Resources

Here’s where you can access tools to help you analyse, adapt and share the data. You'll also find video interviews and other features to help you get more out of this website.

The power of government data

Professor Nigel Shadbolt gave a talk about the power of government data and the work that he and others have been doing to open it up at The Guardian's Activate 2010 conference. Below is a video of his talk:

This video is made available under the Creative Commons Non-Commercial No Derivatives licence. See the licence's deed page for more details.

What is Linked Data?

Here is Sir Tim Berners-Lee on this at TED:

Michael Hausenblas's introductions:

Yves Raimond and Michael Smethurst's, BBC, A skim-read introduction to linked data

Tom Heath, Open University, technical tutorial on how to publish Linked Data

Using Linked Data

Jeni Tennison's excellent practitioner's blog
Semantic Web Development Tools
The Talis wiki (link to introduction to SPARQL)

SPARQL tutorials

History of project

What is the Semantic Web?

Combining different data sources has never been easy, but the Semantic Web will enable data to be joined easily across boundaries. Find out more on this page

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Comments (23)

Catalyzing innovation and

Fri, 14/10/2011 - 11:01 — Anonymous (not verified)

Catalyzing innovation and adding more transparency to government through the release of open data is an issue that should rise about partisan politics. At least, as far as I can see that was the message that Nigel Shadbolt delivered at a conference. Shadbolt’s presentation on how they did data.gov.uk, will definitely offer some fuel to the arguments of advocates in other countries or states working to justify standing up similar repositories – or defend one that are already online. As far as I know from the article found by byfiles search, it was only last month, after all, that the United States Congress weighed deep cuts to funding for federal open government data platforms, with the final budget slashing the White House Office of Management and Budget’s e-government fund by some 75%.

Partisamism is indeed a global problem

Tue, 29/11/2011 - 11:25 — Anti-Partisan (not verified)

In peru for example, we have political groups changing government rules and biases every 5 years. What is protected in the past is now open. But viceversa as well. It all depends on political conveniences not on social-driven change. There are a lot of groups of interest that demand that for example the data that we publish in www.datosperu.org is banned from the web. Why? Because it shows connections between the ruling power and private enterprise. The kind of savage private enterprise that is everything except free market oriented.

Google Earth

Tue, 09/08/2011 - 23:13 — Pedge
Is there any easy way to import data into Google Earth? If not, perhaps some kind of importing tool is required? Example uses might be plotting drug crime / alcohol consumption against the multiple deprivation index for a visual comparison.
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Google Earth

Fri, 20/01/2012 - 23:19 — jack06

Hi, I search the same tool for import some data into Google Earth. I really would like to build a program to do this on a option binaire website.

 

.

Importing Data Into Google Earth

Wed, 31/08/2011 - 21:43 — Carl Hine (not verified)

This is a little tricky for someone not in development. That said, Google do have extensive documentation and a visual playground for 'having a faff'.

But, you have to understand the Earth 'KML' file code. This is Keyhole Markup Language. I'm a developer, I've used this to draw polygons of postal sectors and districts, place-markers, heat maps, and overlays. It's serious fun. If you can point me to WHERE this data is (your alcohol crime data cross tab gubbins) I could give it a go.

 

Carl.

For me its okay, i can see

Mon, 08/08/2011 - 07:12 — vladimir

For me its okay, i can see the videos and the tutorials, so thanks you for this resources.

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Can you help me Vladimir

Fri, 09/12/2011 - 12:55 — betttys77

Hello vladimir for you there is no problem but I can't see the video, can you help me please.

Michael, you can install the

Fri, 05/08/2011 - 09:34 — Brian Unsrie (not verified)

Michael, you can install the flash module for Firefox or Internet explorer, with this module you can see all the video on the website like flash games.

Thanks you for this

Fri, 05/08/2011 - 09:27 — Michael.il (not verified)

Thanks you for this ressources, i cannot see the video, with wich module can i see this video ? Anyway, i will come back later when i will find a way to see all your ressources.

 

Bye

 

This is cool

Tue, 03/05/2011 - 15:56 — Anonymous

This is reall cool

Yes - missing the point as usual

Mon, 28/02/2011 - 22:42 — Anonymous

The problem is that the MoD person could not open ODF files. The 'fault' being that people pushing open standards forget that as far as the rest of world is concerned, Word documents and PDFs ARE open standards, inasmuch as just about anyone can open/read them.

While ODF is a great idea - and I certainly support it - it shouldn't stop me accessing these documents in .DOC/.PDF.  Otherwise it's not 'open' government.

 

Not missing the point

Thu, 24/03/2011 - 18:01 — Anonymous

Its actually pretty difficult not to be able to open ODF as its an application and platform independent solution.  If you can't it is worth working out why - you can even use online solutions if you're on a whitelisted machine.  Its not even hard in what is on most public sector desktops - http://www.robweir.com/blog/2010/12/microsoft-office-odf.html.   More to the point it presumably means anyone the MoD official is working with is occuring an enforced and undeclared cost both in terms of licencing but also in a restricted choice of tools.  

 

Oh and PDF is an open standard.  .DOC is a trade secret.

radii

Fri, 12/11/2010 - 09:12 — Anonymous

Good, I agree with your point of view, thanks for your sharing!I think i am very close to your imagination. May be you are indicating the global warming and thing about the ice age.

 

Cannot opd files

Thu, 04/11/2010 - 14:41 — Anonymous

Great to see the information being published except those of us within the Ministry of Defence cannot open the files as our IT does not support opd file format!

Any solutions?

Opening .ODF files

Tue, 23/11/2010 - 16:26 — Anonymous

Anonymus,

 

See if the MoD it will allow the use of the tool ODF converter (http://sourceforge.net/projects/odf-converter/) to be deployed on your machine(s). This will allow MS office to open .odf files. "Sun ODF Plugin for Microsoft Office 3.1Enables Open Document Format (Star Office) documents to be opened in MS Word, PowerPoint or Excel"

 

Regards,

Someone can track your IP.

Links

Wed, 30/06/2010 - 13:19 — Anonymous

Unfortunately, most of the links are blocked by my (public sector organisation) firewall and security settings...

Must be a mistake in the word Unfortunately

Sat, 01/01/2011 - 16:42 — Anonymous

FORTNATELY most of the links are blocked for the public sector at work as they will be in most private companies you need to do what the rest of us have to do whcih is your job not trawing arround the internet in search of something to do at the taxpayers expence.

Websites blocked

Tue, 10/08/2010 - 09:29 — Anonymous

It is well known that lots of public sector organisations and central government, block lots of websites e.g. social networking ones. Jeez, some council staff do not have access to external email. Despite this, there is still a push forward to spend a fortune on creating knowledge management websites that those people that the websites are intended for can not access.

You've missed the point!

Wed, 24/11/2010 - 19:12 — Anonymous

If you work in the public sector you have the data you need to do your job ...if you don't, ask your boss.  If you have the time to idly trawl through the raw data pertaining to other departments, etc. during working hours, you have too much time on your hands.  You can either (a) take on more work, or (b) accept that your post is probably superfluous and simply sit back and await the redundancy notice.

Isn't "Opening up government"

Fri, 19/11/2010 - 10:15 — Anonymous

Isn't "Opening up government" about giving access to people that are not working in the public sector. If you want to view this information, do it from home in your own time, not the taxpayers.

Pretty idiotic reply.  This

Wed, 24/11/2010 - 18:03 — Anonymous

Pretty idiotic reply.  This information is often an important internal research tool and can more easily be accessed through the public route.  It is often easier for instance to search using google than internal website search tools.

 

Agree with the idiots? Think not

Wed, 09/02/2011 - 13:23 — Anonymous

I do like the fact that ranters like those above often don't have the ability to read and assimilate.

The first post was trying to find out how to put data out when there is a compatibility issue.

I work in a government and one of the most time consuming activities is to find out statistics for activities outside my department.If government becomes more joined up in its provision of data to the public, it will also benefit dramatically itself by saving much of this time.Sharing the data may also drive standardisation of outputs across departments where possible to ease the process.

Oh and by the way, you can still be at your workplace and not working.

Witness my one-handed typing whilst munching a non-subsidised sandwich!!

Tools

Thu, 21/01/2010 - 00:14 — Anonymous

Probably a better page for tools: http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/wiki/Category:Tool