[open-civil-society] Cuts data

Tim Davies tim at practicalparticipation.co.uk
Sun Aug 14 16:07:10 UTC 2011 

Hello Javier, David

Good work on the spreadsheet.

*Javier: *I don't think it's possible to let people add charts direct to
that copy of the spreadsheet without having full edit rights, however, there
are a number of routes if you are keen to get people sharing their own
analysis of charts:

   1. You could use Google Spreadsheets and point people to the 'Make a
   Copy' option, encouraging them to create their own copy of the spreadsheet
   to manipulate, and encouraging them to share the results back by adding a
   blog comment or e-mailing someone (how to use Google Spreadsheets for basic
   charts might make a good recipe for the Open Data Cook Book if anyone was
   interested in writing that up? http://www.opendatacookbook.net)

   2. You could use a platform like the newly launched BuzzData.com which is
   designed around the idea of publishing (at the moment) simple tabular data,
   and then having space for discussions and social interaction around it -
   including people submitting details of visualisations and news stories
   written around data.

   I've been trying it out with some aid transparency data here:
   http://buzzdata.com/timdavies/international-aid-transparency-initiative-data

   In fact, I should have thought of this earlier as a good way for some of
   David's data to be published in order to get conversation going around it -
   as if you have simple tables to publish I suspect it could be quite a good
   way to generate, um, buzz, around them.

   3. You can go the route the Guardian Data Blog do, which is to encourage
   people to work on their own visualisations and explorations of the data from
   a Google Spreadsheet, and then share them on Flickr with a particular tag.

There's definitely something interesting to explore in crowd-sourcing
scrutiny over statistics; or using open data to create opportunities for
education about stats... but quite how is a good question to explore...

Tim

On Fri, Aug 12, 2011 at 2:36 PM, Javier Ruiz <javier at openrightsgroup.org>wrote:

> Good work. Tim, is it possible in the permissions to allow people to draw
> graphs without mucking up with the data?
>
> Regarding the scrutiny, maybe it could be posited as a challenge with a
> specific question to direct inquiry in a place like False Economy or other
> cuts related high traffic platform?
>
>
> On 12 August 2011 14:22, David Kane <David.Kane at ncvo-vol.org.uk> wrote:
>
>>
>> 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<https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AhPQWam6YvCcdE5VeDdpdjEtRGNURzRJcHI0a0t6MEE&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.
>>
>>        _______________________________________________
>>        open-civil-society mailing list
>>        open-civil-society at lists.okfn.org
>>        http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/open-civil-society
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>>
>>
>> http://www.timdavies.org.uk
>> 07834 856 303.
>> @timdavies
>>
>> Co-director of Practical Participation:
>> http://www.practicalparticipation.co.uk
>> --------------------------
>> Practical Participation Ltd is a registered company in England and Wales
>> - #5381958.
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> open-civil-society mailing list
>> open-civil-society at lists.okfn.org
>> http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/open-civil-society
>>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> open-civil-society mailing list
> open-civil-society at lists.okfn.org
> http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/open-civil-society
>
>


-- 


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

Co-director of Practical Participation:
http://www.practicalparticipation.co.uk
--------------------------
Practical Participation Ltd is a registered company in England and Wales -
#5381958.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/open-civil-society/attachments/20110814/9aad7dbd/attachment-0001.html>

More information about the open-civil-society mailing list