Warwickshire open data project

opendata.warwickshire.gov.uk How and why we opened up Warwickshire’s data

Drivers & Benefits
Transparency for the public
Enhancing public communications
Improving service delivery and enabling citizens to self-serve
Contributing towards new ways of running public services
Improving external contribution to WCC
Enabling mash-ups of disparate sources of information to create new ways of looking at information
Enabling 3rd sector organisations or individuals to develop applications aggregating data across organisational boundaries
Reducing workload in areas like Freedom of Information (FOI), the Observatory and Public Relations
Reinforcing our efforts to resolve data and information issues

The Technical Stuff
Written using Ruby on Rails
Hosted on external platform-as-a-service provider Heroku
Used Amazon EC2 for storing the raw data
Standard standard XML schema for the metadata associated with each dataset
Schema was aligned to that used by http://data.gov.uk
Metadata automatically extracted to enable easy inclusion in the http:// data.gov.uk data catalogue
Will be open-sourced to enable other authorities to easily build their own open data site

The Project
2 Developers; 1 Project Manager; Jim Morton
2 days per week
Started end Jan 2010
Unofficial launch mid-April 2010
Official launch end-April 2010
Hack Warwickshire Competition mid-May – July 2010

Hack Warwickshire Competition
Do you look at government web sites and think “I could do better than that”?
Have you got a great idea for how technology can deliver better public services?
Could you use our data to show us how to work smarter?
Do you want to get your hands on an Apple iPad?
http://warwickshireopendata.wordpress.com/hack-warwickshire /

Tips & Tricks
Start with quick and easy datasets
Get sample apps developed quickly – show people what is possible
Key question to ask: “If someone requested this information under FOI, would we have to give it to them?”
Create a good process for feeding back any issues with the data
Create a strong community

Why has it worked?
Got in there early – lots of eagerness & support
Freebies for the competition – not many have done this yet
Lots of 2-way promotion (Yahoo!, Ordnance Survey, OpenlyLocal)
People are really interested in seeing the results
The community is forming and want to help each other

Some issues to consider
Revenue streams from some data sets
Different interpretations (from the ‘official’ Council view) may be aired without the extra context/ knowledge that staff may have
Is our information accurate?
Information timeliness
Ordnance Survey derived data
Technology rather than business led (?)

Sample Applications
School viewer - http://www.sandboxi.co.uk/
Warwickshire Information - http://isithackday.com/demos/warwickshire/
Tip finder: http:// www.pezholio.co.uk/warwickshire /
Augmented reality: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/layar-reality-browser/id334404207

Questions Contact Warwickshire Open Data Site [email_address] Twitter: @wccopendata

Warwickshire open data project

by Geovation

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