Guidance & resources
Open Data Kit: free tool for managing mobile data collection
Michael Grimes
Tuesday 18 January 2011
I’ve just come across Open Data Kit, which is ‘a free and open-source set tools [sic] which help organizations author, field, and manage mobile data collection solutions’.
I’ve not played with it, and I don’t know how well it would suit UK use, but according to the Open Data Kit website it enables users to:
Build a [...]
…Continue reading 'Open Data Kit: free tool for managing mobile data collection'‘Linked data’: making connections between unrelated datasets
Michael Grimes
Friday 14 January 2011
Publishing data is a start, and publishing it in a common standard that others can understand and re-use is the next step; but wouldn’t it be even more useful if you could see correlations between seemingly unrelated sets of data?
That’s where linked data comes in. The website linkeddata.org puts it like this:
Linked Data is about [...]
So what datasets are people actually publishing?
Michael Grimes
Thursday 13 January 2011
I’ve decided to add the feed from data.gov.uk to this site, so that you can see the breadth of data that is now being published as well as the variance in quality of labelling.
All sorts of data are now being published by all sorts of organisations, from Tribunal Service quarterly statistics to Utilisation of Milk by Dairies [...]
More clarity please about the jurisdiction of ‘open standards’
Michael Grimes
Monday 10 January 2011
I keep coming across neat tools that claim to support ‘open government’ and ‘open standards’, but have no indication of which governments or regions they are relevant to.
The Open Data Standards website is a case in point. It’s facilitating the development and fine-tuning of open standards, but for a while I suspected that it was [...]
Open Data Publisher: useful tool for publishing open government data?
Michael Grimes
Monday 10 January 2011
I’ve just come across Open Data Publisher, which claims to be ‘the easiest way to start publishing Open Government data if you are already using SQL Server’.
I don’t know anything about it and the website is quite technical. Also I don’t know if it’s useful to UK local authorities or only relevant to Canada.
Do you [...]
How to use accountants to argue for open data
Dan Slee
Saturday 8 January 2011
Sometimes you need to stop listening to geeks. Sometimes you need to start listening to people in pinstripe suits.
When it comes to open data there’s a gem of a report by Deloitte Canada. ’Understanding government‘ is a belter. It’s an assessment by suits for suits of what open data can achieve. It’s worth downloading.
Think of this post as a [...]
Don’t know what to publish? Ask the consumers
Michael Grimes
Thursday 6 January 2011
Overwhelmed by all the data you’re expected to release and skeptical that it will be a waste of effort? Why not ask people what data they want to see? That’s what they’re doing in Kent.
Open Kent – a project to enable local public service agencies in Kent to publish, manage and share their public data – [...]
Debtris: debt, set to Tetris
Michael Grimes
Tuesday 4 January 2011
First day back after Christmas? Same here. So, for a gentle start to the new year here are videos of UK and US spending and debt data set to Tetris.
The videos were posted by David McCandless on Information is Beautiful last week, along with their source data. Apparently they are the very first animations from [...]
Where does my money go?
Michael Grimes
Thursday 9 December 2010
Where does my money go? visualises how your UK taxes are spent depending on income.
…Continue reading 'Where does my money go?'Sutton Open Maps
Michael Grimes
Wednesday 8 December 2010
Sutton Open Maps is a collection of maps showing locations of key services in the London Borough of Sutton.
…Continue reading 'Sutton Open Maps'
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