- From: Jonathan Gray <jonathan.gray@okfn.org>
- Date: Fri, 22 Jan 2010 21:20:31 +0000
- To: george@thomas.name
- Cc: Ed Summers <ehs@pobox.com>, Sandro Hawke <sandro@w3.org>, public-egov-ig@w3.org
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