LGID Khub

A sensible commentary on the mass participation potential of opening up public data.

LGID Official YouTube channel

at the 2nd meeting of the Knowledge Hub advisory group, we asked people to map how they would use the Knowledge Hub (imagining that it's everything they wanted it to be) to satisfy their knowledge and information needs around a popular, complex LAA target. (In one case, NI 111 - first time entrants to the youth justice system and NI 39 hospital admissions due to alcohol related harm).

Steve Dale is developing the Knowledge Hub for IDeA, as reported here socialreporter.com However it is proving difficult to explain to people that it isn't just a big knowledge warehouse. Steve reflects on how to explain, at the KIMPS09 knowledge management conference.

A cool app showing which councils are publishing their spending data, whether the data is released with an 'open' licence, and whether is it available as 'linked data' (machine readable).

The site provides the best available evidence and practical examples of health professionals successfully sharing and applying knowledge and experience to their daily activities.

Armchair Auditor lets you see how your council spends your money. Sometimes you want a high-level view of how much money is being spent by each council service or paid to each supplier. Other times you want to examine the details right down to individual payments. Armchair Auditor lets you do both.

Tim Berners Lee explains the 5 stars of open linked data, where each star represents a further step in the journey towards publishing data which is compliant with open linked data standards. Also a neat and simple description of linked data, ontologies and vocabularies using a packet of chips (crisps) to illustrate the points.

"These statements of architectural principle explain the thinking behind the semantic web specifications. These are personal notes by Tim Berners-Lee: they are not endorsed by W3C. They are aimed at the technical community, to explain reasons, provide a framework to provide consistency for for future developments, and avoid repetition of discussions once resolved. "

Salford has a range of open data feeds. A lot of these are around council decisions and council meetings. The requirement to publish this information has been overshadowed a little bit by the announcement of the requirement to publish all expenditure over £500. So it's great to see Salford's example of a nice clean page with lots of different feeds covering governance arrangements, job openings, councillor information and an always useful "what's on" listings.

Linked data for the University of Oxford

Warwickshire County Council is taking open and linked data seriously. They're opening up data and supporting the developer community to do something useful with it through a Hack Warwickshire competition (open til 25 June). And they're open to suggestions of what data should be open next.

A letter from Prime Minister David Cameron to Government departments on plans to open up Government data * Historic COINS spending data to be published online in June 2010. * All new central government ICT contracts to be published online from July 2010. * All new central government lender documents for contracts over £10,000 to be published on a single website from September 2010, with this information to be made available to the public free of charge. * New items of central government spending over £25,000 to be published online from November 2010. * All new central government contracts to be published in full from January 2011. * Full information on all DFID international development projects over £500 to be published online from January 2011, including financial information and project documentation.

Welcome to the wiki on winning the argument for localgov data.

Having trouble persuading your managers of the benefits of open data? Or just need persuading yourself? Well here we try convincing all of you. What follows is a Q&A compiled initially by Dan Slee of Walsall Council and Stuart Harrison of Lichfield District Council. The first part is a bit of background information, the second part comprises some responses to common arguments. This work is ongoing, and this page will occasionally be updated accordingly. You can watch and contribute on the Open Local Data wiki

Communities Secretary Eric Pickles and Local Government Association Chair Baroness Eaton joined forces today to urge all councils to publish details of all spending over £500 in full and online as part of wider action to bring about a revolution in town hall openness and accountability.