Data & Stuff // Neil Houston

Late last week, Data.gov.uk was released with a fanfare opening from Tim Berners-Lee [Guardian Coverage].

It looks good, but what is it really about?

Luckily I’ve had access to the site whilst it was in private testing, and am able to get an insight into the development world through an associated email group.

The simple thing is, YES it’s great – opening up data, for reuse, how could it not be.

Though NO, it’s not ‘great for the general public end user’. By that I mean, the general public will almost indoubtly benefit due to the applications and products that get developed due to this openness and transparency of data.

For instance, want to know Where Does Your Money Go. This was a concept that was developed through the Show Us A Better Way competition – a precursor, and almost a proof of concept that opening up data is good for us all.

So whilst the outputs are likely to be interesting, I don’t think its necessarily going to be top of every UK citizens todo list to checkout http://data.gov.uk often.

There are a lot of good things that have already come from the site, and this Top 10 Government Data Visualisations from the Guardian demonstrates just some of the talent out there .

I’ll certainly be looking at what is coming out utilising the data available, what mashups get made and such. Meanwhile I need to tune up my Ruby, RDF, SPARQL, etc knowledge to be able to take full advantage. I just don’t think that Joe Public will be doing that.

Maybe I’m just wrong?

A while ago you may have heard me talking about #hacktitude. This was a concept devised by Mark Steadman.

So what was it all about?

Hackitude is a two-day hacking event based around your ideas. Non-techie-types can suggest ideas for things they’d like to see made, and hackers can setup or join working groups to make those ideas a reality.

Anyone could suggest an idea (or more than one), that they think is something that is missing in the online world. All the ideas are on the site, so take a browse – could you help build one of them in the future?

We chose to work on one by Dave Harte, which involved letting the public know where allotments where and what facilities they had etc.

I was popping in and out through the evening, but alongside Jamie Garner, but my main task was to help devise the data structure/model that the backend should work on.

The concept was to make it as flexible as possible, allowing us for instance to use the same database, and site, to pull out information on local cafes and facilities, or pubs with wifi etc.

Here is a video shot by Nat, of Aquila TV, of Jamie and myself explaining it (this was taken at around 1AM – so I’m not looking too fresh!)

I had other commitments through the weekend, but popped in a few times to help see how it was progressing and helping/hindering others along the way.

What came out of it was a remarkable system, which can be seen on the Metalocal site. It quickly shows the data, and filters based off what facilities your require.

Only a small subset of data is within the system, but its testament to all that it got done in the space of the weekend.

What do you think? Know of any other cool ideas like this?

P.S. Have a giggle at this:

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