“The New Zealand Open Government Bar Camp is an “unconference” for people who are interested in making government-held data more freely available for others to re-use. An “unconference” is an alternative participant-driven event, that avoids aspects of a conventional conference, such as high fees and sponsored presentations.
Web 2.0 developments have shown the potential of combining data from different sources made freely available on the Internet. The government holds a huge range of non-personal data which could form the basis of innovative services and applications by others on the Internet.
You should come if you are interested in government information policy, explore ways to provide data, making entrepreneurial use of the Internet, or building working applications during a weekend.”
So why am I a) sponsoring it and b) attending?
Mostly because my instincts tell me this is important. I don’t know what will happen at the bar camp (August 28 and 29) or as a result of it. There’s even a good chance I won’t understand half of what’s being said, given that I’m not a programmer and cannot speak geek.
What I do know is that this is a conversation worth having and I want to be part of it.
Why? Because government data is public data. It’s data about us, that helps describe us and informs us, and is often provided by us. It’s ours. But too often public data is not published which means it’s not available in the public arena. Other times data is published, but in a form that makes it hard to use. A pdf, for example, is great if you want to print out some information in the very format it was published in. What if you want to lay it out differently? Or incorporate it in your website? Or take the data and mash it up to make it useful in a new way?
Some government data is published in usable form in New Zealand. A useful starting point for finding those datasets is the Open Data Catalogue, a newish website that aims to catalog all available government data. One of the creators of that site, Glen Barnes, will be at the bar camp and hopefully we’ll hear more about that project over the weekend.
I’d like to see more public data published in reusable formats to see what useful new applications can be found for it.
I see it as an essential ingredient in the evolution of new forms of journalism.
A good example of someone taking existing data and adding huge value to it is the US-based everyblock.com project which was led by a journalist, Adrian Holovaty, and which has just been acquired by MSNBC.
Everyblock.com takes data from local government, libraries, police, emergency services and many more sources and ‘arranges it’ geographically so that visitors to the website can get a picture of what’s happening on their street. They can see figures for house listings, crime, new books available at the library, inspection ratings for local restaurants and much more, all on the one website. Previously, the visitor would have had to go to dozens of websites to find that range of information, or go to their local council building, or may not have been able to find it at all.
Another project of interest to me is ushahidi.com, an open source initiative which aims to crowdsource crisis information by allowing people to add details to a map or timeline via text, email or web. The crisis could be a weather event, a medicine shortage, or a tumultous election process. What results is a centralised visual display of information – which could easily also incorporate and/or link with data from government agencies and NGOs. I know there’s someone coming to the bar camp who’s interested in the Sahana open source disaster management system, which I’ll be interested to learn more about too.
These are just two examples of new forms of journalism and of using data in new and useful ways. There are many more possibilities. Let’s see what else we can come up with.
All Evolving Newsroom
Why I’m sponsoring Open Govt Data Bar Camp
First of all, what’s Open Govt Data Bar Camp?
“The New Zealand Open Government Bar Camp is an “unconference” for people who are interested in making government-held data more freely available for others to re-use. An “unconference” is an alternative participant-driven event, that avoids aspects of a conventional conference, such as high fees and sponsored presentations.
Web 2.0 developments have shown the potential of combining data from different sources made freely available on the Internet. The government holds a huge range of non-personal data which could form the basis of innovative services and applications by others on the Internet.
You should come if you are interested in government information policy, explore ways to provide data, making entrepreneurial use of the Internet, or building working applications during a weekend.”
So why am I a) sponsoring it and b) attending?
Mostly because my instincts tell me this is important. I don’t know what will happen at the bar camp (August 28 and 29) or as a result of it. There’s even a good chance I won’t understand half of what’s being said, given that I’m not a programmer and cannot speak geek.
What I do know is that this is a conversation worth having and I want to be part of it.
Why? Because government data is public data. It’s data about us, that helps describe us and informs us, and is often provided by us. It’s ours. But too often public data is not published which means it’s not available in the public arena. Other times data is published, but in a form that makes it hard to use. A pdf, for example, is great if you want to print out some information in the very format it was published in. What if you want to lay it out differently? Or incorporate it in your website? Or take the data and mash it up to make it useful in a new way?
Some government data is published in usable form in New Zealand. A useful starting point for finding those datasets is the Open Data Catalogue, a newish website that aims to catalog all available government data. One of the creators of that site, Glen Barnes, will be at the bar camp and hopefully we’ll hear more about that project over the weekend.
I’d like to see more public data published in reusable formats to see what useful new applications can be found for it.
I see it as an essential ingredient in the evolution of new forms of journalism.
A good example of someone taking existing data and adding huge value to it is the US-based everyblock.com project which was led by a journalist, Adrian Holovaty, and which has just been acquired by MSNBC.
Everyblock.com takes data from local government, libraries, police, emergency services and many more sources and ‘arranges it’ geographically so that visitors to the website can get a picture of what’s happening on their street. They can see figures for house listings, crime, new books available at the library, inspection ratings for local restaurants and much more, all on the one website. Previously, the visitor would have had to go to dozens of websites to find that range of information, or go to their local council building, or may not have been able to find it at all.
Another project of interest to me is ushahidi.com, an open source initiative which aims to crowdsource crisis information by allowing people to add details to a map or timeline via text, email or web. The crisis could be a weather event, a medicine shortage, or a tumultous election process. What results is a centralised visual display of information – which could easily also incorporate and/or link with data from government agencies and NGOs. I know there’s someone coming to the bar camp who’s interested in the Sahana open source disaster management system, which I’ll be interested to learn more about too.
These are just two examples of new forms of journalism and of using data in new and useful ways. There are many more possibilities. Let’s see what else we can come up with.