[open-government] Metadata and portal interoperability is the new open data black!

[Tracey P. Lauriault]

fyi

G4 = Edmonton Vancouver Ottawa and Toronto cities working together on open
data in Canada, sharing best practices etc.  It was G4 +1 as Montreal was
added.

On Tue, Oct 25, 2011 at 6:02 PM, Tracey P. Lauriault <tlauriau at gmail.com>wrote:

> It is great to see that the Open Data gathering in Warsaw has metadata and
> interoperabilityon its wish list
> http://blog.okfn.org/2011/10/23/open-data-wishlist-for-the-next-year/.
>
> This conversation began in Ottawa Last week at Gtec. I convened a small
> meeting with Edmonton and Ottawa, a science data researcher, the founders of
> the data liberation initiative (DLI) (
> http://www.statcan.gc.ca/dli-idd/dli-idd-eng.htm), the creators of ODESI (
> http://search2.odesi.ca/), and members of the IASSIST Executive
> (IASSISTdata.org) to discuss scaling, interoperability and metadata.  This
> was well received and we have agreed to introduce local data library experts
> to members of the G4 in Vancouver, Edmonton, Ottawa and Toronto.  Librarians
> & archivists manage thousands of datasets, curate them, deposit them in
> repositories, describe them with common metadata and create portals that
> harvest the metadata from other portals in order to expand cross
> institutional searching.  Librarians and geomaticians have been doing this
> for decades and doing it well.  The recommendation is for open data
> initiatives to team up with these experts and collaborate on developing
> common standards.
>
> Current open data catalogs in cities in Canada will soon face a scaling
> issue as the number of datasets contained within them grow, and without
> common metadata amd adherance to interoperability standards, it will not be
> possible to seach across them or to create a federated cataloguing system
> where metadata can be harvested.
>
> ODESI has done that, and there is 15 years experience in getting 10s of
> thousands of data sets searched across Ontario University Data Libraries.
> The *UK Data Archive* is another great example (www.data-*archive*.ac.uk/<http://www.data-archive.ac.uk/>).
> In addition, the Open Geospatial Consortium (
> http://www.opengeospatial.org/) has been instrumental at developing test
> beds and interoperability specifications for geospatial data and there is
> tremendous merit in working with them.
>
> ODESI, DLI, UK Data Archive and OGC are excellent examples upon which open
> data initiatives can build upon instead of reinventing wheels.  Some great
> cross polination can happen and there are some tremendous learning
> opportunities to be had on all sides.
>
> I look forward to seeing those discussions move ahead in Canada and
> Internationally.
>
> One point I would add is *capacity building,* and the DLI as well as the
> Community Data Consortium (www.*communitydata*-
> donneescommunautaires.ca/Home) have that in place for universities and for
> community based organizations while the UK Data Archive has great resources
> on their websidte and it would be great to see some open data apps
> developers collaborate with subject matter specialists in other fields that
> are less tech savvy but increadibly innovative in their capacity to deliver
> services and do community based research.  Social Planning Councils who are
> great community based researchers have also been working on this capacity
> building piece and there is merit in working with them.  Finally, there is
> *Community Data Canada* which has convened  a number of roundtables with
> various levels of government and departments at the Federal government with
> community groups(http://www.cdc-dcc.info/).  This group is also involved
> at bridging community groups and government institutions in terms of data
> access and use.
>
> *To the 10 principles (
> http://sunlightfoundation.com/policy/documents/ten-open-data-principles/) I
> would add*:
>
>    - Metadata
>    - Interoperability
>    - Organizational Cultural Change
>    - Capacity Building
>
> Cheers
> Tracey
>
>
>
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