Devon County Council has embraced open data by establishing an Open Data Group to coordinate initiatives, publishing various types of open data including spend over £500, and partnering with the Open Data Institute's Devon Hub to leverage community skills and share resources. Open data promotes transparency, reduces FOI requests, sparks innovation, and helps unlock economic and social value when combined from multiple sources. Examples show how open data on council spending was used by a member of the public to create a website tracking Devon's spending.

1. Devon County Council’s
Approach to
Open Data
By Martin Lawrence

2. What is covered?
• What is Open Data
• Why is it beneficial
• How does it link with FOI
• Devon’s approach
• Open Data Initiative – the Devon Hub
• Examples of how Open Data is used
• Open Data initiatives at Devon
• Can Open Data help you?

3. What is Open Data?
“Open data is data that can be freely used,
re-used and redistributed by anyone -
subject only, at most, to the requirement to
attribute and share alike.”
Taken from the Open Data Handbook

4. Why is it important
• Promotes openness & transparency
• Can help reduce the no of FOI requests
• Reduce the burden of responding to
FOIs
• Promotes active engagement
• Makes use of skills in the community
• Promotes innovation
• Leads to better insight from combined
data sources

5. How does it link with FOI
FOI Officers work closely with “Data people”
- we are often best placed to identify Open
Data sources
Insight from FOI can help in target where
open data might be useful for the public
Linking Open Data with your Publication
Scheme to reduce the burden of requests

6. Devon’s approach
Devon County Council has been heralded
as an “Open Data Champion” by Francis
Maude.
We are actively committed to publishing
quality open data sources that will benefit
the community and help improve our
services.

7. Devon’s approach
• No standard approach until recently
• Open Data Group established
• Open Data initiatives coordinated
• Risks identified & fed through IA process
• Councillors kept informed
• Representation from the community
• We are using FOI to identify direction of
travel

8. ODI – the Devon Hub
The Open Data Institute exists to create
economic, environmental, and social value
through open data. It helps unlock supply,
generates demand, creates and
disseminates knowledge to address local
and global issues.

9. ODI – the Devon Hub
• DCC has a formal relationship with OCI
Devon
• Exploring a single Open Data store
• Networking has already helped
information sharing
• We want to utilise the skills and resources
of the community
• Those skills already used to good effect

10. How Open Data is used
Members of the community possess
fantastic skills and expertise. They can
sometimes do things that there is not
sufficient resources for the Council to do!
Devon already published spend over £500.
Look what a member of the public did with
this data.
www.devonspends.co.uk

11. Open Data Initiatives
• The Human Resources Dashboard
• Highways Open Data Hub
• Complaints and FOI Dashboard
• PCN Mapping
• Parking Charges Data
• Adult Social Care Data Store

12. Can open data help you
• Do you publish open data
• What types of data do you publish
• Are there any opportunities to join up

13. Any questions?

14. Further information
Please direct any questions that you or your
colleagues might have to;
Martin Lawrence (Senior Information
Governance Officer) –
martin.lawrence@devon.gov.uk
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