[open-government] Socrata Open Data Standards - Your Thoughts?

[Rufus Pollock]

Hi all,

Work on DCAT [1] at the W3C and the Data Catalog Interoperability
Protocol [2] on the data-catalogs mailing list [3] has been ongoing
for some time (at the OKF we've had input into the former and helped
develop the latter stimulated by work on CKAN - the open source data
platform we've help develop). More generally we and others have been
working on a set of open data ‘protocols’ to make open data tools and
services to talk to each other [5].

[1]: http://www.w3.org/TR/vocab-dcat/
[2]: http://spec.datacatalogs.org/
[3]: http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/data-catalogs
[4]: http://www.dataprotocols.org/

Given the existing work we're unclear what Socrata's new site adds,
and we wonder whether it could perhaps to have been more useful to
contribute to what was already there.

We in fact spoke with Socrata last week about both DCIP and about Open
Data Protocols (and offering to work with them in this area) so we're
a bit surprised to see this announcement as it appears to directly
duplicate this existing work - just on their website.

As interoperability and some common standards are definitely important
to the open data and open government data community, our hope is that
going forward is that a broad range of stakeholders in this area can
work together. Hopefully in future this will include communicating
sensibly and not replicating existing work unnecessarily!

Regards,

Rufus

On 16 November 2012 13:24, Hare, Jason <Jason.Hare at raleighnc.gov> wrote:
> I would like to hear more about this- we are about to adopt Socrata as our
> platform and we would like to adhere to a common data standard. So far as I
> can tell there is a draft proposed by the W3C and Saf from Socrata has
> indicated a desire to partner with the City of Raleigh to go down the path
> of creating a standard. From a regional perspective we would certainly like
> our data to be interoperable.
>
>
>
> Best regards and thank you Rufus for the links.
>
>
>
> Best regards
>
>
>
> Jason Hare
>
> Open Data Program Manager
>
> City of Raleigh - Information Technology
>
> One Exchange Plaza, Suite 900
>
> P. O. Box 590
>
> Raleigh, North Carolina 27602-0590
>
> Mobile: 919-323-2767
>
> Office: 919-996-3599
>
> jason.hare at raleighnc.gov
>
> http://www.raleighnc.gov/open
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> From: open-government-bounces at lists.okfn.org
> [mailto:open-government-bounces at lists.okfn.org] On Behalf Of Rufus Pollock
> Sent: Friday, November 16, 2012 5:29 AM
> To: Tracey P. Lauriault
> Cc: legal-econ at lists.gsdi.org; GOSLING members in Ottawa;
> open-government at lists.okfn.org; CARTA-L : Canadian Map & GIS Libraries and
> Archives; civicaccess discuss
> Subject: Re: [open-government] Socrata Open Data Standards - Your Thoughts?
>
>
>
> I would note there is already quite some work on an *existing* data catalog
> standard both in the form of DCAT [1] and in terms of a protocol (which and
> I colleagues have contributed to):
>
>
>
> http://spec.datacatalogs.org/
>
>
>
> There is also the work at: http://www.dataprotocols.org/
>
>
>
> Rufus
>
>
>
> [1]: http://www.w3.org/TR/vocab-dcat/
>
>
>
>
>
> On 15 November 2012 21:18, Tracey P. Lauriault <tlauriau at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Greetings all;
>
> I would love to hear your thoughts about these proposed standards?
>
> I see Open Geospatial Consortium, linked data ideals and DOI, data and
> preservation and infrastructure as missing.  But I do not know enough to
> know if those matter in this context.
>
> It would be good to hear from science, libraries, archives and so on these
> matters.  I am concerned that data preservation, dissemination and
> management practices as seen in CODATA, GEOSS, GSDI, ICPRS, OGC and IASSIST
> and others.  Also, that groups are not overlapping much.  More so, these
> principles and standards might become the norm, and they may negatively
> influence data policy if not done well at the beginning.
>
> Sincerely
> Tracey
>
> --
>
> Tracey P. Lauriault
>
> Post Doctoral Fellow
>
> Geomatics and Cartographic Research Centre
>
> https://gcrc.carleton.ca/confluence/display/GCRCWEB/Lauriault
>
> http://datalibre.ca/
> 613-234-2805
>
>
>
>
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Co-Founder, Open Knowledge Foundation
Promoting Open Knowledge in a Digital Age
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