Tag: data

Stuff I've seen June 9th through June 13th

These are my links for June 9th through June 13th:

  • Local Works | Campaigning to implement the Sustainable Communities Act – You can only use the radical new bottom-up powers in the Sustainable Communities Act if your councils (district/borough/city and county) choose to use it too! See the map and list below for those who have. If your councils have not already done so please write to them (and urge others to write too!), this sample letter will help you.
  • The Open Rights Group – But with Lord Carter departing, there is a serious question as to whether the government will push the Digital Britain agenda forward at all. Who will pick up the brief; will they support and desire the completion of its recommendations; will they be able to build up the political will to see any proposals through Parliament, especially as its mood darkens?
  • BBC NEWS | Technology | Web creator job 'beyond politics' – The inventor of the world wide web has been asked by the prime minister to help open up access to government data.
  • I smell a government rat in my news | Online Journalism Blog – To help you measure the amount of government-funded journalism, Nicolas Kayser-Bril built this little app, I smell a government rat in my news. Just type in any query and you’ll see the share of articles produced with state funds.
  • Peregrine Falcons – Worcester Webcam – Great work from Worcester City Council to engage public interest and establish broader positive relations with folk.

Data, crown copyright, archives, listening to communities and the "empowerment heist".

I’m rootling through my feed reader catching up.

On Thursday Tom Watson announced that Crown Copyright was to be revised so those wanting to data mash with information from the Office of Public Sector Information will now be automatically granted a license. With a rather neat turn of phrase “They say information is power, but only distributed information is truly empowering” he went on to say:

the Office of Public Sector Information (OPSI) has looked again at the restrictions of Crown Copyright, and now a licence will automatically be granted to anyone wanting to use the information rather than having to apply beforehand.  OPSI has also shown how Government can publish in a ‘web-friendly’ way rather than just as PDFs, and I want to see this approach rolled out across Government.  Today I’m pleased to announce that COI is launching new standards on quality to make Government sites as effective and easy to use as possible.”

The COI site on web site clarity was first mention on the Power of Information Blog and is   http://usability.coi.gov.uk/

The Guardian has been continuing it’s Free Our Data reporting, with Charles Arthur a little underwhelmed by the announcements above:

Umm. It’s not quite the revolution that some of us were hoping for. It doesn’t even yet seem to legitimise the re-use and repurposing by sites such as theyworkforyou.com of the contents of Hansard – which is Crown copyright. That’s the trouble with tectonic shifts, though. Nothing seems to happen for a very long time, and then sometimes it happens all at once.

I don’t agree, (and neither does Tim Davies) the shift won’t be seismic in the sense of some sort of overnight social media sensation.  The last 5 years has seen steady change and the groundwork is still going on at government level.  The COI’s social media guidance document (a pdf – tut) says civil servants should:

Help non-governmental bodies to build new services by structuring information so that they can combine public data with private data.  Avoid replicating what is already being undertaken by non-governmental bodies.

Wednesday saw the launch of a 12 week consultation called Archives for the 21st Century, again data, how we capture and share it will be at the heart of this.  The press information mentions one wonderful example of a data set created from digitising the log books of ships going back to the 17th century.  Hour after hour mariners from Britain, Holland, France and Spain would log the time, their position and the weather.  The CLIWOC project is now a database for Climate Change Study.  Another example they use is Birmingham Stories.

Also on Wednesday Downing Street restored the e-mail the Prime Minister service and Hazel Blears announced that one way for councils to save £600 million a year was by listening to their communities.  This riled Julian Dobson who called it an “empowerment heist”:

‘Involving communities are key to unlocking greater savings – when it comes to finding efficiencies, empowering local people is part of the solution, not part of the problem,’ she said.

There is of course some truth in this – councils that listen to local people and provide services that are valued will achieve more for their money. But the crude equation of ’empowerment’ with savings is dangerous nonsense: there’s no rationale for turning what may be a fortunate by-product in some circumstances into the raison d’etre.  Yesterday’s speech might have been excusable were it not for the ten years of rhetoric that had preceded it.

Ofqual’s new Chief Officers report has been made comment-able and Spaghettitesting listed the Government winners of the Webby’s including a non-governmental site from the transparency movement  GovernmentDocs.org.

Stuff I've seen April 27th to April 29th

These are my links for April 27th through April 29th:

  • Job listing for Innovation and New Markets Executive, Screen West Midlands, Birmingham – Audiences Central – Your job will be to assist in delivering a programme of support for digital projects and companies in the region including events, project development and production funding and identifying new trends in digital media, technology and emerging business models. Experience in the digital media sector is highly desirable, as is successful partnership work, project management and familiarity with media contracts – particularly in the digital sector.
  • After the crunch | Andrew Dubber – Ask me what is the greatest thing in the world, I will reply: It is people, it is people, it is people!
  • The mystery of the missing London parking tickets | News | guardian.co.uk – This fab use of data to reveal curious patterns shows how citizens and news outlets can work together to ask interesting questions: ”
    Nobody has parked in a loading bays illegally for 18 months, and nobody has overstayed in a parking place across the whole of London? That’s a flipping miracle. You’d think TfL would be shouting the new-found behaviour of London drivers from the rooftops.”  Except … apart from a couple of low totals at the end of 2008 (which may be due to delays in tickets issued working their way through the system), total ticket numbers have generally risen; indeed they hit an all-time high in November 2007. Clearly, people aren’t really behaving better.
  • cybersoc.com: revealed: groundbreaking study of user generated content use at the bbc – The majority of respondents to the MORI poll commissioned had favourable views of user generated content and thought it played a positive roll in reporting yet few have actually contributed. One of the questions was whether people would take a photo if they saw a fire break out – just 14% said they would, and just 6% of those said they’d send it to a news organisation. Great differences were seen across classes – 16% of higher management would take a photo, with all saying they’d submit it to a news organisation, but in other groups (middle-management to manual laborers) only between 4 – 5% would take a photo.
  • Job listing for Aspiring programme makers – Audiences Central – Our initial aim was to provide the area with its first local television channel and provide an outlet for video productions made with the various groups we work with. Now with the help of Aston Villa Community Interest Company and Data Pacific we have created V-Cube.tv. We intend to produce and schedule programmes that directly or indirectly support, enhance, promote or deliver local concerns & initiatives directly to the Web and other broadcast platforms.
  • Digital Mentors FAQs — Media Trust – “Is this about getting people online?  No. If more people get online as a result of Digital Mentors, that’s great. But digital media is as much about offline technology. But digital media is as much about offline technology, as long as it helps communities to express and exchange their views.”

Stuff I've seen April 18th through April 21st

These are my links for April 18th through April 21st:

  • Better ways to share information digitally « Observations – The Observatory’s Population & Society Group is planning a seminar in the summer to investigate and discuss how research organisations in the West Midlands can get better at sharing information digitally. Do you have any thoughts on this?
  • Google News Timeline – Google News Timeline supports lots of different types of queries that you can add by clicking on a checkbox below.
  • Birmingham City Council Press Releases – An independent site that purely exists to allow a space for commenting on Birmingham City Council Press Releases.
  • World Bank API – Welcome to the World Bank Developer Network! – The World Bank's first API offers 114 indicators from key data sources and 12,000 development photos (see all sources). We are releasing this API because we believe this information can be mapped, visualized and mashed up in an unlimited number of ways that will help develop a better understanding of trends and patterns around key development issues.
  • The Conservative Party | News | The Blue Blog | Making Government data work for you – "MySociety are campaigning for Parliamentary bills to be published in an internet-friendly format, so the public could be kept up-to-date with their progress through Parliament. Thankfully, David Cameron agrees – it’s a great idea, and one that could lead to a UK version of OpenCongress (or, better still, our version of YourOwnDemocracy – an ambitious US project still in its early stages) becoming reality."