Status/Timeline query on publicly requested 'Irish Open Data Wish List'
Denis Parfenov
Dear all,
we are contacting the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform with a request to clarify the status and timelines associated with the Open Data Wish list submitted to the Consultation on the Open Data Strategy on April 14th 2014.
On 14/4/2014 members of the Irish public submitted a list of high impact data sets that should be released with an 'open licence' so that they can be used and re-used and drive public and economic benefits in Ireland (Wish list submitted by the Irish Public on April14th 2014, Original request for feedback from tenderer)
The public has prioritised this list of data sets that should be released in machine readable format and under an open licence asap due to their high-value relevant to public & economic benefits. However,
Over a year after the requested 'Open Data Wishlist' was delivered none of the data sets identified have been published in an open format and under an open licence! (blogpost)
May we please ask for a status update and may we please ask for timelines to be assigned as to when the data sets on this list will be published a) in machine readable format, and b) under an open licence.
As an added caveat we point to data such as the Hospital waiting lists for which data is available in machine readable format only to the authorities and is then released to the public in PDF report format. This is one example of data not currently being shared with the public in a way that is useable or useful for the purposes of innovation or from an accountability point of view. But on the other hand as the data is already available releasing it under an open licence with the help of the CSO may not be a time consuming task to undertake and could represent a quick win in demonstrating the benefits of the Irish public data being made open and put in use.
--
Open
Knowledge Ambassador / Open Knowledge Ireland, Founder
https://openknowledge.ie/ | @OKFirl | Google+
'To open up all essential public interest information and see it used to create insight that drives change.'
Denis Parfenov
[Update] Credit is where credit is dueIn June 2015 the Central Statistical Office of Ireland has adopted an open CC-BY licence for all publicly accessible data http://www.cso.ie/. CSO has also made a great effort to publish it’s data and other government data as JSON-stat in an API webservice http://www.cso.ie/webserviceclient/ and Census 2011 data in RDF http://data.cso.ie/ under the same open data license. National Statistics, Census, infrastructure, wealth, skills are now being published under an Open Data license. CSO offers a free data dissemination services to all government bodies.
Best,
Denis
Denis Parfenov
I believe that time for concepulizing potential benefits of making data open has passed and by this stage we should be able to *demonstrate* examples of the Irish data helping someone to answer a real question. Apart from a good progress achieved by CSO Office in making it's data open, there is still very little of *useful* data open, discoverable and re-usable.
It's time for the Irish government to match it's good intentions (to open up data collected on citizens behalf and at taxpayers expense) with concrete actions.
It would good to have some sort of acknowledgement that the request for clarifications re community's wishlist has been attended. It would be even better to know what's the plan for making valuable and useful datasets open.