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

[Will Pugh]

I appreciate the conversations.  I think there are a few places this blog
missed the mark, but the issue of trading off speed for effective
governance is a reasonable discussion.   The blog does not have a place to
comment, so I'll respond here (and possibly a later blog post).

The Government Linked Data Working Group has done a good job in defining a
number of the vocabularies for catalogs and linked data, however, in terms
of last mile standards in terms of how catalogs synchronize and federate
with each other, these are a good starting point but not enough.  Both the
open-data-standards initiative as well as the
spec.datacatalogs.orginitiative start where the Government Linked Data
Working Group and DCAT
left off.  They are focussed on providing the interoperability protocols
between catalogs, built on DCAT.

The standards efforts that have some overlap with the
open-data-standards.github.com, are NOT the DCAT and Government Linked Data
efforts.  They are spec.datacatalogs.org and www.dataprotocols.org.  As I
mentioned in my previous email, I've had some talks with Rufus and am
hopeful that we can merge these efforts.  However, if we merge efforts, the
governance issues are still valid.  None of these efforts have effective
governance bodies, and are subject to the same fragmentation that Stephane
and James referred to for Open311.

One model I've seen was how the http://www.simplecloud.info/ standard
 formed.  It  started as a Google Group and a repo for the specs.  After
getting agreement across the folks participating, they then found a
standards organization for it, and it is now under the IETF.  However, by
starting with the discussion outside the standards body, they were able to
make progress quickly.  Then, move the the standards body for governance
and upkeep after much of the initial work and agreements were made.

My goal would be to have the interoperability standards we are working on
follow the same path.  I agree effective governance is important, but right
now, I think quickly getting to interoperable catalogs and datasources is
important.

    --Will


On Fri, Nov 23, 2012 at 5:24 PM, Diane Mercier <diane.mercier at gmail.com>wrote:

>  A critical review of this conversation about "Socrata Open Data
> Standards".
>
> ** Open Data, Standards and Socrata.** November 22, 2012** by Stéphane
> Guidoin, James McKinney
> ** http://blog.opennorth.ca/2012/11/22/open-data-standards/
>
> in French:
> ** Les données ouvertes, les standards et Socrata.** 22 novembre 2012**par Stéphane
> Guidoin, James McKinney
> http://blogue.nordouvert.ca/2012/11/22/les-donnees-ouvertes/
>
> Thanks Tracey for this initiative
>
> Curator :
>
> Diane Mercier, Ph. D.
> Docteure en sciences de l'information
> Consultante en transfert des connaissances
>
> Blogue :     http://dianemercier.com/ <http://consultus.qc.ca/carnets/>
> LindedIn :   http://www.linkedin.com/in/dianemercier
> Twitter :  	 @carnetsDM
> Mes perles : http://www.pearltrees.com/dianemercier
> Zotero :     http://www.zotero.org/dmercierdiane@dianemerercier.com
>
>
>  **
>
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