Monthly Archives: January 2017

Food Standards Agency supports us again!

Food, ODCamp4

By Dr Sian Thomas, Head of Information Management, Food Standards Agency

The Food Standards Agency is delighted to be a silver sponsor of Open Data Camp 4 in Cardiff – 25-26th February 2017.  Our involvement with Open Data Camp started at the first camp in Winchester, and following our re-affirmation of our Open Data commitment in January 2016 we were pleased to sponsor the Bristol Camp last May.

The FSA has an office in Cardiff, so I thought it might be interesting to pull out a couple of food facts which can be found in our open data.  Food and You – the Agency’s consumer survey which has been carried out in 2010, 2012 and 2014 (still waiting for 2016 results) showed that Women in Wales aged between 40 and 45 were the demographic group most likely to comply with recommended food safety practices. With Welsh roots myself, in my house we call this the ‘Mam effect’.  Comparisons across countries from this survey showed significant differences across a number of areas.

Wales also was the first country to make displaying a Food Hygiene Ratings Scheme (FHRS) Score mandatory.  Of course, FHRS is our most well used dataset and we are in the process of changing the licensing arrangements for this data to Open Government License.

We look forward to engaging in food and open data discussions at camp.  If you have an interest in food open data too, do seek us out or think about jointly pitching a session.  And if you are unable to attend – watch out for @foodgov tweeters on the #ODcamp hashtag.

Open Data Camp with a Welsh flavour

ODCamp4, , , ,

This post was first published on the Epimorphics blog.

Blwyddyn Newydd Dda!

Open Data Camp continues to grow and and build a diverse open data community. I’m delighted that just before St. David’s Day it is visiting the Pierhead in Cardiff….

Image: “The Pierhead” by: Alex Coley: CC BY 2.0 https://flic.kr/p/d2Fuef  

Open Data Camp continues to grow and and build a diverse open data community. I’m delighted that just before St. David’s Day it is visiting the Pierhead in Cardiff.  Cardiff was my home for many years and is a place I have huge affection for.  More importantly, this is a great opportunity for the open data community to discuss and highlight some of the Welsh context of Open Data.

There are many public bodies in Wales doing great things with Open Data. The Welsh Government is growing their open data resources and implementing their open data plan. The ODI Node: Cardiff continues to grow, connect and equip people across Wales to innovate with data. It would be great for all of us to be able to add some data stories to the developing community from across Wales.

We at Epimorphics are looking forward to what has become great forum for discussion, hearing great data stories and sharing challenges. We will be attending again and are proud to be sponsoring the event.

We’d love to see you there but as a reminder tickets are going fast. The next batch of tickets will be released on Sunday 8th Jan, see here for more details.  

Byddwn yn eich gweld yn fuan.