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With the publication of the Digital Britain report, the government has committed to making its data more available in a reusable format. Some local authorities are also following suit, with a few councils already making moves to open up their data. Stuart talks about his approach to open data Lichfield District Council, as well as demonstrating some quick and easy ways local authorities can publish their data with little or no technical knowledge.
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A local authority approach to
Stuart Harrison
information sharing
Lichfield District Council
suzannelong
What is open data?
Web pages make sense to peopleThey don't make sense to machinesInformation should be accessible to machines as well as people
A standard webpage
Information is unstructuredDifficult to export into different systems without human
interaction
XML
Structured informationEasy to take from one system and put into another
Screen scraping
Auntie P
Used by sites like OpenlyLocal, Planning Alerts etc
Duplication of effortRisk of things breaking
Time consuming
Twitterplan
Uses data provided by PlanningAlertsSends direct message to userWith standard data – took 2 days to buildAs of Monday – currently suspended :(
Lichfield District Council'sapproach'Steady as she goes'Listen to the community and find out what they wantFind quick wins
www.lichfielddc.gov.uk/data
RSS Feeds*Some* planning dataFood Safety inspectionsLocal facilities and attractionsIf it's in an online database – we'll add it!
Easy ways to open data
Allow me to demonstrate...
Why open data?
Allows us to engage with different audienceMakes engagement a 'many to many' arrangement'Failure for free'It's going to happen anyway
What are the barriers?
Licensing (Ordnance Survey in particular)Lack of awareness
Lack of technical knowledge in web teamsLack of interest from suppliersFear, Uncertainty and Doubt
The future
Two words: Linked Data
Links different types of data across the wider webChampioned by Tim Berners-Lee
Allows web pages to be read by machines and people
Already being used by central government
Thank you
Stuart [email protected] 308779www.twitter.com/pezholio
www.lichfielddc.gov.ukwww.pezholio.co.uk
