Digital Engagement

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» links for 2009-12-08

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Bookmarks for December 6th through December 8th

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Links for December 8th through December 13th | daveharte.com

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Stuff I’ve seen December 6th through to December 13th | Podnosh

It may be useful, but who draws the line at what's a sensible use of public money? Do we have to pay for people to monitor the government employees that are twittering too? Do we need to set up a whole new office for this?

does Professor Nigel Shadbolt has accepted the project.as i have read somewhere that he has rejected the project due to some political issues.

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Open Knowledge Foundation Blog  » Blog Archive   » Opening up UK local spending data

hummm... not totally convinced I'm doing this in the correct place, but responding to a tweet containing the text "What priorities for council data release please?", but I'll take it to mean you'd like a wish-list from someone who is waiting to do something with local gov data ( but is not holding their breath ).

Caveat: publish it as LOD (Linked Open Data) so that no matter WHICH COUNCIL publishes it, the data conforms to the same common format as ALL THE OTHER COUNCILS.

If some bright sparq wants to fiddle with it and make CSV files then that is up to them.

Here's a list of simple thing that I think should be made available.

1 Trees (Tree Preservation Orders and the like) - surely they don't belong to local government, the public pays for their protection, listing, organising - open that data up so we can contribute information about the tree outside our window|just crashed into|containing a butterfly|shedding leaves earlier this year|etc.

Trees enrich our lives and environment, lets set them free.

There should be no personal data worries about trees either.

2 Listed Buildings - and their planning history, the interesting features that they contain.  If you live in an LB then you have rights, responsibilities and grants, but you are looking after shared history - some of that should be made public.

3 Local road works - should be made available as LOD so they can be interleaved with things like the highways agency feeds to show all road works/accidents/delays in an area.

4 Refuse collection info - routes (roads/buildings/no of bins), schedules, times, updates containing problems like broken trucks, blocked roads, missed bins stats such as weight by route, by truck, weight landfilled, weight recycled, by day, by route et al.

Give out everything warts and all, even if it starts out being historic - get many eyes looking at it maybe someone will spot and opportunity ... in the guerilla-spirit of New York Broken Parking Meters:

http://nycbrokenmeters.com/

Which resulted in extra vigilance in the city council, getting them fixed double quick, and increasing their revenue.

If some people with full bins work out that another part of the town has half empty bins ... well ...?

Smart councils (or more accurately perhaps, their suppliers) should start building the infrastructure to capture and promote the effects of crowdsourcing themselves and to start thinking about how and where to channel feedback on these services in order to localise and improve them.

Paul G,

Thanks very much-very helpful. I have passed this on to the team dealing with this.

Cheers,

James

Sounds a good idea in principle, however many may question how wide a scope and depth of information would be made available for public scrutiny. A seamless feedback system would be required to maintain quick responses to enquiries from public and bodies representing legal institutions, not to mention the media who would be keen to exploit and challenge any new data made available to them. On a local level, such enquiries could place further demands on public services.

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Data.gov.uk live!  « Policy and Performance

Government launches one-stop shop for data

Government launches one-stop shop for data

Refuse is a good one. I know they had a tough time in the recent snow but bins were left on the streets unemptied for four weeks, this is meant to be a civilised country - that isn't. If a private business left waste out for that long, they would be sued but local councils can do as they please.  I think that having more information regarding local councils would be a good thing, but then we'd have to pay even more for someone to administrate it!  There comes a point when having more and more data and administrators, IT support etc doesn't really add anything or provide an economic benefit, I think that point has been reached!

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Data.gov.uk live! | W3wb.com Blogs

Great to see progress on this issue. The most important factors to consider are how to make the data accessible in terms of formats *and* how interpret the data.

This is a positive step towards increased transparency. As pointed out below, it will be interesting to see what the public will think of all this data. More opportunities will arise via social networks, and I am sure this will bring forth positive voices for the improvement of what's lacking as a result of the public data display. Third world countries like Uganda should follow this up ; just recently, Oil has been a major concern in Uganda, and contracts are being drafted up and contents are not being revealed to the public, quite a scenario on the opposite end compared to what the British Government is undertaking. Being Transparent would encourage stability, boosting business for the various Apartments in Kampala and Hotels and the hospitality industry in general. Increased tourists usually lead to increased in-flows, more development, greater employment opportunities and higher standards of living.