Open Data

  • Hollyweb? Tell the W3C no thanks!

    Steve WoodsMedia, Open Data, Open Source, Open Standards, Tech

    According to its website, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international community where its member organisations, a full-time staff and the public work together to develop web standards, whose mission is to lead the Web to its full potential.

    These standards have so far been characterised by complete openness: all web standards are open standards.

    However, these open standards are now under attack.

    There’s a proposal currently before the W3C’s HTML5 Working Group to build DRM (aka Digital Restrictions Management by openistas. Ed.) into the next generation of core web standards. The proposal is called Encrypted Media Extensions or EME.

    The people behind EME are the major media companies; having failed to push such illiberal measures as SOPA and PIPA through the US legislature, the Big Media moguls are now going through non-governmental channels to try to sneak digital restrictions into every interaction people have online.

    image with caption Stop DRM in HTML5
    Hollyweb? No thanks, W3C!

    Netflix, Google, Microsoft and the BBC are all rallying behind this ludicrous proposal, which – as stated above – flies in the face of the W3C’s mission.

    However, a petition has already been set up to oppose the addition of DRM to HTML5 and 3rd May 2013 has been designated the International Day Against DRM.

    The petition page is also available in French.

    I’d urge everyone interested in open standards and all other forms of openness – such as open data and open source – to sign the petition; I’ve already done so.

    This article is reposted with some minor amendments from Bristol Wireless.

  • ORR fails open standards test

    Steve WoodsOpen Data, Open Standards, Tech

    As a regular rail user, I sometimes use real-time train information and was intrigued to learn that the Office of Rail Regulation is currently holding a consultation on real-time train information until 28th February.

    However, the ORR is clearly confused as to what open standards (such as web standards. Ed.) really are, as shown by the following sentence from the consultation page:

    So that we are able to apply web standards to content on our website, we would prefer that you email us your response in Microsoft Word format.

    Firstly, MS Office formats are closed, proprietary formats, unlike the Open Document Format (ODF) used by more sensible office suites.

    Secondly, does the above statement imply that the ORR uses MS Word to edit its web content? MS Word has a hard time behaving like a word processor. 🙂 When used for HTML it produces some of the sloppiest mark-up known. As Homer Simpson would say: “Doh!”

  • Open data a closed book to most civil servants

    Steve WoodsOpen Data, Politics, Tech

    An Open Data Insitute blog post of the first ever survey* into civil servants’ awareness of open data reveals an astonishing level of ignorance.

    Among the survey’s main findings were the following:

    • 78% of civil servants do not know about government plans for open data and the benefits that follow;
    • 75% say they don’t know where to find useful data to help their decision making;
    • 57% do not know how to access data sets, how to interpret them or how to best apply data standards;
    • Only 52% recognised that ready access to data and data standards will generate new enterprises, jobs and services in the public and private sectors.

    Sir Humphrey and his Whitehall mates (plus their counterparts in local government. Ed.) are essentially saying that they find it too difficult to access and reuse the right data and – more importantly – that they do not have the technical knowledge and expertise to exploit what data is available.

    What implications does this have for the UK government’s aspirations to be a world leader in open data – aspirations that Chancellor George Osborne voiced in his 2011 autumn statement? Negative ones probably, unless better skills, training and communication are introduced across government departments, local government and the public sector in general.

    * The research was conducted in December 2012 on behalf of Listpoint and involved over 1,000 responses received from central and local government, non-departmental bodies, the NHS and the police.

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