Council websites a step change in improvement - martin greenwood
Open data under the hood stuart harrison - lichfield district council
1. Open data: Under the hood
Stuart Harrison
Lichfield District Council
Hikaru Kazushime
2. Lichf eld District
i
Small district north of Birmingham
Two urban centres (Burntwood and Lichfield)
Mainly older population, but younger in urban centres
Technically savvy, with a lively blogging scene
NickBrickett
4. Next steps
Lots of information on our website
Why not expose all this?
Added geographical information too
5. Next steps (2)
Heard about Openly Local
Felt the pain of scraping
Why don't I just give you our data?
6. What are the barriers?
Lack of awareness
Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt
Lack of interest from suppliers
Lack of technical knowledge in web teams
AdobeMac
7. Open Elections Project
Aims to overcome some of these barriers
Standards-based
Minimal technological knowledge
Minimal cost
Also built a Jadu module
8. Ordnance Survey
Data created on OS maps (even points) OS derived
Can't easily be reused by third parties
Massive issue with Google Maps
Ongoing discussion with Cabinet Office
9. A consumer as well!
My Area
Inspired by BCC DIY
Uses data from:
Openly Local
Planning Alerts
Data.gov.uk
Police API
NHS Choices
Etc, etc
http://www.lichfielddc.gov.uk/myarea
10. Why open data?
Allows us to engage with different audience
Makes engagement a 'many to many' arrangement
'Failure for free'
It's going to happen anyway
coccu
11. What next?
Deeper integration with systems
More useful data (performance data, geographic data)
Standards, standards, standards
Don Solo
13. Open data: Under the hood
Stuart Harrison
Lichfield District Council
Hikaru Kazushime
1
14. Lichf eld District
i
Small district north of Birmingham
Two urban centres (Burntwood and Lichfield)
Mainly older population, but younger in urban centres
Technically savvy, with a lively blogging scene
NickBrickett
2
The internet, whilst being accessible to people is
mainly a system for presenting information.
While machines know what type of information is on a
web page, they don't necessarily know what the
information is
Open data essentially makes web based information
accessible to machines, as well as people.
15. Ratemyplace
Food Safety scores website
Built completely in house
Open data? Why not!
Simple RESTful API
Widgets too!
3
Here's a standard web page
As I mentioned before, machines know how to
present the data, but they can't tell the difference
between what is an address (for example) and what
is a political party or telephone number.
This makes it very difficult to get the data from a web
page to any other system (without a lot of work from
developers)
16. Next steps
Lots of information on our website
Why not expose all this?
Added geographical information too
4
This is the same information presented as XML
It's standardised, so machines can read it very easily
and there is less work involved on the part of
developers.
17. Next steps (2)
Heard about Openly Local
Felt the pain of scraping
Why don't I just give you our data?
5
Data can then be reused as in this example – openly
local
Information is shown in a simple, clear format, with
other council's information in the same format –
much of it gained through screen scraping.
18. What are the barriers?
Lack of awareness
Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt
Lack of interest from suppliers
Lack of technical knowledge in web teams
AdobeMac6
However, there are some barriers, licensing is one,
sometimes we can't share all the data we want to
because of licensing restrictions.
There's also a lack of awareness amongst senior
management, which means there's noone pushing for
data to be opened
There's also a lot of fear about open data, it's a brave new
world and a lot of people are used to 'data hugging' –
keeping their data close and using it as power
Suppliers don't seem to have got on the open data train yet,
there's currently no offering that allows online systems to
be opened easily
Some web teams don't have a technical resource, and
without suppliers offering systems, they just don't have
the knowledge
19. Open Elections Project
Aims to overcome some of these barriers
Standards-based
Minimal technological knowledge
Minimal cost
Also built a Jadu module
7
Twitterplan uses data provided in a standard format
by PlanningAlerts
Sends a direct message on Twitter to users whenever
a planning application is lodged in their area
Because it uses standard data, which is easy to work
with, it took me two days to build – if I had to get the
data from council websites myself it would take a lot
longer
However, due to the actions of the Royal Mail, this
service is currently suspended.
20. Ordnance Survey
Data created on OS maps (even points) OS derived
Can't easily be reused by third parties
Massive issue with Google Maps
Ongoing discussion with Cabinet Office
8
Twitterplan uses data provided in a standard format
by PlanningAlerts
Sends a direct message on Twitter to users whenever
a planning application is lodged in their area
Because it uses standard data, which is easy to work
with, it took me two days to build – if I had to get the
data from council websites myself it would take a lot
longer
However, due to the actions of the Royal Mail, this
service is currently suspended.
21. A consumer as well!
My Area
Inspired by BCC DIY
Uses data from:
Openly Local
Planning Alerts
Data.gov.uk
Police API
NHS Choices
Etc, etc
http://www.lichfielddc.gov.uk/myarea 9
At LDC, I was inspired by the work of dedicated
volunteers, and wanted to open up our data
We've taken a 'steady as she goes' approach,
releasing data in a piecemeal fashion, working with
developers in the community and finding out what
they want
We've also been identifying quick wins, if someone
wants a new system, we make sure open data is
built in. Also if there's data that's easy to open, such
as leisure centre or park locations (as KML files),
that goes in too
22. Why open data?
Allows us to engage with different audience
Makes engagement a 'many to many' arrangement
'Failure for free'
It's going to happen anyway
coccu 10
I've gone through the hows, but what about the
whys? Why should we lofty public sector folk give
our data to the public?
For a start, it allows us to engage with a different type
of audience, opening data gives us access to a
typically younger, digitally switched on audience,
not just the curtain twitching nimby type
Also, when we release data, communities build up
around data, making engagement a many to many
arrangement – good example is BCCDIY
It gives people the opportunity to build cool stuff with
our data – stuff we either wouldn't have thought of
or don't have time to do. And if it doesn't work,
we've lost nothing – to paraphrase Clay Skirky, we
get 'Failure for Free'
23. What next?
Deeper integration with systems
More useful data (performance data, geographic data)
Standards, standards, standards
Don Solo 11
I've gone through the hows, but what about the
whys? Why should we lofty public sector folk give
our data to the public?
For a start, it allows us to engage with a different type
of audience, opening data gives us access to a
typically younger, digitally switched on audience,
not just the curtain twitching nimby type
Also, when we release data, communities build up
around data, making engagement a many to many
arrangement – good example is BCCDIY
It gives people the opportunity to build cool stuff with
our data – stuff we either wouldn't have thought of
or don't have time to do. And if it doesn't work,
we've lost nothing – to paraphrase Clay Skirky, we
get 'Failure for Free'
