Overview of Open Data; Why it’s important; Fingal Open Data experience; Examples of businesses/services utilising Open Data; What needs to happen next.
Presentation to "Open Data 18 Hour Challenge" in NDRC, Digital Hub, Dublin, Ireland on 4th July, 2011
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Hinweis der Redaktion
Today, I am going to give an overview of Open Data; explain why it’s important; share our experience with Fingal Open Data; give examples of businesses/services utilising Open Data; look at what needs to happen next.
Open Data is …
Public data Which is not subject to data protection or other limitations
Open Formats Available in non-proprietary formats e.g. CSV, XML, KML, RDF, open APIs
Machine Readable In a format that computers can process
Accessible Available to the widest range of people for the widest range of uses
Why would we publish Open Data?
Transparency To Open up Government and enable the Public to see the underlying information. What is the actual evidence-based reality as opposed to the perceived reality
Participation To increase citizen engagement with Government. If Government and Citizens are to cooperate, then Government can’t be the only ones with the information
Collaboration To enable the combination of data from different public sector agencies To enable other sectors to collaborate with Government.
Economic Opportunities Public sector data can be used as the basis for online services, mobile applications, analytics, etc.
Where did Open Data originate?
Open Data is based on the principles of Freedom of Information & Reuse of Public Sector Information. The 2003 EU Reuse of Public Sector Information Directive was designed to allow European companies to exploit the potential of Public Sector Data and to contribute to economic growth and job creation. In a 2009 report, the EU cited the value of EU Public sector data at an estimated €27B.
In the United States, Barak Obama promised Open Government during his election campaign. This website, data.gov was created in 2009 to share US Government data.
In 2010, the UK Government followed suit and established this website, data.gov.uk to share UK Government data, with Tim Berners Lee, creator of the World Wide Web working on the project.
In 2010, the United Nations established the UN data website to share UN data
There are also many examples of Local Government Open Data websites around the world. In particular, the Greater London Authority have provided us with advice based on their experience with the London Data Store which was created in 2010.
Last week datacatalogs.org was launched A list of Open Data catalogs worldwide
What about Fingal? The Fingal area covers North County Dublin – north of the Liffey and the M50 including Blanchardstown, Howth, Swords, Balbriggan. It is the 3 rd largest Local Authority area by population as per preliminary Census 2011 figures It is the youngest area in the country It was fastest growing from 2002 – 2006 (22%) and 3 rd fastest growing from 2006 – 2011 (14%) To cope with this growth we have relied heavily on data for service planning.
Fingal Open Data evolved from the principles of the Fingal Data Hub and the Open Data movement. It is the first Open Data website in this country. It is available at data.fingal.ie The website, which you can see on screen, provides public access to source data from Council systems.
There are over 70 datasets, some of which can be seen here in the centre of the screen These are grouped into the 12 categories on the right-hand side of the screen.
These are the datasets in order of popularity (as rated by users)
The data is subject to the Irish PSI Licence, drawn up by the Department of Finance, which allows for fair use of the data.
This is the first service that has been developed with Fingal Open Data. It was built as an added feature on the ‘Hit The Road’ website It displayed all polling Stations for the 2011 General Election and allowed a user to search for a Polling Station and get directions to that Polling Station using Public Transport It showed data from all 4 Dublin Authorities, but the data was scraped from the other 3 Local Authority websites.
This is an iPhone App that has been built with Fingal Bring Bank data It displays all Bring Banks It allows filtering on the type of recyclable material – glass, cans or textiles It displays information about the selected Bring Bank It also identifies the nearest Bring Bank to your location and will provide directions to Bring Banks
Local Planning Explorer Ireland was developed by DERI in NUI Galway in cooperation with Fingal County Council and Local Government Management Agency Fingal planning applications from Fingal Open Data Five Councils planning applications from a Microsoft Azure cloud service Remainder scraped using ScraperWiki
Last Monday the Dublinked initiative was launched at www.dublinked.ie A collaboration between Dublin City, Dun Laoghaire/Rathdown, Fingal & South Dublin County Councils and NUI Maynooth Platform provided by IBM A Network for Sharing Data to facilitate Innovation within the Dublin Region Invitations to participate Data release in Autumn Initial Dublin City data is being made available today for the Open Data Challenge Also work by DERI, IIA, NDRC, Enterprise Ireland Also un-Open Data – CSO, EPA, DoECLG, Marine, Finance, HSE
There are many examples of Applications and Services that have been developed around the world using Open Data Many have been developed as a result of challenges such as this This challenge is distinctive in the it specifically sets out to identify commercially viable ideas The following are examples of businesses or services commercially utilising Open Data
Sparkfish Creative are a Cambridge company specialising in App development The MassTransit app is their main product They also provide consulting and contract services
This website is not commercial but is included as an example of how visualisation services can be developed based on open data It provides a visualisation of the German Federal Budget. The coloured blocks provide a visual representation of the comparative sizes of different Government Departments expenditure. You can drill down to see the components of a Departments expenditure and compare expenditure from year to year.
Brightscope are a company who provide Tracking for 401k plans (U.S. retirement savings plans) Provides Ratings, Financial Advice One of their data sources is the Government records relating to 401K (never previously requested)
iTriage is a Mobile Health App Healthcare questions, symptoms diagnosis Locate nearest healthcare providers Hospital waiting times Hospital pre-registration in selected areas
Placr is a Location Based Services company Recently presented at Enterprise Ireland/Ordnance Survey Ireland event in Dublin Provide transport feeds to apps developers (timetables, live data) Consultancy, training and other Services
What are the next steps?
We need to have more Irish Open Data Local Authorities, Government Departments and Agencies should all start to release Open Data They should also examine whether usage restrictions can be removed from data already released There are also opportunities for Open Academic Data, Open Scientific Data, Open Bibliographic Data, etc And why not Open Business Data? Open Product Catalogues; Airline Flights and Fares; etc.
We need apps & services built with Irish Open Data Initially this might be Fingal Open Data and DUBlinked data, but these apps should be built to consume Open Data from any Government agency Beyond that, apps could consume data from other European countries – the EU wants to encourage cross-border apps and services Apps can be developed by business, 3 rd level, volunteers, etc If we are to demonstrate the value of open data and encourage the release of more data, we need to be able to show the practical benefits through practical applications and services
Open Data video from Open Knowledge Foundation – opengovernmentdata.org
As I mentioned earlier, Fingal Open Data is available at data.fingal.ie And you can also follow us on Twitter at fingalopendata
In line with the theme, this presentation is licenced for sharing under a Creative Commons licence It is available for viewing and downloading on slideshare Thank you.