[open-civil-society] Cuts data

Fri Aug 12 13:22:45 UTC 2011

Thanks Tim - good idea. 

I've set up a google spreadsheet here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AhPQWam6YvCcdE5VeDdpdjEtRGN
URzRJcHI0a0t6MEE&hl=en_GB#gid=1

I haven't set up your other ideas for making the data a bit more useful
- but they are good ones. I suppose the perfect situation would be one
sheet per table.

There has been disappointingly little scrutiny of the actual numbers
unfortunately. If there's one more thing I'd like open data to help
encourage it's a more sceptical attitude to data that's presented. Even
when it's my data being scrutinised!

Thanks
David

________________________________

From: open-civil-society-bounces at lists.okfn.org
[mailto:open-civil-society-bounces at lists.okfn.org] On Behalf Of Tim
Davies
Sent: 08 August 2011 18:52
To: List for Open Civil Society
Subject: Re: [open-civil-society] Cuts data

Hey David 

Great work on the report - and good leading by example with the data.

The Five Stars of Linked Data is a good cumulative framework for
thinking about different steps of publishing open data: 

http://inkdroid.org/journal/2010/06/04/the-5-stars-of-open-linked-data/

Often a fairly quick shortcut to allow you to publish both structured
spreadsheets, with data on multiple tabs in context, and to make that
data available for those who want it as CSV, is to share it through
Google Docs, as with the permissions set right, a carefully crafted URL
can give a user the choice of viewing it in spreadsheet format online,
downloading each sheet as a CSV, or even querying the data directly over
the web.

>From looking at your data, that's not so important as providing links
back to the original raw data sources you've used, which is what you're
doing in the spreadsheet. You might event want to think about including
a list of all the datasets you used just as a separate section on the
page - so that your 'Data Appendix' shows the context you've used the
data in, and links to 'raw data sources' helps people head off to
explore that data in context.

It will be interesting to see if any coverage/use of the report picks up
on the data appendix - and who the users are - as I suspect it won't
just be data-geeks who are interested in the content (lots of people
after the raw numbers and facts, as well as ways of mashing-up and
visualising the data...)

All the best

Tim

On Mon, Aug 8, 2011 at 6:14 PM, David Kane <David.Kane at ncvo-vol.org.uk>
wrote:

		Hi - you'll probably have seen the cuts research we
released today.

	At the risk of being a self-publicist we've also released a
"data appendix" spreadsheet that contains all the source data we used in
creating the report. You can find a link to the spreadsheet here:
http://www.ncvo-vol.org.uk/cuts-report#dataappendix

	I guess a wider point is that I often find we're releasing this
kind of analysed data regularly, and apart from just putting up excel
spreadsheets (though probably should be using open spreadsheet files!)
I'm never sure of the best way of making them "open".

	I think it's different to "raw" data, like the charity
commission register for example, because a CSV file can't show you the
sructure of the data correctly, with lots of small linked tables. So I'm
never sure if there's a better alternative to producing a big excel
file.

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-- 

http://www.timdavies.org.uk
07834 856 303.
@timdavies

Co-director of Practical Participation:
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