The UK’s version of data.gov, ably put together by the Cabinet Office, has just launched in private beta. We got to have a sneak peak, and it’s great!
The site is a blend of the US’s equivalent, data.gov, and Directgov | Innovate. It’s got a listing of available data packages, powered by the Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network, and user-generated lists of apps and new ideas. This is just right: the data you need, combined with a way to promote the things you make and a place to get ideas if you’ve got itchy typing fingers but lack inspiration.
It’s not perfect. Conspicuously missing is an organised way to browse data sets: but that’s coming, along with some other tweaks and twiddlings that’ll improve the site’s usability.
The site is powered by Drupal, with packages catalogued and hosted by CKAN. Meanwhile, data.gov.uk hosts a data store powered by Talis that can scale to 100 billion triples and is hosted on Amazon EC2. The system is federated, so departments can add and control their own data, lots of which is available as RDF, with the remainder downloadable in spreadsheet form.
Speaking of spreadsheets, they’ve even written an app that departments can deploy in-house to convert spreadsheets into RDF (kudos to John Sheridan!) which makes it much easier for departments to produce structured, linked data.
This is all working now, and was put together by the team at the Cabinet Office in the last three months. This is a massive achievement, and it sounds like it’s just the beginning: they have big plans. User submissions for new datasets. Metadata to describe provenance. More data sets on the site. More data as RDF. Organised browsing for packages. Source code releases. The list goes on.
This is such an encouraging thing to see. No expensive procurement exercises for clunky, bespoke sites: instead, we have the right tools for the job, joined together. Simple things that do one job well, combined to form a more complex whole. It’s the Unix philosophy in action.
This is how all Government IT should work.
Our hearty congratulations go out to the team at the Cabinet office, with special thanks to Richard Stirling for spilling some of the beans. I had lots of questions and nitpicks, and every single one of them was answered reassuringly.
They’ve got a plan, and it’s a good one.
[...] RT @dextrousweb: Data.gov.uk has arrived, and we think it's great: http://thedextrousweb.com/2009/10/the-wraps-come-off-data-gov-uk/ [...]
I am glad they have a plan, and glad they are getting IT.
The main thing in this life is to keep things simple. KISS. GIGO.
We need good tools.
Simple.
Kudos to everyone involved.
chris. (the simple user on the other end of it all)
Really look forward to his. We’re developing something similar on a much more modest and local scale
http://picandmix.org.uk, very keen esp to learn about we can use semantic web and linked data for this.
[...] Harry Metcalfe got an early look at the site and explained some of the technology behind it and some of its features. The site runs on the open-source content management system and community platform Drupal. One of the impressive and much-needed tools at the site is an “app that departments can deploy in-house to convert spreadsheets into RDF”, Metcalfe said, but one thing he hopes to see in the future is a data browser. [...]
[...] Alexandre Gamela shared The wraps come off data.gov.uk! – Archive – The Dextrous Web. [...]
[...] http://thedextrousweb.com/2009/10/the-wraps-come-off-data-gov-uk/ a few seconds ago from xmpp in context [...]
[...] The potential result is a wave of new applications, based on government data, that could do a wealth of things, from relating performance with class sizes in your local school to understanding how your local farming community is faring. Data.gov.uk is a very non-trivial project, and there is a long way to go, but what I was a very promising start. The early developer community is already very active, even though the site won’t really be in beta until the end of the year. As Harry Metcalfe puts it, the wraps are off. [...]
[...] Nachdem es die USA mit data.gov seit Mai diesen Jahres vormacht, zieht jetzt auch die britische Regierung nach und stellt mit data.gov.uk eine Portal bereit, auf dem zentral eine Reihe von frei verfügbaren Datenbeständen von öffentlichen Ministerien & Behörden gelistet werden. Darüber hinaus wird es wohl auch die Möglichkeit geben, Ideen und Tools vorzuschlagen. Momentan noch in der geschlossenen Beta-Testphase (mehr Infos zu Zugangsdaten etc gibt es hier), doch Harry Metcalfe hat schon mal einen Blick hinter die Kulissen geworfen. [...]
[...] For de som er opptatt av nettjournalistikkens fremtid er det bare å legge til bloggen til nyhetsleseren med en gang: vi etterlyste nylig om det ikke var på tide med en norsk versjon av data.gov – britene er allerede godt på vei til å få data.co.uk som Olav Anders skriver her og TheDexterousWeb er begeistret for beta-versjonen av den Drupal-baserte løsningen. [...]
[...] note, I got my user name and password for the governments data site (which you can read about here). It seems that the data is modelled using RDF, which I must admit I know nothing about, and can be [...]
[...] The wraps come off data.gov.uk! – Harry Metcalfe posted this exclusive preview of data.gov.uk – the UK government’s free open data store, currently in private beta. [...]
[...] http://thedextrousweb.com/2009/10/the-wraps-come-off-data-gov-uk/ a few seconds ago from choqoK [...]
[...] data. This then ties in with the Linked Data message. (In the UK, incidentally, that also means the data.gov.uk vision, thanks to Tim Berners-Lee and [...]
[...] Mehr Hintergründe, vor allem zur Technologie (Drupal, amazon-Server, Dateiformate) finden sich bei theDextrousweb in englischer [...]
[...] Open DataThe wraps come of data.gov.uk private beta preview [...]
[...] I’d like to see more of is some brainstorming about what our ideal data.gov would look like. A recent post about the coming data.gov.uk site provides a nice foil for us, for one, as the UK seems to be [...]
[...] I’d like to see more of is some brainstorming about what our ideal data.gov would look like. A recent post about the coming data.gov.uk site provides a nice foil for us, for one, as the UK seems to be [...]
[...] creates opportunity. And now the trend has turned into a movement within government in the US, the UK and many other [...]
[...] datasets can be easily disseminated, an indeed many of the leading projects such as data.gov and data.gov.ukare using linked data principles to expose data originally obtained in CSV format. Furthermore, [...]
[...] People who have seen early versions of data.gov.uk say that it contains tools that make it “much easier for [government] departments to produce structured, linked data”. Harry Metcalfe, an independent developer who has developed and worked on a number of sites that use government data to produce public information, commented that “this is such an encouraging thing to see. No expensive procurement exercises for clunky, bespoke sites: instead we have the right tools for the job, joined together … this is how government IT should work.” [...]
Complete fail. No dataset. Looks like it crashed.