture.ru
>>
>
>
>
> --
>
>
> * Rufus Pollock Founder and Executive Director | skype: rufuspollock |
> @rufuspollock <https://twitter.com/rufuspollock> The Open Knowledge
> Foundation <http://okfn.org/> Empowering through Open Knowledge
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[okfn-labs] Bad Data: real-world examples of how *not* to do data

[okfn-labs] Bad Data: real-world examples of how not to do data