opendata – Page 5 – Dave Briggs

Bookmarks for January 10th through January 24th

January 24, 2011

I find this stuff so that you don’t have to.

#UKGC11: Flickr, Wikipedia and Open Streetmap for local authorities – Great write up of an interesting session from @abeeken
Reworking the public sector | Public sector pm – Notes on a great topic at #ukgc11
Uk GovCamp 2011 | Partridgej’s Blog – Nice summary of the #police discussion at #ukgc11 from @jiiiii
The Plan is not the Objective – Superb stuff from @curiousc on agile policy making talks at #ukgc11
Considering PaaS – Fabulously useful post on cloud platform stuff from @cote
6 ways to make open innovation easier – 100% Open – Great tips.
Public Data Corporation to free up public data and drive innovation – Interesting. Not least because I'm not convinced there's much money to be made by anyone here – certainly not by small suppliers anyway.
Transport’s £2.7m spend on online game – Shame – a potentially good idea made ridiculous by spending too much money on it.
My GovCamp wishlist (and yours) – Thanks to Simon for sharing his ideas for this year's GovCamp.
How To Build An Online Community – The Ultimate List of Resources (Updated) – Great list of resources from Rich Millington on building online communities- vital reading.
As VLC for iPhone, iPad Pulled from App Store, What’s the Future for GPL Apps? – Interesting post on whether open sources licences like the GPL are incompatible with Apple (and maybe other) app stores T&Cs.

You can find all my bookmarks on Delicious. There is also even more stuff on my shared Google Reader page.

You can also see all the videos I think are worth watching at my video scrapbook.

Who Owns My Neighbourhood?

January 13, 2011

Who Owns My Neighbourhood? is a cool new project from Kirklees Council. Supported by NESTA, according to the blurb it:

…is a service that helps local people take responsibility for the land, buildings and activities where they live and work.

Basically, you bung in a postcode from the Huddersfield area and it plots who owns which bits of land on a map.

The project blog expands on this:

Who Owns My Neighbourhood? aims to give people a starting point for getting things done in their own neighbourhoods. We hope this service will make it easier for people to have conversations about their local area and for us to answer each other’s questions by sharing what we know. We want people to think about what personal responsibility we are each willing to take for the place where we live, and how we might be able to help each other to look after it.

Will be an interesting project to track.

Bookmarks for October 30th through December 10th

December 10, 2010

I find this stuff so that you don’t have to.

Living with rats: Nine signposts towards Our Society – Good stuff from @juliandobson
Wikileaks and the Long Haul – Shirky on Wikileaks
What the attacks on WikiLeaks tell us – John Naughton nails it on the Wikileaks saga.
Budget consultation approaches by Michele Ide-Smith – Nice summary of some of the recent work from Michele.
I’m not anti-SharePoint – chieftech’s blog – Yup – Sharepoint's problems are usually in its implementation, not in the software itself.
Government data in the public domain – intrinsically good, right? – Great stuff from @rossferg
Connected Kingdom – "The UK has a thriving internet economy. It has the potential to grow even bigger. We want your ideas for ways to make that growth happen."
Learning about content strategy by Michele Ide-Smith – Great stuff on organising your website contributors and getting processes and systems right from Michele.
Innovation functions in large organisations – Great insights from @katebennet on innovating.
eDiplomacy: The US State Department’s Global Collaborative Backbone – Interesting stuff on collaborative tech in US.gov

You can find all my bookmarks on Delicious. There is also even more stuff on my shared Google Reader page.

You can also see all the videos I think are worth watching at my video scrapbook.

Bookmarks for September 20th through October 1st

October 1, 2010

I find this stuff so that you don’t have to.

Social intranets: Enterprises grapple with internal change – Great stuff on deploying social tech within big organisations.
Open Government Licence – "You are encouraged to use and re-use the Information that is available under this licence, the Open Government Licence, freely and flexibly, with only a few conditions."
Four roles for social media in workplace learning – "Whether or not l&d professionals or senior managers embrace social media doesn't really matter in the long run, because there is no turning back, only futile resistance."
Anthologize – "Use the power of WordPress to transform online content into an electronic book."
“The Case for Personal Information Empowerment”: Mydex publishes groundbreaking White Paper – Worthwhile reading. I don't entirely agree, but a cogent argument.
GCHQ spooks top UK Linux installations | THINQ.co.uk – "Whispers in the courtly corridors around Westminster, the seat of British government, have it that British intelligence uses Linux because it is secure, good at number crunching, and doesn't cost much to deploy."
A framework for the social enterprise – Useful and interesting white paper on knowledge and learning within large organisations.
Government Should Do its Own Data Homework | Jeni’s Musings – "It cannot be the case, long term, that you need to be an expert hacker to reuse government data."
Behind the scenes at ShapeYourPlace.org – Great stuff from Paul Henderson on the techie bits behind a nice local government social media engagement exercise.
Meeting the public sector communications challenge – "But what public sector communicators need to do is continue to demonstrate the value of communications, not as an end in itself, but as an agent for making things better for the public."
Open Courses: About 10 Weeks Seems To Be It, Then? – Great post from Tony Hirst on open courses and online learning.
Open Government as a Means to Shake the IT Suppliers Landscape – "…I have not (yet) seen any sustainable business model coming out of government “app stores”."
Where do the good ideas go? – "Given the challenges we face as a country and as a planet, there’s a tremendous opportunity to make crowdsourcing really work here and now. But it will take courage, patience, and a process which taps into the varied time and talents of the crowd, in its widest sense."

You can find all my bookmarks on Delicious. There is also even more stuff on my shared Google Reader page.

You can also see all the videos I think are worth watching at my video scrapbook.

Guidance for councils on publishing data

October 1, 2010

LG Group Transparency Programme

The LG Group have today launched a feedback site to get views on the draft guidance that has been developed for councils on the based ways to approach publishing open data.

As the site says:

Many authorities already publish considerable data. The challenge now is to be systematic about this, and to adopt some basic digital approaches in making data public to maximise everyone’s ability to benefit.

The Local Government Group in collaboration with the Local Public Data Panel is publishing a set of guides to offer practical help to meet both immediate targets of publishing data, and to adopt approaches that will add most value for local people and public services over the longer term.

This is a rapidly evolving and innovative agenda, so the guides are not static, mandatory requirements but rather they are ‘live’ documents that are open for you to comment on and offer the benefits of your experience.

The live nature of the documents is down to the fact that they are hosted on Steph Gray‘s marvellous Read+Comment setup which allows for the rapid publication of commentable documents.

As well as being commentable the site also publishes all the content in open reusable formats through RSS – a great example of walking the talk.

As I discussed with Tim on the podcast, it’s vital to increase the levels of data literacy at all levels of government – explaining the whys and the wherefores as well as the techie stuff about licenses and formats. This guidance is a great start, and if folk across the open local government scene get involved and add the benefit of their knowledge and experience through this site, it should be even better.

It’s also an opportunity, of course, for councils to have their say on this whole agenda. Open data is no panacea and, approached in the wrong way, it could have profound negative implications. So even if you are yet to drink the open data Kool-Aid, get stuck in now or forever hold your peace.

Load more posts!