Open Data
Dutch public sector to adopt ODF as standard?
The Dutch Standardisation Board would like to see the mandatory use of Open Document Format (ODF) for the country’s public sector organisations, according to a report on Joinup giving details of a presentation made by Nico Westpalm van Hoorn to the recent ODF Plugfest held in The Hague.
Van Hoorn stated that over 450,000 documents are transferred each day between the Dutch central
government and citizens or companies.
His presentation contained 3 main messages:
- The only way reuse of document content is achievable for open data is by using the ODF format;
- The only way to ensure sustainable access is by using the ODF format; and
- “This format cannot be opened,” as a remark by a public servant is not acceptable when somebody sends an ODF document.
Within the Dutch government, ODF is used as the default format for editable documents that are posted online. Documents are by default shared as HTML, PDF (for archiving) and as ODF. Furthermore, all central government workstations are capable of working with ODF, suggesting that civil servants who cannot open the format need some IT training.
Speaking at the same event, Steven Luitjes, director of Logius – an agency assisting government organisations in building e-government services, admitted that ODF is often ignored by public sector organisations and that a failure to standardise on formats is increasing the cost of public sector IT.
If the Dutch government does adopt ODF as a standard, this would follow on from the recent announcement of the standard’s adoption by the Italian Ministry of Defence (posts passim) and the UK government’s publication of guidance for the introduction of ODF.
Openness workshop at University of Perugia, Italy
Sonia Montegiove writes on the Libre Umbria blog that a workshop on openness is being organised on Thursday 12th March between 3 pm and 5 pm in Hall 20 in the Faculty of Economics of the University of Perugia as part of the initiatives linked to the Umbria Digital Agenda organised by the Umbria regional government.
After the introduction by Loris Maria Nadotti of the Department of Economics of the University of Perugia, Giovanni Gentili, the regional government’s digital agenda officer will speak about openness in the digital agenda. He will be followed by Francesca Sensini on open government, Sonia Montegiove on open source and finally Cristiano Donato and Tommaso Vicarelli on open data.
Each talk will last a maximum of fifteen minutes to allow time for a final debate with the lecturers and students attending.
Open data: Hamburg establishes transparency portal
The Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg has put a transparency portal online, heise reports. Data and documents from the city administration and publicly-owned companies are being made available in the schedule of information. The portal also comprises the data from the former Hamburg Open Data Portal. Amongst other things, the transparency portal makes available decisions by Hamburg’s Senate, minutes and resolutions, budget and management plans, policies and specialist guidelines, official statistics and progress reports, geodata, the tree protection register, environmental measurement data and commercial data.
The Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg is therefore complying with the requirements of the Transparency Law, which became effective in the city in October 2013. According to this legislation, Hamburg must publish its reports, contracts and Senate decisions on the internet. Under the previous Information Freedom Law, it only had to provide information upon request.
Companies House to make all of its digital data available for free
Yesterday, while David Cameron was rearranging the deckchairs on his governmental re-enactment of the SS Titanic, one significant piece of news (apart from the DRIP Bill. Ed.) seems to have escaped the personality-obsessed British media.
The news was the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills announced that Companies House is to make all of its digital data available free of charge. It has hitherto charged users for anything but the most basic company information on its website.
This will make the UK the first country to establish a truly open register of business information.
As a result, it will be easier for members of the public and businesses to research and scrutinise the activities and ownership of companies and their directors. Last year (2013/14), users searching the Companies House website spent £8.7 million accessing company information on the register.
The release of company information as open data will also provide opportunities for entrepreneurs to come up with innovative ways of using the information.
This change will come into effect from the second quarter of 2015 (April – June).
Bristol open data initiative launched
Bristol City Council is working with the Future Cities Catapult and the Connected Digital Economy Catapult on a new open data initiative that will help Bristolians improve their city with the help of local authority data.
The partners are working together to release Bristol civic data sets such as traffic management and land use databases to citizens. The collaboration will support developers to use the data to create new products and services to improve how the city of Bristol works, making it easier to get around, reduce waste, save energy or improve the city’s air quality.
Once the data sets are made available online in late summer, citizens and businesses will be invited to explore around one hundred data sets, supported by a series of Catapult-run events and competitions. Bristolians will be supported in testing, prototyping and commercialising their ideas.
Following a successful initial data release, the Catapults and the Council will then create a schedule to release further useful city data sets in consultation with the developer community. The programme’s outcomes will be shared with local authorities, developers and organisations in other UK cities to spread the benefits to the citizens of other cities.
Environment Agency to release flood of open data
The Environment Agency has announced that it is releasing a whole raft of information as open data.
Environment Agency datasets that are already available as open data include:
- Flood Alert Areas;
- Flood Warning Areas;
- Flood Warnings (Live Feed);
- Real-time and Near Real-time River Levels (Live Feed);
- Real-time and Near Real-time Air Temperature (Live feed);
- 3 day Flood Forecast (Live Feed);
- Water Framework Directive (WFD) River Waterbodies;
- Water Framework Directive (WFD) Groundwater Classification Status and Objectives; and
- Water Framework Directive (WFD) Measures.
The Agency is now increasing its commitment and will soon public as much of its data as possible, including flood data, as open data. This means that over time more EA data will be made freely available to developers, technology companies and individuals.
To assist the release of open data, the Agency is setting up a user group to advise it on which data it is most important to concentrate on making open.
The group will be made up of external parties with an interest in EA data, its current data customers and people with an open data background; the group will also receive input from the Agency and Defra. Anyone interested in joining this group should email OpenData@environment-agency.gov.uk.
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