Devon County Council’s Approach toOpen Data

By Martin Lawrence

What is covered?

• What is Open Data

• Why is it beneficial

• How does it link with FOI

• Devon’s approach

• Open Data Initiative – the Devon Hub

• Examples of how Open Data is used

• Open Data initiatives at Devon

• Can Open Data help you?

What is Open Data?

“Open data is data that can be freely used, re-used and redistributed by anyone - subject only, at most, to the requirement to attribute and share alike.”

Taken from the Open Data Handbook

Why is it important

• Promotes openness & transparency

• Can help reduce the no of FOI requests

• Reduce the burden of responding to FOIs

• Promotes active engagement

• Makes use of skills in the community

• Promotes innovation

• Leads to better insight from combined data sources

How does it link with FOI

FOI Officers work closely with “Data people” - we are often best placed to identify Open Data sources

Insight from FOI can help in target where open data might be useful for the public

Linking Open Data with your Publication Scheme to reduce the burden of requests

Devon’s approach

Devon County Council has been heralded as an “Open Data Champion” by Francis Maude.

We are actively committed to publishing quality open data sources that will benefit the community and help improve our services.

Devon’s approach

• No standard approach until recently

• Open Data Group established

• Open Data initiatives coordinated

• Risks identified & fed through IA process

• Councillors kept informed

• Representation from the community

• We are using FOI to identify direction of travel

ODI – the Devon Hub

The Open Data Institute exists to create economic, environmental, and social value through open data. It helps unlock supply, generates demand, creates and disseminates knowledge to address local and global issues.

ODI – the Devon Hub

• DCC has a formal relationship with OCI Devon

• Exploring a single Open Data store

• Networking has already helped information sharing

• We want to utilise the skills and resources of the community

• Those skills already used to good effect

How Open Data is used

Members of the community possess fantastic skills and expertise. They can sometimes do things that there is not sufficient resources for the Council to do!

Devon already published spend over £500. Look what a member of the public did with this data.

www.devonspends.co.uk

Open Data Initiatives

• The Human Resources Dashboard

• Highways Open Data Hub

• Complaints and FOI Dashboard

• PCN Mapping

• Parking Charges Data

• Adult Social Care Data Store

Can open data help you

• Do you publish open data

• What types of data do you publish

• Are there any opportunities to join up

Any questions?

Further information

Please direct any questions that you or your colleagues might have to;

Martin Lawrence (Senior Information Governance Officer) – martin.lawrence@devon.gov.uk

This slideshow is available online at