1. CKAN as an implementation
framework for the open data
portals
GFOSS
George Karamanolis
ICT Consultant
Bologna 29/11/2012
2. Agenda
• CKAN – introduction
• User Groups and Features
• Testing and customization for the
Decentralized Administration of Crete
• Screens from the testing enviroment
• Implementation Toolkit
• Added Value – Possible Synergies
3. About CKAN
• CKAN is a powerful data management system that makes
data accessible – by providing tools to streamline
publishing, sharing, finding and using data.
• Was developed by the non-profit Open Knowledge
Foundation
• Aimed at data publishers (national and regional
governments, companies and organizations)
• Used to power both official and community data portals,
CKAN
• It now powers more than 40 data hubs around the world,
including portals for local, national and international
government, such as the UK’s data.gov.uk and the European
Union’s publicdata.eu (beta version)
4. Ckan user groups
•Publishers
• Local/national governments, data providers
•Open Data users
• Researchers, journalists, programmers, NGOs,
citizens
5. Features for publishers
• Publish data through a guided process or import
via API/harvesting from other catalogs
• Customize: add your own metadata fields,
themes and branding
• Store data within CKAN or on external (e.g.
departmental) sites
• Manage: Full access control, version history with
rollback, INSPIRE/RDF support, user analytics
6. Features for data users
• Explore: search, add, edit, describe, tag, group
datasets via web front-end or API
•Collaborate: user profiles, dashboard, social
network integration, comments
•Use: metadata and data APIs, data previews and
visualizations
•Extend: full documentation for building extensions
9. Integration with existing information
systems or Content management
systems
• extensions for full Drupal and Wordpress
integration
• API that makes it straightforward to add
support for other CMSs and third-party
catalogs
10. Community functionality
• Comments extension – users can add comments and
discussion on a dataset. The extension can be enabled or
disabled at any time.
• Share – users can quickly and easily promote and discuss a
dataset using twitter and facebook integration.
• RSS/Atom feeds – create feeds of any changes and revisions
to datasets and groups.
• Follow extension – ‘follow’ a dataset to be informed of any
changes, updates or new activity.
• To do extension – flag a dataset with an issue or instructions
of what is missing or still ‘to do’. This allows for a community
driven effort for improving and adding to metadata.
11. Testing for the decentralized
Administration of Crete
• Set up at Decentralized Administration of
Crete for testing and customization
• Customize layout, look and feel
• Publish test data sets to explore
functionality
• Testing community features
• Testing Interoperability features, apis etc
12. Localization (University of Crete)
•English (100%)
•
Greek (100%) (80 =>
Spanish (100%) 100)
•Portuguese (Brazil) (100%)
•
Swedish (90%)
•Japanese (100%)
•
Serbian (82%)
•
Norwegian (100%)
•French (100%) •
Slovak (95%)
•Italian (100%)Korean (100%) •
Russian (56%)
Chech (100%) •
German (66%)
•Finnish (100%) •
Polish (64%)
•
Dutch (70%)
•
Bulgarian (64%)
•
Hungarian (40%)
•
Slovenian (15%)
•
Latvian (21%)
•
Lithuanian (0%)
•
Romanian (3%)
19. Federation
• the data can be pulled regularly into CKAN from the
existing repositories.
• customizable “harvesting” mechanism which can fetch
and import records from many different repository
sources, including
Geospatial Servers
Existing web catalogues
Simple HTML index pages
Other CKAN instances
This functionality is used on data.gov.uk to implement a Discovery Metadata Service used to fulfill
the UK’s obligations under the EU INSPIRE directive. It is also used on publicdata.eu to pull in
information from other catalogues to make them all searchable in one place.
20. Federation
• The harvesting functionality can be used to pull in
metadata from other CKAN instances, it can also be
used to create a federated network of CKAN nodes
which share data between each other.
CKAN follows the DCAT standard for data catalogue metadata, so data can also be federated from other non-CKAN
catalogues.
21. Ιmplementation Toolkit
• 10 pg document
• Guidelines for opening up data, focusing to to
existing tools (CKAN)
• Ckan installation
• legal issues and licensing
o
greek and eu legislation and directives
o
Feedback from HOMER PROJECT
• Cataloging data sets and Publishing data sets
• Connecting with stakeholders, Building communities
• Reusable for Homer Partner
22. Participation to an open source
project
• A chance to actively participate for an Open
source project
• GFOSS is willing to coordinate resources for
further development
• Eg python developers, web designers
23. Final Thoughts..
• GFOSS cooperates with OKFN and Informatics
Directorate-General (DIGIT)
• ADMS, Egov core vocabularies developed by
ISA Group or EUROVOC
• .. ADMS can be used for representing reusable
semantic assets, e.g. schemas, ontologies, models,
codelists...., hosted in metadata repositories.
ADMS can act as a common layer among
repositories that want to exchange data (see als
http://joinup.ec.europa.eu/asset/adms/descriptio
n)
24. Final Thoughts..
• Utilize the whole experience for European level
projects
• Synergies (eg athens greek hackathons)
• Transparency project in Greece
