ePSIplatform news

Want to be a digital storyteller?

These two workshops, organized by The Guardian, will show you how raw data can be turned into striking visual stories. Tobias Sturt and Adam Frost from The Guardian's Digital Agency will be running the event, and will share their perspective on how to create compelling visualisations. Coding and specific software will not be covered.
For more information, see: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/5610826132/es2

Date: 11 May 2013, from 10:00-17:00
Place: London, UK

The municipal government of Zaragoza has approved the Transparency and Free Access to Public Information Ordinance, the first of its kind in Spain.

In an unprecedented step toward increased transparency, Zaragoza will publish its civil servants' salaries and expenses once the ordinance has passed four or five months from now. Additional records such as use of official cars, mobile phones and credit cards will also be included, as well as access to municipal grants and public buildings.

The information released will be made accessible, open, and traceable, so as to facilitate reuse by third parties.

Ordenanza (web municipal): http://www.zaragoza.es/ciudad/risp/detalle_Normativa?id=3823

How can rural communities benefit from, and make progress in, open data?

The use of Open Data is often not as widespread in small towns and rural communities as in larger urban centres. The general lack of innovators, resources, and specialized experts can potentially lead to a stark contrast between city and country use of Open Data.
Four French towns that are pioneers in Open Data use, however, attest to the fact that this is not always the case:

—Brocas (Aquitaine, pop. 800) was the first small town to take steps toward opening up on opendata.brocas.fr. It's already published historical documents and photographic archives, but more data is forthcoming.
—Changé (Pays de Loire, pop. 5.000) has made available a comprehensive list of companies located in the area, as well as details concerning its historical heritage.
—Balma (Midi-Pyrénnées, pop. 13.000) has embedded a list of local infrastructure on the regional website data.grandtoulouse.fr.
—Digne-les-Bains (PACA, pop. 18.000) also publishes information on its corresponding regional website opendata.regionpaca.fr.

These towns illustrate the first small steps taken in this area, but much remains to be done to improve access to basic public information. This task is especially important since, after the national government, towns are the organisations that receive the highest volume of requests for public information.

In order to discuss these issues and promote the use of open data in rural communities, the following events will be held in April:

"Opening Data" Conference: http://opendata.brocas.fr/content/vous-inscrire
Date: 5 April 2013, 9:30-18:00
Place: Brocas (Aquitaine)

"Opération Libre: 48 Hours to Open up a Small Town": www.operation-libre.org
Date: 6-7 April 2013
Place: Brocas (Aquitaine)

Austria's ICT Strategy 2014 - 2018: Online Discussion

Austrian citizens have been invited to an open discussion process to help determine Austria's ICT Strategy 2014-2018, which includes the steps it might take toward Open Data. The document has been made available online (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/open3/~3/XQe4fTL54Uw/ikt-strategie-2014-2...), and details a draft treatment of the main considerations at hand.
The questions regarding Open Data include: What action needs to be implemented by 2018? What steps and resources are necessary to achieve these goals? Who needs to be involved?

Follow comments and discussion pertaining to Open Data here: http://www.iktstrategie.at/de/chapter-list/19194

21 March 2013. Bern, Switzerland.

How can Open Data help promote financial transparency? How can budgets be opened up to provide relevant information? Opendata.ch will be hosting this series of conferences and round table discussions to cover these and other topics relevant to Open Data and finances. For the complete information and registration, please see: http://opendata.ch/2013/03/gv-und-podium/

Date: 21-22 March 2013
Place: Bern, Switzerland

21 March 2013

The last of a three-part series on opening government and public sector information in Italy will take place on 21 March. The topic is "Sharing Open Data", and will feature Venice and Bari as case studies. The webinar aims to examine the goals they set, the technology they used, and the feedback they received from the region.
Antonio Cantatore and Lucas Corsato will be hosting the event.

To register, see: http://eventipa.formez.it/node/2048
For more information: http://www.dati.gov.it/content/i-webinar-di-datigovit-tre-nuovi-seminari...

One-day Intensive Programme in Manchester, UK - 19 March 2013

Scalable business models, funding opportunities and B2B prospects.

In this one-day intensive programme you will learn how different business models can be driven by open data, and explore how companies can use open data to improve performance, sales and customer satisfaction.
Organiser FutureEverything will show businesses how they can capitalise on Open Data by offering case studies, funding opportunities, data sources, and business modelling that can be utilised immediately from Open Data currently available.
Business of Open Data charts the maturing open data market and how new services and applications are moving beyond the ‘free iphone app’ paradigm. This programme will be valuable to data owners, developers and startups, mar-comms professionals and owners of businesses who want to grow and improve performance.

www.futureeverything.org

Date: 19 March 2013. 8am-8pm.
Place: Manchester, UK

19 March, London, UK

The Open Knowledge Foundation will host an Open Data Maker Night in London this coming Tuesday. The event will focus on “making” using open data–whether that’s creating apps or generating insight. Guest speakers David Miller from Open Healthcare UK will discuss open health data, and Rufus Pollock will comment on how to examine government finances. All those interested in open data are welcome to attend.

Date: 19 March, 18:00-21:00
Place: London, UK (Centre for Creative Collaboration (C4CC), 16 Acton Street)

Europa-Atlas: a data journalism project by Süddeutsche Zeitung.

This unique data journalism project, created by Süddeutsche Zeitung, centralizes Eurostat official statistics in a visual format that gives a bird's eye view of life in the Eurozone.
The interactive atlas maps, country by country, the state of education, health, local economy, and other key measures of development.
All of this information comes from Eurostat's yearly report, based on access to 5689 datasets from the statistical office of the European Union (http://open-data.europa.eu/open-data/data/publisher/estat).

To view the Europa-Atlas please see: http://www.sueddeutsche.de/app/wirtschaft/europaatlas/

Two RDF Vocabularies Published by W3C for Governmental Use

The W3C Government Linked Data Working Group has just published the following working drafts:
The RDF Data Cube Vocabulary. This is an RDF vocabulary for publishing multidimensional data, particularly statistical data. It is compatible with the cube model that underlies SDMX (Statistical Data and Metadata eXchange), a widely used ISO standard. The Data
Cube Vocabulary brings essential SDMX elements to RDF, providing a standard way for governments to publish statistical information as Linked Data.
Data Catalog Vocabulary (DCAT). This is an RDF vocabulary for expressing the contents of data catalogs, such as government data portals. DCAT is for catalogs of all kinds of data (not just RDF data), but uses RDF to support easy aggregation of catalogs and construction of services which can search across many unrelated catalogs.

19 March, 20:00-22:00, Amsterdam (Netherlands).

The Waag Society and Pakhuis de Zwijger are running a new series on open data, big data, and the possibilities of visualizing data, called Big, Open & Beautiful.

In its second edition, Big, Open & Beautiful will try to unravel how journalists, political lobbyists and citizens look at how data analysis and its explanation of social trends. Experts will discuss and examine the reliability of data sources and visualizations, including Project X researcher Thomas Boeschoten, social media expert Farida Vis, nu.nl editor Wouter Bax and blogger and data journalist Stephan Okhuijsen.

Place: Pakhuis de Zwijger, Amsterdam (Netherlands)
Date: 19 March 2013 - From 20.00 to 22.00 hrs
http://waag.org/en/event/big-open-beautiful-2

The Spanish government launches technical interoperability standard on PSI reuse.

The Spanish Ministry of the Finance and Public Administrations has recently released a Technical Interoperability Standard on PSI reuse, which specifices guidelines for public bodies that use Open Data. It marks an important milestone in the use of Open Data in Spain, as it establishes a base for streamlining Open Data initiatives and semantic interoperability among Open Data catalogues.

The document lays out rules for all the government institutions involved in defining or implementing Open Data strategies. These address how to publish PSI, identifying semantic resources using well-formed URIs, sharing catalogue metadata based on Linked Data and DCAT as vocabulary, selecting open licenses and formats, among others. The document also includes several taxonomies (themes and locations) that enable a common classification of catalogues and datasets. You can find the document here: http://www.boe.es/boe/dias/2013/03/04/pdfs/BOE-A-2013-2380.pdf

12-14 April 2013

Learner Journey Data Jam is a weekend-long collaborative event involving developers, designers, learners, practitioners and education sector policy-makers. Participants will explore and experiment with existing learner data and discover its potential in bolstering the educational journey.

The first dataset that will be presented is a complete list of Universities in the UK and Colleges in England, with course level information from Unistats. It is incredibly comprehensive and well documented and includes information on over 30,000 courses, entry conditions, accreditation, employment options and salaries, accommodation prices and much more.
http://learnerjourneydatajam.com/

The code for two mapping tools used in data.gov.uk has now been released as open source.

The Map Based Search allows users to draw a box on a background map that leads to a search for datasets within that area. It also features a gazetteer so users can locate where they want to draw their search box by place name.

The Map Preview allows users to display geospatial data as a previewed sample on a map. The code is mostly written in Javascript, and uses OpenLayers. It is integrated into the CKAN extension 'ckanext-os', available here: https://github.com/datagovuk/ckanext-os and offered for reuse under the new BSD license.

Whilst the code is open, these tools require access to web map services and gazetteer services to operate. Ordnance Survey supply commercial-grade versions of these services to data.gov.uk under licence, but other websites that wish to use this software can obtain their own licence from Ordnance Survey (link to http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/web-services/os-ondemand/index...), or substitute free alternatives, such as services based on Ordnance Survey OpenData or OpenStreetMap.

Linked Data Platform 1.0 Draft Published

The W3C Linked Data Platform (LDP) Working Group has published a Working Draft of
Linked Data Platform 1.0, which specifies best practices and a simple approach for a read-write Linked Data architecture, which is based on HTTP access to web resources that describe their state
using the RDF data model.

German citizens can now consult how much land costs, or what price tag buildings have in Rheinland-Palatinate. The new open data portal based in Rheinland-Pfalz will give users access to information on transportation, economy, education, health and social affairs.
At the moment, however, much of the information is only available through PDF documents.
www.daten.rlp.de

Pan-European Geographic Data Now Available under Open Data License

This 1:1 million scale topographic dataset, dubbed EuroGlobalMap, will be available free of charge for any use under a new open data licence. It is produced using authoritative geo-information provided by members of EuroGeographics, the Association for European Mapping, Cadastre and Land Registry Authorities.
EuroGlobalMap can be used for cross-border planning, monitoring and network analysis, as well as presenting environmental policies. It collects national mapping data supplied by 45 European countries and territories, which falls under six categories: administrative boundaries, names locations, transport networks, settlements, elevation, and the water network.

The move is part of a wider package of new licensing agreements and lower pricing to enable more users to benefit from members' pan-European data. The changes mean that EuroGeographics will sell only European and regional coverage of its EuroBoundaryMap, EuroRegionalMap, and EuroDEM products. Individual national datasets and cross-boundary areas for each product will be available from licensed distributors and value-added resellers.

EuroGlobalMap can be downloaded for free at www.eurogeographics.org.

Forage through more than a century of Nobel Prize Awards.

Nobelprize.org offers information on a century's worth of Nobel Laureates, including the nature of their award and basic information such as birth date and affiliation at the time of the award. This website renders Nobel Prize data to developers and users in both API and Linked Data, making it a treasure trove for data enthusiasts. Nobelprize.org is free to use and regularly updated.

26 April 2013 in Birmingham, UK

This data-centric event will bring together innovative companies, thought leaders and decision makers from across industry and academia to explore new opportunities and develop collaborations. Digital World 2013: Data Revolution will feature engaging talks from leaders in the fields of Big Data, Open Data, Linked Data & the Semantic Web, followed by a lively panel discussion and an interactive Q&A.

Topics to be explored include:
-Big Data
-The new era of business intelligence platforms & processes to find insights from high volumes, velocities and varieties of data.
-The relevance of Big Data for key aspects of Smart Cities.
-Open Data
-Business use of Government Open Data as a new resource for decision making or greater efficiency.
-How can Open Data help economic growth, your community, freedom & save lives?
-Visualising Complex Data
-Mobile Data
-The Future of Data
-The Contextual Semantic Web of Linked Data

The event will be held in Birmingham on Friday 26 April 2013, from 2-9pm.

How can health open data be used by investigative journalists?

The Open Data Institute (ODI), along with Mastodon C and Open Healthcare UK, sought to answer this question by crafting a story that would illustrate the potential uses of open data with regards to the NHS. Together with journalist and doctor Ben Goldacre, they ran a story based on the prescriptions file, one of the datasets currently being released. Around 10 million rows of data is released each month from the UK's 8,000 GPs.

After examining the prescribing of generic (non-brand name) and proprietary (brand name) drugs, the researchers concluded that there was room for a potential saving to the NHS of around £200 million a year, since proprietary drugs usually cost more than the generic alternatives.

The organizers have cautioned against superficial interpretation of the prescription data map, urging journalists and scientists to sharpen their skills in data analysis. As an example, the research revealed which areas have a higher proportion of prescribing expensive drugs. Interpreting these facts correctly requires careful consideration and appraisal.

Mastodon C, a big data start-up that uses technology to make sense of large or very messy data sets and turn them into something valuable, has made the code available so that journalists and others can build on their work. (https://github.com/MastodonC)

The story was reported by the Financial Times, the Economist and the Daily Mail.