This document discusses several open community projects including Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata, OpenStreetMap, Wheelmap, Telraam, Weather Observations Website, GitHub curated lists, Common Voice, and others. It provides brief descriptions of each project, what opportunities they present for public administrations and organizations, and encourages contributions to help document government data and services.

1. BOSA.be
Sharing is caring
October 2020– Brussels
Bart Hanssens
BOSA DG Digital Transformation
Open
Community
Projects

2. Wikipedia
https://www.wikipedia.org

3. What is Wikipedia ?
• Online encyclopedia
• Everyone can contribute
• Edit the page or discuss in the “talk” tab
• Some “controversial” pages are being moderated
• Objective, neutral
• “best employer” => “won the award for Best Employer”
• Supported by (links to) facts

4. What is Wikipedia ? (2)
• Is it accurate / biased ?
• Probably as accurate / biased as “traditional” works
• Articles may (not) be available in multiple languages
• Translations are often not exact translations

5. Wikipedia: opportunity
• Document the various public administrations
• Again: neutral, informative, not a publicity page

6. Commons WikiMedia
https://commons.wikimedia.org

7. What is Commons Wikimedia ?
• Freely available drawings, images, sounds and videos
• Currently about 65 million items
• Do respect the license !
• Some files Creative Commons Zero (CC0) / public domain
• Most files require attribution (CC-BY)
• Sometimes the result must be free as well (CC-SA)
• Other restrictions / licenses may apply

8. Commons Wikimedia: opportunities
• Reuse in presentations, publications
• Alternative to commercial stock photos
• Contribute
• Pictures of historic government buildings

9. Wikidata
https://www.wikidata.org

10. What is Wikidata ?
• Structured data used by other Wiki-projects
• Also available as Linked Open Data
• SPARQL: https://query.wikidata.org/

11. Open Street Map (OSM)
https://www.openstreetmap.org

12. What is OpenStreetMap ? (1)
• Freely available maps
• Alternative to commercial maps
• Sometimes based on official maps
• Mostly mapped by “the crowd”
• Used by many other initiatives and products
• E.g. https://pelias.io
• Local “chapters” and events, “map-athons”
• See also https://openstreetmap.be/en/projects.html

13. What is OpenStreetMap ? (2)
• Is it accurate / complete ?
• Depends, often quite good
• Can be more complete for “niche” transport
• E.g. “non-car routes” like hiking, bike trails

14. OpenStreetMap: opportunities
• Already used on “fast2web” websites
• Maps on contact page
• Instead of more expensive commercial map services
• Verify location / description of government buildings

15. Wheelmap
https://wheelmap.org/

16. What is WheelMap ?
• Wheelchair accessibility info on maps
• Pictures, descriptions of possible issues
• Rating (fully / partially / not accessible)
• An Android / iOS app is also available
• Related project: https://brokenlifts.org

17. Wheelmap: opportunity
• Contribute accessibility info of government buildings
• Create awareness

18. Telraam
https://telraam.net

19. What is Telraam ?
• Count cars, bikes, pedestrians passing by the window
• Local traffic statistics
• Some (cheap) hardware required
• Raspberry Pi + low-res camera, Wifi
• Privacy-friendly
• Images processed immediately, not stored
• GBA/APD approved
• Word play: “telraam” means abacus in Dutch

20. Telraam: opportunity
• Used / supported by some municipalities in Flanders
• E.g. Leuven, Halle, Hasselt, Zonhoven

21. Weather Observations Website (WOW)
https://wow.meteo.be

22. What is Weather Observations Website ?
• Collecting weather data from semi-pro and amateurs
• Some basic hardware / weather station required
• Local “chapters”, working with official institutions
• E.g. RMI in Belgium, Met Office in UK

23. Weather Observations website: opportunity
• Already used by the Royal Meteorological Institute
• “Ambassadors” in education
• Geography teachers Flemish / French Community

24. GitHub “curated lists”
https://github.com/search?q=curated+list

25. What is Github ?
• Platform for sharing (mostly) open source code
• Sometimes used to share bookmarks / lists
• “Curated list”, “Awesome list”
• Examples
• https://github.com/costezki/awesome-semantic-tools
• https://github.com/EnigmaBridge/javacard-curated-list
• https://github.com/codePerfectPlus/Springer-
DataScience-Books

26. Common Voice
https://commonvoice.mozilla.org

27. What is Common Voice ?
• Mozilla project
• Collect voices from various people
• Dozens of languages / dialects
• Free dataset to train voice-to-text applications
• Voice assistants etc

28. Common Voice: opportunity
• Contribute to improve voice recognition software
• See also: accessibility

29. Questions ?

30. And lots of other projects
• Air quality / radiation
• https://influencair.be
• https://www.uradmonitor.com
• Maps
• http://www.cartesius.be
• Food products
• https://world.openfoodfacts.org

31. And lots of other projects (2)
• Bikes and public transport
• https://www.bikedataproject.org
• https://openplanner.team
• http://openov.nl
• Free literature / books
• https://wikisource.org
• https://www.gutenberg.org

32. BOSA.be
@BartHanssens
Bart.Hanssens@bosa.fgov.be
Thank you !