Tag Archives: odcamp6

How can we become better open data producers?

Our session host, Dan Barrett, head of data and search at the UK Parliament, noted that he’d heard two clear messages from the conference so far:

  1. We need to work ever more closely with the users of the data
  2. Need to avoid working on a technical solution that makes an assumption about who our users are and how they will use the data

What else would make data producers better?

Continue reading How can we become better open data producers?

Building engagement with Open Data

A few years ago, our session host, Rory Gianni, through being involved with several open data initiatives, saw that some went on to great success and some weren’t sustainable. One factor that seemed to make a difference was engagement – if you are not involving people outside te organisation, why are you doing it? Even if you’re being driven by the stick of legislation, you could still capture why others would be interested.

He has a set of digital engagement notes on GitHub. These follow on from the five stars of open data engagement, conceived at UkGovCamp in 2012.

Continue reading Building engagement with Open Data

Getting Better Open Data at national, regional and local levels

The UK is amongst the best in the world at releasing Open Data at a national level – but the same can’t be said at other parts of government. What can be done?

Could it be that the data at lower levels is less accessible? For every piece of valuable data, there’s at least one local authority doing it well, but rarely more than a couple. For example, around 100 local authorities have published business rates data, but several hundred more haven’t. The vast majority of local authorities haven’t published empty homes data.

Continue reading Getting Better Open Data at national, regional and local levels

Open data for health and social care

Session leader Katya Bozukova said that she works for the Lincolnshire Open Research and Innovation Centre, a university-based team that works with charities and SMEs on data driven innovation, and on projects that address the challenges posed by an ageing population.

Her organisation wants to publish open data around its work: “but we know need to do it in an ethical way.” In the meantime,  she would like to know what data sets are already out there, that her organisation might use. What, she asked, were other session members hoping to get out of the session?

Continue reading Open data for health and social care

Starting the open data journey

One of the big questions that often comes up at Open Data Camp is where to start. So at Open Data Camp 6 in Aberdeen there was a session on that subject.

Leader Pauline Roche asked what advice people would give, and the ideas that came back fell into two, broad categories: advice for those who want to publish open data and advice for those who want to use it.

Continue reading Starting the open data journey

Open Data Camp 6: open data for newbies

Open Data Camp 6 in Aberdeen opened with the ever popular (totally essential and very informative) ‘open data for newbies’ session.

And it started with a question: “Who knows what open data is?”

Participants decided the critical answers are that: it is data that can be made public (so not personal data); that is available free (or near free) for other people to use; and that is properly licensed as such.

Also, that it should be easily and available and consumable; although there is considerable debate about what that means.

Continue reading Open Data Camp 6: open data for newbies