OpenData Working Group

In April, 2011 the Drupal Government Days in Brussels will be held for the first time.

We want to bring government representatives, Drupal users, developers, evaluators and businesspeople together.

There will be sessions, talks and more at the Drupal Government Days in Brussels.

Some preview on possible topics:

Drupal / Open Source adoption
Case Studies, Projects & Solutions
Open Government initiatives in Europe
Drupal & Open Data
Open Public
Efficiency, Effectiveness and Transparency
eIdentity and eSecurity Integration
Services for Businesses & Services for Citizens

Before embarking on an effort to build a great new opendata app/feature/distribution of Drupal, here's a spreadsheet we can use to catalog what technology platforms are used for leading existing open data sites already; please add to it!

https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0ArCIrNfY8gf8dHZOR0hKdmFuN1o5dTN...

Hot off the heals of DrupalCon, a number of Drupal'Govies are trying to figure out what's next. With the release of OpenPublic, there is a unique opportunity to tackle some of our more complex issues with an unprecedented way in sharing code, modules, content types and now APPS!!!

FYI, when I'm talking about a "summit," I'm describing a day/s that are mixture between a hackday, unconference, and a "con." Check out this summary < http://groups.drupal.org/node/98784 >.

DrupalCon 2011 Chicago
BOF on Open Data

Who's here?
Kris Olafson, University of Waterloo, helping student developers
Kurt Voelker, CTO of ForumOne, working with NPTech, 1ドルM from Goog
Colan Schwartz (colan), Canadian Gov, buyandsell.gc.ca
Daniel Abadie, in charge of open data init, buenos aires
Bret Husbands, FirmStep, works with 1/3 of UK city govs
Larry Hugg, Sleight of Hand Studios
Anne Keane, NOAA
Alan Palazzolo, Code for America
Barrett Smith, SRA

What would make for a terrific open data server, along the lines of data.gov or data.worldbank.org? Something that could help encourage more governments, non-profits, companies, and others to publish more data more usefully?

Feel free to add your comments below each point, and based on those comments, improve each point. Try to avoid adding more points to avoid scope creep.

1. Structured way to store and access raw data sets, downloadable in the same form they were uploaded, and queryable by name, time, or text search

2. Catalog links to other data hosted elsewhere

I've published the meeting notes from the BoF last week, and a separate wiki page for my wish list for a great open data server. Feel free to edit the meeting notes page to add points I didn't document; and to edit the wish list to comment on or improve the list. Moving forward!

For lack of a de.licio.us or reddit function on d.o, here's a set of useful links related to what we could or should do with open data: Let's sort it by category (in bold).

Making the Business Case
2011年03月12日: NYTimes: This Data Isn’t Dull. It Improves Lives.
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/business/13view.html

2011年03月18日: FCW: How to move from datasets to data services
http://fcw.com/articles/2011/03/18/comment-brand-niemann-data-services.a...

Tools
2011年02月17日: Google Public Data Explorer goes public

Hey Folks,

I just wanted to point you all to a few pages on the Civic Commons wiki where some of this information is already being collected:

http://wiki.civiccommons.org/Data_Platform (this also includes the spreadsheet that Andrew started)
http://wiki.civiccommons.org/Data_Standards#Data_Catalog_Protocols

Best,
Phil

I think this is relatively new, Government of Canada data. I was unable to add it to the list, but if it is new would it be appropriate to add to our growing list of data sources?

colan: It's not relatively new; it was announced today! :)
Minister Day Launches Open Data Portal

A note was posted to the Sunlight GoogleGroup list recently pointing to:

http://www.datasciencetoolkit.org/

A free, self-contained, ready-to-run VM with apps+data for

• geocoding (using geocoder.us. I'm assuming TIGER and OS data)
• geodict "pulls country, city and region names from unstructured English text"
• political boundary lookup (various sources)
• lots of data processing tools, eg pdf ->text
• more