The adventures of open data portals

Irina Bolychevsky@shevski

Open Knowledgeokfn.org

ckan.org/instances/

Open data portals can lead exciting lives

Or get out of date

&

lonely

Agenda

What makes data portals valuable

Why we can’t just stop there

We are a global network using advocacy, technology & training to unlock information

and data and empower citizens and organizations to drive positive change

okfn.org

We build tools and communities to educate, empower and connect people.

OpenDataProtocols.org

A piece of content or data is open if anyone is free to use, reuse, and redistribute it — subject only, at most, to the requirement to attribute and share-alike.

http://opendefinition.org/

What does open mean?

WhereDoesMyMoneyGo.org

OKFestivalOpen Knowledge Festival

Largest open data event in the worldBerlin 2014

CKAN is...a search index and signpost to data

a metadata catalog

a datastore (with APIs)

a data management solution

data portals are ‘in’ this year

So what’s all the fuss about data portals anyway?

Serves two main use cases

ckan platform

1. search and discoverability for re-users of data

2. data management tools for publishers

Serves two main use cases

1. Search and discovery

Online home for data

Central keyword searchFacet by tags, location, format, licence, publishing departmentBrowse by groups, keywords, publishersStandardized interface for viewingLink to datasets or data directlyPreviews and data exploration where possible

Data Management for Publishers

Easily store and update metadata recordsWorkflow and approvalFine grained authorization controlsBroken link reportsDownload and view counts

Add and edit dataset metadata

Authorisation & access control

Benefits of data portals

● Improve metadata quality

● A key tool for governments internally

● Central point of discovery and activity

● Clear licensing for re-use

It’s time to demand more

We need to be ambitious

Why do open data at all?

● Transparency

● Economy

● Efficiency and going digital

● Reuse

○ the best things to do with your data will

be thought of by someone else

So now what?

● Engagement & community

● Data literacy and education

● Data quality - frictionless ‘re-use’ ready

data

● Release important datasets at granular

levels

Events

Hackathons

App challenges

Social media

School of data

● Data expeditions - online and offline short gatherings where a group of people

with different backgrounds tackle a data related problem

● Data clinics - hands on support working directly with people’s data

● Mentoring - local mentors working with local communities

● Online content - tutorial and walkthroughs

● Offline resources e.g. Data Journalism Handbook

Data quality

1. Open, machine readable formats

2. Standard ‘packaging’ - data.okfn.org

3. Use the data you publish

4. Publish the schema

5. Standardise

Sunlight principles

What data?

Open data index

Open data questionsWhat is open data?

Source: Twaweza, Tanzania, List of worst schools, http://www.shule.info/schools/worst

Release data that matters

THANK YOU

Irina Bolychevsky @shevskiOpen Knowledge okfn.orgckan.org @OKFN