By Frank Hebbert, Associate Planner, RPA
Open Data, a bit like the name of my employer, Regional Plan Association, is at once transparent and opaque. Once you know what either term means, the words themselves seem self-evident. Before the explanation, however, they can seem inscrutable. How can Data be Open? What is an Association of Regional Plans?
Recently, my explanations of Open Data have gotten better, and it's thanks to the Sebastopol Eight, a handy set of defining principles for open government data drawn up at a meeting of open data advocates in Sebastopol, CA.
Now, when I bring up Open Data and someone asks "open?", here's my pithy reply:
Open data should be COMPLETE! Get that info out to the street.
TIMELY data is useful data. Think about sharing it sooner not later.
PRIMARY data are disaggregated, and have infinite potential to be re-tabulated.
Make your data ACCESSIBLE! MACHINE PROCESSABLE!
SHARE it baby! Be UNPROPRIETARY!
LICENSE FREE does not have to be scary!
It's fair to say that Jay-Z doesn't need to start quaking in his Gucci sneaks just yet, though things might change once I finish the second verse, which deals with the benefits that come once you start sharing your data.
To break down the flow a bit: the eight principles respect the needs of organizations to keep some data off-limits for privacy, security or privilege reasons, while setting a good approach for sharing everything else. Making up-to-date information available in its entirety to everyone in a granular primary form enables use in many different ways. Machine readability is crucial for fostering an ecosystem of data, users and cool applications. For instance, those bus schedules are great to look at, but they come in a form that can't be used in other ways without a lot of cleaning up and re-formatting. (If you've ever tried to copy a table from a PDF, you know how frustrating it is to work with non-machine readable data.) Avoiding licenses means that the data are truly open, rather than just loaned out, and staying away from proprietary formats helps a healthy software market where we aren't all dependent on one vendor for our tools.
All told, it's an extremely useful set of principles that define how data should be shared. And now you've got a snappy way to remember them.
For more information about the eight principles of open data for government, see http://wiki.opengovdata.org/index.php/OpenDataPrinciples.
Open Data, a bit like the name of my employer, Regional Plan Association, is at once transparent and opaque. Once you know what either term means, the words themselves seem self-evident. Before the explanation, however, they can seem inscrutable. How can Data be Open? What is an Association of Regional Plans?
Recently, my explanations of Open Data have gotten better, and it's thanks to the Sebastopol Eight, a handy set of defining principles for open government data drawn up at a meeting of open data advocates in Sebastopol, CA.
Now, when I bring up Open Data and someone asks "open?", here's my pithy reply:
Open data should be COMPLETE! Get that info out to the street.
TIMELY data is useful data. Think about sharing it sooner not later.
PRIMARY data are disaggregated, and have infinite potential to be re-tabulated.
Make your data ACCESSIBLE! MACHINE PROCESSABLE!
SHARE it baby! Be UNPROPRIETARY!
LICENSE FREE does not have to be scary!
It's fair to say that Jay-Z doesn't need to start quaking in his Gucci sneaks just yet, though things might change once I finish the second verse, which deals with the benefits that come once you start sharing your data.
To break down the flow a bit: the eight principles respect the needs of organizations to keep some data off-limits for privacy, security or privilege reasons, while setting a good approach for sharing everything else. Making up-to-date information available in its entirety to everyone in a granular primary form enables use in many different ways. Machine readability is crucial for fostering an ecosystem of data, users and cool applications. For instance, those bus schedules are great to look at, but they come in a form that can't be used in other ways without a lot of cleaning up and re-formatting. (If you've ever tried to copy a table from a PDF, you know how frustrating it is to work with non-machine readable data.) Avoiding licenses means that the data are truly open, rather than just loaned out, and staying away from proprietary formats helps a healthy software market where we aren't all dependent on one vendor for our tools.
All told, it's an extremely useful set of principles that define how data should be shared. And now you've got a snappy way to remember them.
For more information about the eight principles of open data for government, see http://wiki.opengovdata.org/index.php/OpenDataPrinciples.
@RegionalPlan