[open-government] List of open government competitions

Tue Oct 12 10:18:11 UTC 2010

On 11 Oct 2010, at 21:05, Tim McNamara wrote:

> 
> From a technical standpoint, I would prefer all the data to be in Freebase.com and we can build a presentation layer with either with their API or straight from their Acre platform. Acre is a tool, like the Google App Engine, that enables people to create JavaScript applications for free.  I am a contributor to the Google Refine (previously Gridworks) project and we could probably seek some support from Google for something like this. I think that open data should in Freebase there unless there is a good reason for it not to. 
> 

Hi, just to clarify, are you proposing this for a centralised database of OGD competitions, catalogues, etc... or to copy government datasets into Freebase? or both?

for the first case would be have to agree some standard-ish design? 

For the government data itself, wouldn't this have some implications around maintenance and updating? If I understand,  once data is inside Freebase the Acre system will provide internal consistency, but will it keep track of changes in government sources? 

also if were to potentially dump several terabytes of data we could consider some discussions with Freebase. i don't know how they are run, but it may strain their resources.

> 
>  
> Also we thought it would be cool to start thinking about start collecting other useful information around OGD like
> 
>        • OGD use cases & success stories
>        • OGD most popular data
>        • OGD low hanging fruits (where to start? what data is easy to open)
>        • OGD best practice
> 

yes, this would be very helpful. Some other ideas:

It would be particularly useful to collect and develop some richer case studies with follow up of impacts and benefits. There are very few examples so far, such as http://www.onebusaway.org/p/Research.action

to help the economic case (on trading funds at least), maybe we could ask someone to translate some of Rufus Pollock and co's work into visuals and calculator apps? 

One aspect important for us is that a lot of existing advocacy is directed towards government to open up, while in contrast at ORG we are also interested in advocacy towards organised civil society on the demand side and following on the practical implications. In this respect, an addition to the list above would be tutorials on how to access and use the data. 

Also, we may want to consider some more dynamic knowledge base where help could be sought and best practice consensuated

I am not a developer, but i will help in what I can

best, Javier
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