Saturday, 24 October 2009

BarCampLondon7: Release London's Data -- Feedback from #londonsdata

Emer Coleman (assistant chief exec for London Borough of Barnet)

  • has been doing research this year about what data has been collected in london boroughs
  • big crisis in public finance after next election — what will happen?
  • to have a meaningful conversation, you need to have information available…
  • lack of trust at the moment (esp. for MP’s finances)
  • GLA holds a lot of data and wants to publish
  • already publish financial data
  • hoping to put pressure on subsidiary bodies to release more
  • invited developers to ask for what they wanted
    • 65 developers gathering information
    • TfL & transport info is really where they want to get to
  • developers have gone as far as they can to push agencies
  • “we’re just gonna do it”
  • asked “do you want raw data, or with some contextual data?”
    • didn’t come to any firm view
  • should we just release with the cabinet office?
  • now an email list, and a google group set up
  • will be running a competition
  • aiming to release data store in January
  • data avilable
    • air quality maps
    • number of people in social housing
    • school catchment areas
  • message coming from developers — just put the data out there
  • Daniel Shore (@LDN): what’s the attitude of TfL to scraping the journey planner?
  • IanForrester: other authorities (e.g .Manchester) trying to do things too
  • DIY Birmingham — scraped version of local authority site, but much more accessible
  • Cloudmade: NaPTAN data being imported into OpenStreetMap
    • then allows it to be updated, corrected and extended
  • Beth Noveck (Obama’s advisor on transparency) has written a book about wiki government

No comments: