Public Information Delivery –
Opening up Government Data
Professor Nigel Shadbolt FREng
Information Advisor
PSI In Action
19 October 2009
What a difference a year makes
Using semantic technology to improve the
delivery of policy and public services across
Government
The Context
• Berners-Lee and Shadbolt - Information Advisors for CO
• Context - PoI Taskforce
• Strategic Drivers
– Transparency and accountability
– Economic and Social Value
– Public Service Improvement
– New Industries New Jobs
Our ToR
1. Establish single point of access for all public UK datasets
2. Specific proposals to implement and extend to wider public sector PSI principle
–
Select and implement common standards for release of common data
‒
Select, develop and implement common terms for data where nec
–
Develop licenses - CC variants
–
Support exploitation and publication of distributed and decent info assets
–
Potential for reform of info reg framework
3. Drive use of internet to improve Gov consultation process
4. Engage with International dimension
5. Drive culture change in Whitehall total pub of anon data using open standards
Progess to date
• Top down
– Ministerial
– CIO/CTOs
– Engaged key data holders
• Middle Out
– Civil Servants
– Inventory of Information Assets
• Bottom up
– Engaging with developer community
– Cross Gov URI workshops
– data.gov.uk
data.gov.uk
• Currently under development scrutiny and extension
– Over 1000 datasets
– Over 900 registered developers
– The beginning of linked data
• Beta service to be released end of year
• Clear schedule of release thereafter
data.gov.uk
data.gov.uk
Technical Challenges
The four micro principles of the Semantic Web
1. All entities of interest, such as information resources,
real-world objects, and vocabulary terms should be
identified by URI references.
2. URI references should be dereferenceable, meaning that
an application can look up a URI over the HTTP protocol
and retrieve RDF data about the identified resource.
3. Data should be provided using the RDF/XML syntax
4. Data should be interlinked with other data.
Linked Data on the Web: May 2007
500 Million RDF
Triples
120,000 RDF
links between
data sets
Linked Data on the Web: April 2008
Linked Data on the Web: March 2009
And then the applications flow
And then the applications flow
And then the applications flow
And then the applications flow
• See for example results of developers day at the Guardian
showing what might be achieved with our data.gov.uk
datasets
– http://itoworld.blogspot.com/2009/10/visualisingtransport-data-for.html
– http://blog.newspaperclub.co.uk/2009/10/16/datagov-uk-newspaper/
Cultural and Organisational
•
Data hugging
•
We have released it - sort of…
•
License impediments
•
Worries about
– Confidentiality
– Interpretations
– QoI
– Lost value
– Disrupted workflow
– New IT procurement
•
Critical importance of local authority and other public bodies
Capability Challenges
• What assets have we got
• No duty to hold register of public non-personal datasets
• Who can do this work
• How to name and label
• How to share best practice
– Within and across Government all tiers
– Commercial intersections
– International
Policy Challenges
• Extending the principle on all public sector bodies to publish their data
in re-usable form - local authorities, non-dept bodies, other parts of the
wider public service
• Issue - devolved administrations
• Consistency in what is published, how it is licensed and its format data.gov.uk - data generally free to reuse
• Range of exceptions
• Risks to be managed - confidentiality, accuracy, liability and reputation
• Costs - RoI in longer term
• Enforcement regime
• Practical schedule of release
But we have made remarkable progress
we must retain momentum
build this in to our process and notion of
public purpose