The strategists say that open data from high quality APIs has the potential to transform public services. One example where this is proving to be the case is legislation.gov.uk, the official UK legislation website, operated by The National Archives. With legislation.gov.uk we aimed to open-up access to the government’s legislation database, by creating an API first. The legislation.gov.uk API allows anyone to access the data we hold in the database, or to use the services we have built. We wanted to show that government could create a high-quality, technically sophisticated API, following the principles of both REST and Linked Data. We also wanted our API to be fully open, with no restrictions on use, and no need to register before using it. The API is enabling us to develop an entirely new approach to updating legislation, inspired by the open source software movement – our Expert Participation Programme. We are inviting people from outside The National Archives to work with us, to apply changes to the legislation in the database. Quality is maintained through our editorial practice and a stringent process of review. This is an exciting new operating model for maintaining open government data.

1. Open Data:
A New Tool for Government
John Sheridan
Head of Legislation Services, The National Archives
Jeni Tennison
Technical Architect legislation.gov.uk
Tuesday, 2 October 12

2. If we can do it with legislation ...
Tuesday, 2 October 12

3. Tuesday, 2 October 12

4. Work of many
Tuesday, 2 October 12

5. Open Legislation Data
• available under Open Government License
• data underlies user interface
• /data.xml
• /data.rdf
• /data.feed
Tuesday, 2 October 12

6. Reusers
Publisher
data
service
Intermediary
payment Consumer
Tuesday, 2 October 12

7. Reusers
Publisher
data
- links service
- snippets Intermediary
- dumps
- searches
- updates payment Consumer
Tuesday, 2 October 12

8. Reusers
Publisher
data - provision
- integration
- links service - analysis
- snippets Intermediary - visualisation
- dumps - interpretation
- searches
- updates payment Consumer
Tuesday, 2 October 12

9. Reusers
Publisher
data
service
Intermediary
payment Consumer
Tuesday, 2 October 12

10. Benefits of reuse
• innovation by intermediaries
• new products and services for customers
• economic growth
Tuesday, 2 October 12

11. Reusers
Publisher
data
service
Intermediary
payment Consumer
Tuesday, 2 October 12

12. Reusers
Publisher
data
service
Intermediary
payment Consumer
Tuesday, 2 October 12

13. Reusers
Publisher
data
service
Intermediary
payment Consumer
provenance
Tuesday, 2 October 12

14. Reusers
Publisher audience
data
service
Intermediary
payment Consumer
provenance
Tuesday, 2 October 12

15. Benefits
• improved reach
• intermediaries deliver to other channels
• for legislation.gov.uk
• iPhone / iPad applications
• eBooks
• tailored value added products for specific audiences
Tuesday, 2 October 12

16. Dependents
Publisher
data
Intermediary service
payment Consumer
Tuesday, 2 October 12

17. Dependents
Publisher
data
Intermediary service
customisation
information
payment Consumer
Tuesday, 2 October 12

18. Dependents
Publisher
data
Intermediary service
customisation
information
payment Consumer
Tuesday, 2 October 12

19. Dependents
Publisher
Intermediary service
data customisation
information
payment Consumer
Tuesday, 2 October 12

20. Dependents
guarantees
Publisher
Intermediary service
data customisation
information
payment Consumer
Tuesday, 2 October 12

21. Dependents
- accurate
guarantees - reliable
Publisher - timely
Intermediary service
data customisation
information
payment Consumer
Tuesday, 2 October 12

22. Where is the benefit to the publisher?
Tuesday, 2 October 12

23. Tuesday, 2 October 12

24. Tuesday, 2 October 12

25. Tuesday, 2 October 12

26. Tuesday, 2 October 12

27. Tuesday, 2 October 12

28. Tuesday, 2 October 12

29. Tuesday, 2 October 12

30. Tuesday, 2 October 12

31. Maintaining legislation data
• for primary legislation we identify and apply
• textual & non-textual amendments
• extents & commencements
• savings & provisos
• we create point in time versions with annotations
• we extract structured data from legislation
• editors use the data to create new versions showing the changes
Tuesday, 2 October 12

32. The challenge
• primary legislation
• in-house team applies ~10,000 effects per annum
• parliaments and assemblies now make ~15,000 new effects
• there is a 100,000 “debt” of unapplied effects
• secondary legislation
• required to produce tables of effects for annual bound volumes
• no updated versions
Tuesday, 2 October 12

33. Partners
guarantees
Publisher
data service
Intermediary
payment Consumer
Tuesday, 2 October 12

34. Partners
guarantees
Publisher
data service
Intermediary
maintenance
payment Consumer
Tuesday, 2 October 12

35. Partners
guarantees
Publisher
data service
Intermediary
maintenance
- collection
- correction payment Consumer
- expertise
Tuesday, 2 October 12

36. Partners
guarantees
Publisher
data service
Intermediary
maintenance
- collection
- correction payment Consumer
- expertise
Tuesday, 2 October 12

37. Expert Participation Programme
• primary and secondary legislation
• publicly available - official - free - open - up-to-date
• we invite others to work with us under MoU
• new processes and tools to support collaboration
• The National Archives provides tools and training
• guardians and arbiters of editorial practice and quality
Tuesday, 2 October 12

38. Technical architecture
Tuesday, 2 October 12

39. New requirements
• new types of information
• effects & research
• tasks & workflows
• participants & permissions & messages
• priority lists to update
• new levels of interactivity
• read/write platform
• dynamic, native web interface
Tuesday, 2 October 12

40. lingua franca application-native data
HTML JSON
concise
hard to get wrong
single source format web-native data
XML RDF
flexible graph model
other formats are better for other things
Tuesday, 2 October 12

41. caching & delivery CDN
caching cache
static files web server
transformation pipeline engine
documents XML database triplestore data
new architecture XML and RDF data
Tuesday, 2 October 12

42. displays driven by RDF transformed by XSLT
Tuesday, 2 October 12

43. displays driven by RDF transformed by XSLT
Tuesday, 2 October 12

44. displays driven by RDF transformed by XSLT
Tuesday, 2 October 12

45. HTML JSON
URIs
XML RDF
URIs are the keys weak, flexible links
Tuesday, 2 October 12

46. User and re-user focus
• integrated API and UIs
• guarantees relevance
• help re-users understand information
• help developers debug
• URIs are key
• addressability
• sharability
• understanding of underlying resource model
Tuesday, 2 October 12

47. Agility
• native XML eases development
• provides flexible access into documents
• avoids data model mismatches
• native RDF eases development too!
• ease of combining information from different sources
• querying with SPARQL
• schema-free & extensible aids agility
Tuesday, 2 October 12

48. Open data as operating model
• private sector values high quality public data
• value official status, processes and controls
• willing to collaborate and invest resources in open government data
• Expert Participation shows how open data
• helps to deliver services
• helps to reach new audiences or existing audiences through new channels
• underpins feedback loops, improving quality of both data and service
Tuesday, 2 October 12

49. Summary
• complex documents and data
• added value for publishers and consumers from having them on the web
• layered architecture with web standards
• make the most of single-source publishing providing long-term flexibility
• open data as a tool
• enabling us to bring legislation up to date for the first time
• if we can do it with legislation ...
Tuesday, 2 October 12

50. Questions
Tuesday, 2 October 12