Re: data.gov.uk coverage on BBC

On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 7:42 PM, George Thomas <george@thomas.name> wrote:
> Definitely would love to have John tell us about whatever he'd like to talk
> about, and share Ed's interest in understanding more about the relationship
> of OKFN and Talis.

A bit of background information from our end...

The Open Knowledge Foundation has been working on CKAN (which is the
part of the back end for data.gov.uk that handles metadata about
datasets) since at least 2004. For your information I've included a
list of links to information about CKAN-related talks and events at
the bottom of this email. CKAN is an open source, fully versioned
registry for open data. More about the CKAN system and its features
at:

  http://knowledgeforge.net/ckan/trac/wiki
  http://knowledgeforge.net/ckan/trac/roadmap
  http://knowledgeforge.net/ckan/trac/query

There were discussions of CKAN for UK Government data, and the
possibility of something like data.gov.uk at an OKF workshop in Autumn
2008 (i.e. before the launch of data.gov). At that event participants
discussed things like Vivek Kundra's DC OCTO data site and Information
Asset Registers (IARs), and we brainstormed about where to find UK
government data, what format it is in and whether or not it is open.
More on this at:

  http://wiki.okfn.org/PublicInformation

There was further discussion of something like data.gov.uk at the UK
Gov Barcamp last January (the next of which is taking place in London
at Google HQ tomorrow).

  http://blog.okfn.org/2009/02/06/barcamp-ukgovweb-2009/

Also in January 2009, the Power Of Information Taskforce Report
recommended something like data.gov.uk ("a public sector information
repository and catalogue"), alluding to the OKF workshop:

  http://poit.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/poit/2009/01/finding-public-information-for-reuse/

The OKF has been a long time advocate of open government data, making
raw data available and so forth. Sir Tim Berners-Lee attributes the
'raw data now meme' to the OKF's Rufus Pollock in his (now infamous)
TED talk from February 2009:

  http://www.w3.org/2009/Talks/0204-ted-tbl/#(34)
  http://www.ted.com/talks/tim_berners_lee_on_the_next_web.html
  http://blog.okfn.org/2007/11/07/give-us-the-data-raw-and-give-it-to-us-now/

We're very excited about the next steps with CKAN and are working with
open government data advocates around the world to set up instances in
different countries - including Germany, France, Canada, and possibly
Finland. (If anyone is interested in talking more about setting up a
new instance - feel free to get in touch!) Next steps include getting
a command-line interface fully operational, looking at how we can
federate between different instances, looking at how we can better
provide better support for domain specific metadata (e.g. geospatially
referenced data), looking at how we can extend CKAN's support for
arbitrary metadata fields, thinking about how we can improve its
support for those interested in semantic web technologies, better i18n
and so on.

Regarding the OKF's relationship with Talis - Talis were a very early
advocate of open data and legal tools for open data. While it is now
reasonably sized and rapidly growing - the community of people
interested in open data a few years ago was not so big. Talis
supported Jordan Hatcher in his work on the Open Data Commons project
and its legal tools since at least 2007. We 'adopted' the Open Data
Commons project in January 2009. Talis sponsored an OKF workshop on
open data and the semantic web in November.

  http://www.opendatacommons.org/2007/12/17/licences-now-available-for-comment/
  http://blog.okfn.org/2009/01/22/open-data-commons-now-at-the-okf/
  http://blog.okfn.org/2009/11/20/after-the-open-data-and-semantic-web-workshop/

Hope that helps! Happy to provide any further information off-list -
but I suspect that is enough from us for now. ;-)

Jonathan

### CKAN in talks, workshops and releases

http://blog.okfn.org/2006/06/07/storing-and-visualizing-open-data/
http://blog.okfn.org/2007/02/20/collaborative-development-of-data/
http://blog.okfn.org/2007/05/21/xtech-2007/
http://2007.xtech.org/public/asset/attachment/190
http://blog.okfn.org/2007/07/04/the-comprehensive-knowledge-archive-network-ckan-launched-today/
http://m.okfn.org/files/talks/opentech_20080705/
http://blog.okfn.org/2008/10/31/ckan-07-released/
http://blog.okfn.org/2009/05/11/european-open-data-summit/
http://blog.okfn.org/2009/05/12/ckan-08-released/
http://blog.okfn.org/2009/07/21/open-dictionary-databases-an-overview/
http://blog.okfn.org/2009/07/23/what-features-should-be-included-in-a-catalogue-of-open-government-data/
http://blog.okfn.org/2009/08/13/ckan-09-released/
http://blog.okfn.org/2009/08/19/opening-up-government-data-give-it-to-us-raw-give-it-to-us-now/
http://blog.okfn.org/2009/10/08/datagovuk-launched-and-its-using-ckan/
http://blog.okfn.org/2009/10/26/new-ckan-features/
http://blog.okfn.org/2009/10/27/open-data-on-cities-an-international-round-up/
http://blog.okfn.org/2009/11/05/new-linking-open-data-group-on-ckan/
http://blog.okfn.org/2009/11/20/after-the-open-data-and-semantic-web-workshop/
http://blog.okfn.org/2009/12/05/climate-change-climate-sceptics-and-open-data/
http://blog.okfn.org/2010/01/21/datagovuk-goes-public-and-its-using-ckan/

-- 
Jonathan Gray

Community Coordinator
The Open Knowledge Foundation
http://blog.okfn.org

Twitter/Identica: jwyg

Received on Friday, 22 January 2010 21:21:08 UTC