Presentation on open and linked data presented to the annual conference of the public sector IT management organisation, Socitm, on 11 October 2010

1. Open and Linked Data
Dane Wright
IT Strategy Manager
Brent Council
October 2010

2. Conservative Party conference 2010
Francis Maude
Thousands of commercial and
social entrepreneurs have been
frustrated by their inability to
obtain and reuse datasets. I'm
sorry to say that some councils
spend time and money
deliberately making data
unusable to anyone else.

3. Open Data
Open data is information that is freely available on the
web to everyone without restrictions on its re-use
Data on the web becomes more useful when it can be
connected (or linked) with other data
Linked data is a central component of the Semantic
Web where information is understandable not just by
human beings but also by computers – machine
readable

4. A history of the Internet/Web
1940s Vannevar Bush's “memex” vision for automated
information management
1960s McLuhan's “global village, concept of online hypertext
1970s TCP/IP protocols agreed, Arpanet > Internet
1980s Tim Berners-Lee develops WWW concept at CERN, first
web servers on the Internet
1990s CERN makes WWW freely available, websites and web
browsers developed, first UK council website in 1996
2000s Global public use of the Internet, search engines, Google,
dot.com boom and bust, Web 2.0, social media, 1 trillion
web pages in 2008
2010s Mobile devices, cloud computing, Semantic Web

5. The Semantic Web
“I have a dream for the Web [in which computers] become
capable of analysing all the data on the Web – the content,
links, and transactions between people and computers. A
‘Semantic Web’, which should make this possible, has yet
to emerge, but when it does, the day-to-day mechanisms of
trade, bureaucracy and our daily lives will be handled by
machines talking to machines.” Tim Berners-Lee 1999
• Additional languages etc - RDF, OWL, SKOS, SPARQL
• Ontologies – taxonomies with formal relationships
• Linked open data – structured data in standard formats

6. Linked Data
Linking web pages together to allow machine readability
•Everything identified by URIs – Universal Resource Identifer
•URIs give information in standard formats eg XML/RDF
•Include links to other related URIs
Tim Berners-Lee at TED 2009 – “raw data now”
BBC World Cup 2010 website used linked data engine to
build/manage the website and its navigation
esd standards controlled lists are published as RDF
Talis Connected Commons offer hosting for RDF/SPARQL
LeGSB working on linked data ontology for £500 spend data

7. History of open data in government 1
1766 Freedom of the Press Act in Sweden
1966 Freedom of Information Act in US (Lyndon Johnson)
2000 Freedom of Information Act in UK (Tony Blair)
2004 Civic enthusiasts repurpose Hansard & US Congress data
2003 EU Reuse of Public Sector Information directive
2005 Google Maps and Google Earth open up mapping to the public
2006 Guardian Free our Data campaign begins
2006 EU Inspire directive for open spatial data
2007 Cabinet Office Power of Information Review
2009 Tim Berners-Lee “Raw data now” speech at TED
2009 Tim Berners-Lee appointed as expert advisor by Gordon Brown
2009 US federal and state open data stores – data.gov, datasf.org etc

8. History of open data in government 2
2010 Jan - data.gov.uk and data.london.gov.uk launched
2010 Apr - Ordnance Survey makes some mapping data open
2010 May - David Cameron letter re central & local data transparency
2010 May - Tim Berners Lee, Nigel Shadbolt & Tom Steinberg appointed to
Cabinet Office Transparency Board
2010 Jun - Eric Pickles announces local government publication of £500+
spend/contracts by Jan 2011
2010 Oct - UK Open Government Licence released
2010 Oct - Ordnance Survey makes more mapping data open
2010 Oct - David Cameron & Francis Maude reiterate support for open data
2011 Jan - All local authorities in England publish spend and contract data

9. Drivers for open data in government
3 factors driving government open data -
Pressure from civil society enthusiasts to re-purpose
government datasets and make them available for re-use
Support from government officers
Top level mandate to publish open data
Plus the capacity – FoI legislation, availability of data etc
Open Data Study – research by Becky Hogge, May 2010

10. Licensing
• Crucial for re-use in machine readable form
• Variety of licences in the past – Click-use, Creative
Commons etc
• Now there is the new Open Government Licence (OGL)
which covers access, re-use and database rights
• Still some issues with Ordnance Survey licensing around
derived data – details of new PSMA to be revealed soon
• LAs can still charge for data where necessary
• LG Group is working on a practitioners guide

11. £500 spend & contracts
May 2010 – Prime Minister letter on opening up data
June – letter from Eric Pickles
Sept - spend guidance from Local Public Data Panel
Oct – Letter/video from Eric Pickles
Oct – spend & salary guidance from LG Group
Oct - Open Government Licence published
Oct – 35 councils with spend data published
? – contracts guidance
Jan 2011 – deadline for spend to be published monthly

12. Spend/contract/salary issues
• England only, not statutory
• Council commitment to open data or just the minimum?
• Personal data redaction – manual or automatic?
• Format – CSV not PDF, maybe RDF as well?
• Consistency across boroughs?
• Classification schemes – BVACOP, ProClass
• Publishing large volume of data files
• FOI requests – increase or decrease?
• Potential for fraud?

13. Examples
Openly Local
Brent
Lichfield – Jonathan Harrison (Pezholio)
Warwickshire
Trafford
Walsall
LG Group Transparency Guidance

22. What to do next
Feedback to LG Group Transparency Programme
Publish more than just the minimum
Use the recommended CSV formats
Include classifications, links wherever possible
Use the Open Government Licence
Encourage OS to allow us to make GIS data open
Encourage conversion to RDF and linked data
Make more data sets open – GIS, Govt returns …

23. Hindsight
Freedom of Information. Three harmless words. I look at
those words as I write them, and feel like shaking my
head till it drops off my shoulders. You idiot. You naive,
foolish, irresponsible nincompoop. There is really no
description of stupidity, no matter how vivid, that is
adequate. I quake at the imbecility of it.
Once I appreciated the full enormity of the blunder, I
used to say - more than a little unfairly - to any civil
servant who would listen: Where was Sir Humphrey
when I needed him? We had legislated in the first throes
of power. How could you, knowing what you know have
allowed us to do such a thing so utterly undermining of
sensible government?
Tony Blair - A Journey - September 2010

24. Open and Linked Data
Dane Wright
Brent Council
dane.wright@brent.gov.uk
@pluto9
Useful links are on brentwebdev.wordpress.com