The FCO Open Data Journey
Eleanor Stewart
Head of Transparency
13 March 2014
UNCLASSIFIED
June 2012
• Almost least Transparent Department in
Whitehall
• Not publishing any open data
• No one really knew what it was or why it
was important
Foreign Secretary 2013
“It’s not just about publishing what we spend – it’s about showing
British taxpayers what the FCO delivers with their money; sharing with
British business more of what we know about the world, in support of
the prosperity agenda; and opening up our policy-making to challenge
so we can be sure that we have thought about all the angles. It’s a
cultural change for the FCO, but it will make it easier in austere times to
show that we are delivering.”
UNCLASSIFIED
PM Commitments
Daily
•
Energy Consumption
Monthly
•
New Contracts over £10,000
•
New Tenders over £10,000
•
Spend over £25k
•
GPC over £500
•
Names, Grades, Job titles and annual pay rates for senior Civil Servants in pay
Band 1
Quarterly
•
Meetings with external organisations by Ministers Quarterly
•
Overseas travel undertaken by FCO Ministers Quarterly
•
Gifts given to Ministers in the FCO over the value of £140 Quarterly
•
Exception to cross-Government moratoria on spend in the FCO Quarterly
•
Major Project Authority Quarterly return details (2qtrs in arrears)
Six Monthly
•
Open Data Strategy
•
Names, Grades, Job titles and annual pay rates for senior Civil Servants with
salaries above £150,000
•
Organogram and staff pay data for FCO staff in the UK
Annually
•
Business Plan quarterly data summary
•
UK Consular assistance enquiries
•
Non-consolidated performance related payments
Now :
Open Data Strategy was republished in August 2013
•Now publishing:
•ODA (Overseas aid) spend & project documents
•Treaties database; every Treaty UK has been a
signatory to since 1832
•Consular data; service delivery details for Consular
Services
•Travel Alerts
•Details of our posts across the world
•Historical Records inc inventory of archive
•Working on:
•Gifts data ; register of gifts given to diplomats
•Economic information
•Human rights information
•Wine Cellar data
UNCLASSIFIED
Hackday:
• A hack day is a competitive event where a group of
developers are brought to the same location and given
a set of data, a challenge, an idea or a theme.
• From 24-48 hours they undertake an intensive piece of
research and programming resulting in working
software which is then judged
• Video available - http://vimeo.com/85305730
FCO Alerts
UNCLASSIFIED
TINATAPI
An API* that consolidates information useful to travellers by identifying areas of risk, travel alerts
and human rights concerns (as measured by the objective CIRI criteria) to practical examples of
exchange rates and makes it easy to consume. This API uses data from the UK Foreign &
Commonwealth Office, human-rights.org, the UN, gather by the Guardian, the open exchange and
other sources.
* An API or application program interface, is a set of routines, protocols, and tools for building software
applications. The API specifies how software components should interact and are used used when programming
graphical user interface (GUI) components. A good API makes it easier to develop a program by providing all the
building blocks. A programmer then puts the blocks together.
UNCLASSIFIED
Relations Tracker
Having seen the data available from the FCO, they wanted to quantify the relationships that the UK
has with the world using relevant data sets and a visual interface. The result is the start of an open
source API that translates given data into a grade for each nation. They also created a visualisation
of this data by porting it into a colour coded map where each nations' colour (from red to green)
reflects the overall strength of that countries’
relationship with the UK. The scale is relative to all
UNCLASSIFIED
other countries
FCO Data on the Operating Table
A presentation on the usability or otherwise of the FCO data.
UNCLASSIFIED
Where are we going next?
• Improve Quality of data we’re producing
• Improve understanding of what data is and
ownership across the department
• Build on changing culture to being more open
and precious about our information
• Release more FCO data
• Encourage more people to use the data we’re
releasing
Lessons we’ve learnt:
• It’s challenging
• It’s definitely not easy
• It can be fun
• It helps everyone
So be creative, be smart and open up your
data; it’s worth it.