[open-government] Definition of machine readability?

[Helen Darbishire]

Hi All 

This is the working definition that we have right now. Comments welcome: 

Information which is "machine readable" broadly means that it can be
processed by a computer (or other automatic device or machine in the case of
older, non-digital formats such as punch cards).  For the open government
data community the term "machine readable" is a narrower definition which
refers to electronic formats which allow the data they contain to be
automatically processed, and transferred from one software programme to
another. 

An example would be ensuring that budget data is released in a format which
can be imported into a database for accounting analysis. Releasing such
information in, for example, PDF format would not permit this.

Helen 
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Helen Darbishire, Executive Director
Access Info Europe, www.access-info.org 
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-----Original Message-----
From: open-government-bounces at lists.okfn.org
[mailto:open-government-bounces at lists.okfn.org] On Behalf Of Jonathan Gray
Sent: 22 July 2010 12:24
To: open-government at lists.okfn.org
Subject: [open-government] Definition of machine readability?

Does anyone know of a good working definition of machine readability?
Something we hear very often in relation to opening up government data
-- but something I've more often heard illustrated (databases, PDFs,
etc) than defined (e.g. criteria). Feel like necessary/sufficient conditions
might be tough. Any ideas?

--
Jonathan Gray

Community Coordinator
The Open Knowledge Foundation
http://blog.okfn.org

http://twitter.com/jwyg
http://identi.ca/jwyg

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