Number of things

[Dave Durant]

Hi,

Does this list get much traffic? Looks like it's mostly spam at the
moment...

Anyway - who runs the Rewired State site? A number of the kids at YRS
would have liked to carry on the conversations started there but it
wasn't really encouraged.

What would be ideal would be PHPBB or some other forum on the site.

I've been suggesting for some time that what would be really excellent
would be a SourceForge-esque site for Rewired State type projects. At
the moment there is the site at DirectGov (http://
innovate.direct.gov.uk/apps/list) and the MySociety site (https://
secure.mysociety.org/cvstrac/dir?d=mysociety) but nothing easy for the
kids to use.

I've got contacts at both CollabNet and the Jazz folks at IBM who
might be interested in helping out.

The other thing I'd really like to see would be an easy way for
experienced coders to mentor people who want to get involved in this
kind thing.

Thoughts?

David Durant

[James Darling]

I've set up http://groups.google.com/group/youngrewiredstate

I've also removed the spam from this group, and set it to moderate on
first post.

James

[Jo Jordan]

Agreed David. What do you have in mind?

A site for goverment type hacks, a site for reanalysing data, a site
for Uk?

A site to discuss technical matters (like Stack Overflow) or a site to
discuss ideas?

Jo

On Aug 28, 10:56 pm, Dave Durant <cholte...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Nicholas Bjorn Ellis-Gowland]

I would love to see a site that allows the connectivity of all uk
government data!!

starting with!

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<xs:schema elementFormDefault="qualified"
xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
targetNamespace="http://schemas.gov.uk">
<xs:complexType name="Person">
<xs:all>
<xs:element name="FirstName" type="xs:string" />
<xs:element name="LastName" type="xs:string" />
</xs:all>
</xs:complexType>
</xs:schema>

imagine a place for uk government centric dataset schemas to be
defined and transformed.

If I had schemas.gov.uk basics, wouldnt it be great to rewrite archaic
tech datasets such as the
NDTMS dataset F
in XSD? using structured like http://schemas.gov.uk/Person.xsd and
http://schemas.gov.uk/health/Medication.xsd

It might prove a motivator for software providers to talk? stop the
NHS software providor monopoly for example!?!

Anyway..... would somehow need to provide a web based - XSD/XML/XLST
editor - with the importation of different XSDs from different
namespaces??? - dont have a clue how it could be set up to be
community edited!!

ill keep reading!

[Will Tinsdeall]

I've been invited to the Department of Health to advice on their new API, so if anyone has any comments about what an API should have (format, data, query method etc), drop me an email.

Will

--------

Check out my portfolio and online computing guides at http://www.iexpand.co.uk

2009/9/3 Nicholas Bjorn Ellis-Gowland <coff...@gmail.com>

[Christopher Osborne]

That is quietly being worked on by the Cabinet Office and the new data Tsar, Tim Berners Lee.

http://data.gov.uk/

As its being led by Mr W3C himself, expect RDF :-) but this will only start with the data which has been signed off and agreed by various gov departments, so start small and grow over time.

As a side note, I was thinking about all of the data we seem to be individually scraping.  Every hack day I go to quickly turns into a screen scraping convention, but as far as I know we are not very good at making that data available to others.

We have the list of officially available data here - http://rewiredstate.org/data and a few other places, but nothing for scraped data.  Perhaps this is due to the legal grey area that scraping and scraped data resides.  Does anybody else think a little anonymous hub for scraped datasets (and scraper code?) would be a good idea?  Could be a good way to illustrate what datasets are in demand and the benefits of making them available for reuse, particularly to the more stubborn gov agencies.

Chris

2009/9/3 Nicholas Bjorn Ellis-Gowland <coff...@gmail.com>

--
Christopher Osborne
www.itoworld.com
07533 188 262

[Nicholas Bjorn Ellis-Gowland]

Will that sounds like fun, who are you meeting with at the DoH?

I think before an API is concieved, an easy to query/read
organisational structure is needed in the public domain.

For example I work in the public sector - and in various guises - work for:

The National Treatment Agency (NAT)
My local Primary Care Trust (PCT)
My local Drug Action Team (DAT)
The Home Office,
The Probation Service (local??)
The Police

So when a service user gets referred into our service - in one
scenario - ALL the above bodies want that referral on their books!

But I dont know which body works for who - which bodies share data -
which bodies report to the same people!

I think before an API is realised, a refractoring of the conduits that
my data has to be passed would in itself streamline and help open up
the system - in readiness for an API..

Just my three cents :)

[Em]

Hi all, sorry I was away when this thread started. We hope to do more
with what the YP did at YRS. We will be taking the hacks to all of the
sponsors to see if they want to take them up. But we, as in Rewired
State, are really only a catalyst for things to happen and to show
potential - so anything anyone else wants to do to <- go ahead!!!

On Sep 3, 12:58 pm, Nicholas Bjorn Ellis-Gowland <coffee...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Will that sounds like fun, who are you meeting with at the DoH?
>
> I think before an API is concieved, an easy to query/read
> organisational structure is needed in the public domain.
>
> For example I work in the public sector - and in various guises - work for:
>
> The National Treatment Agency (NAT)
> My local Primary Care Trust (PCT)
> My local Drug Action Team (DAT)
> The Home Office,
> The Probation Service (local??)
> The Police
>
> So when a service user gets referred into our service - in one
> scenario - ALL the above bodies want that referral on their books!
>
> But I dont know which body works for who - which bodies share data -
> which bodies report to the same people!
>
> I think before an API is realised, a refractoring of the conduits that
> my data has to be passed would in itself streamline and help open up
> the system - in readiness for an API..
>
> Just my three cents :)
>
> On Thu, Sep 3, 2009 at 12:33 PM, Will
>

> Tinsdeall<ivebeenlinu...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> > I've been invited to the Department of Health to advice on their new API, so
> > if anyone has any comments about what an API should have (format, data,
> > query method etc), drop me an email.
> > Will
>
> > --------
>
> > Check out my portfolio and online computing guides at
> >http://www.iexpand.co.uk
>

> > 2009/9/3 Nicholas Bjorn Ellis-Gowland <coffee...@gmail.com>

> >> On Thu, Sep 3, 2009 at 10:26 AM, Jo Jordan<jo.working...@googlemail.com>

[Will Tinsdeall]

Well I'm going to be a 'graduate' from Young Rewired State, hopefully to the 'big kids' day in March. I have been invited by Craig Manson "Department of Health - NHS Choices, Head of Digital Strategy and Innovation" after our meet at YRS day. I think the challenge has defiantly doubled in the last 5 mins with the emails coming into my mailbox!

From our brief conversation, and preview of the future API, they are trying to make as much data as they can public. So far they have implemented news articles, service search (hospital, clinics.....), "Livewell" data, "TopicsList" (NHS A-Z of Body parts, conditions). They also want to build in waiting times, ratings etc into the api too.

I have documentation, but I'm not sure if its been released yet so I will find out before distributing it! I'll ask now....

[Em]

Oh and I am working in the Home Office on this www.homeoffice.gov.uk/data
and are working towards all of the data being presented in raw/
reusable form, for the Cabinet Office data team (the one refd above)
to work on to create semantic/RDF/linked stuff...

On Sep 3, 12:58 pm, Nicholas Bjorn Ellis-Gowland <coffee...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Will that sounds like fun, who are you meeting with at the DoH?
>
> I think before an API is concieved, an easy to query/read
> organisational structure is needed in the public domain.
>
> For example I work in the public sector - and in various guises - work for:
>
> The National Treatment Agency (NAT)
> My local Primary Care Trust (PCT)
> My local Drug Action Team (DAT)
> The Home Office,
> The Probation Service (local??)
> The Police
>
> So when a service user gets referred into our service - in one
> scenario - ALL the above bodies want that referral on their books!
>
> But I dont know which body works for who - which bodies share data -
> which bodies report to the same people!
>
> I think before an API is realised, a refractoring of the conduits that
> my data has to be passed would in itself streamline and help open up
> the system - in readiness for an API..
>
> Just my three cents :)
>
> On Thu, Sep 3, 2009 at 12:33 PM, Will
>

> Tinsdeall<ivebeenlinu...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> > I've been invited to the Department of Health to advice on their new API, so
> > if anyone has any comments about what an API should have (format, data,
> > query method etc), drop me an email.
> > Will
>
> > --------
>
> > Check out my portfolio and online computing guides at
> >http://www.iexpand.co.uk
>

> > 2009/9/3 Nicholas Bjorn Ellis-Gowland <coffee...@gmail.com>

> >> On Thu, Sep 3, 2009 at 10:26 AM, Jo Jordan<jo.working...@googlemail.com>

[Thomas Wood]

2009/9/3 Christopher Osborne <chris....@gmail.com>:

> As a side note, I was thinking about all of the data we seem to be
> individually scraping.  Every hack day I go to quickly turns into a screen
> scraping convention, but as far as I know we are not very good at making
> that data available to others.
>
> We have the list of officially available data here -
> http://rewiredstate.org/data and a few other places, but nothing for scraped
> data.  Perhaps this is due to the legal grey area that scraping and scraped
> data resides.  Does anybody else think a little anonymous hub for scraped
> datasets (and scraper code?) would be a good idea?  Could be a good way to
> illustrate what datasets are in demand and the benefits of making them
> available for reuse, particularly to the more stubborn gov agencies.
>
> Chris

Certainly, at YRS we found ourselves going (unknowingly) over a
project that had been tried before at the previous RS!
Although our app turned into more of a proof of concept (+ rail
timetable data scraped using an existing tool), I am looking to deveop
it further.
It also occured to me that there are many people working on National
Rail data who are not aware of RS, I'm trying to pull the ones I find
into a Google Group (currently a little inactive), that should help
pool resources and code - http://groups.google.com/group/nr-data

--
Regards,
Thomas Wood
(Edgemaster)

[Tim Dobson]

Hi David,

First thing, I'd better say I'm not a Rewired State(RS) person (yet!), I
only really became aware of the RS before YRS and so anything I say
certainly shouldn't be interpreted as any sort of official PoV. :)

I wonder if I can tell you about DFEY - Digital Freedom in Education &
Youth - www.dfey.org

We originally set up DFEY in May 08 because we felt there were a lot of
groups out there aimed at supporting technical communities but none of
them were very welcoming towards young people.

We realised there were quite a few isolated young people out there who
were really passionate about technology but were having a terrible time
with their schools trying to get them to be just the slightest helpful -
ie. getting their school sysadmins to install something as simple as
firefox/oopenoffice.org.

We thought if we could create a social space for young people who cared
about freedom and technology to meet each other then they would start
helping each other, sharing ways of doing things and going to adult
orientated technology events together - it's not as intimidating if you
already know people there.

Anyway, so we brought a bunch of people to YRS thanks to YRS's fantastic
organisers and sponsors. :)

School Routr 2.0 and blogotics were two fairly successful projects (in
the judge's eyes at least!) that were comprised mainly of DFEY people,
along with several other projects (like my own) which didn't capture the
judges imagination though were still very impressive! :)

Anyway, we've always been about meeting regularly in face to face
environments with the North West group having been going since August 08
with groups in the South East (London) kicking off as we speak and talk
of things happening in the west country. :)
(I'm meant to be sorting the mailing list situation out :-/)

It's always cool to have support and connect people who want to help out
with people who would like to be mentored towards something!

I'm a little frustrated that I didn't realise people would do "will work
for peanuts" like projects etc. which are really answers to social
problems than use of government data. If I'd realised there would be
projects like that I would have certainly done a project which
introduced what DFEY is. Ah well, one has to live and learn... :)

Lastly, just a personal bugbear of mine, I wonder if you could refer to
"kids" as "young people". :-/ I find being called a "kid" when I'm
pushing 19, playing with APIs etc. quite patronising. I know your not
deliberately to be patronising so if you could bear that in mind, it'd
make me really happy! :D

Cheers,

Tim

(DFEY-NW Co-Organiser)

www.dfey.org

[Will Tinsdeall]

The API documentation I was talking about earlier....

Will take into account what has already been said, but any more feedback?

Will

--------

Check out my portfolio and online computing guides at http://www.iexpand.co.uk

2009/9/3 Em <mul...@googlemail.com>

[Libby Miller]

hi Will,

On 3 Sep 2009, at 14:43, Will Tinsdeall wrote:

> The API documentation I was talking about earlier....
>
> Will take into account what has already been said, but any more
> feedback?
>

Forgive my butting in - I've probably missed a fair bit of the
discussion and maybe someone's mentioned this - but at a glance my
main question would be why SOAP? (or perhaps why just SOAP and not
REST as well?). There may well be good reasons, as it depends on your
audience of developers - but many 'hacker type' developers find SOAP
much harder to use than REST [1].

Another related suggestion is that the API urls should be 'cool' i.e.
they don't change[2]. If you have things like .asp in the url then
when / if you change from using asp pages your urls will change too
and break applications.

There are probably many people on the mysociety list[3] who could give
advice, or if this is useful I could spend more time on it.

all the best,

Libby

[1] http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2006/12/rest_and_soap.html
[2] http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI
[3] https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/pipermail/developers-public/

> <NHSChoicesWebServicesAPI_v1[1].12.doc>

[Thomas Wood]

2009/9/4 Libby Miller <li...@nicecupoftea.org>:

>
>
> hi Will,
>
> On 3 Sep 2009, at 14:43, Will Tinsdeall wrote:
>
>> The API documentation I was talking about earlier....
>>
>> Will take into account what has already been said, but any more
>> feedback?
>>
>
>
> Forgive my butting in - I've probably missed a fair bit of the
> discussion and maybe someone's mentioned this - but at a glance my
> main question would be why SOAP? (or perhaps why just SOAP and not
> REST as well?). There may well be good reasons, as it depends on your
> audience of developers - but many 'hacker type' developers find SOAP
> much harder to use than REST [1].
>
> Another related suggestion is that the API urls should be 'cool' i.e.
> they don't change[2]. If you have things like .asp in the url then
> when / if you change from using asp pages your urls will change too
> and break applications.
>
> There are probably many people on the mysociety list[3] who could give
> advice, or if this is useful I could spend more time on it.
>
> all the best,
>
> Libby
>
> [1] http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2006/12/rest_and_soap.html
> [2] http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI
> [3] https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/pipermail/developers-public/
>
>

At YRS, SOAP was one of the evils we encountered with the national
rail departure boards API, their implementation of the server didn't
seem to want to work with the SOAPpy library I was trying to use
(probably incorrectly).
To save on headaches, we decided to move that aspect of the app to
'future work', and produce some fake data instead to demo it.

[Libby Miller]

Ruby and SOAP isn't too hard, well at least sometimes:

http://planb.nicecupoftea.org/2009/03/12/companies-house-xml-and-rewired-state/#tech

Rob McKinnon's done some more in this area I think (he's on this list
I think).

Libby

[Tom Taylor]

On 3 Sep 2009, at 12:33, Will Tinsdeall wrote:

> I've been invited to the Department of Health to advice on their new
> API, so if anyone has any comments about what an API should have
> (format, data, query method etc), drop me an email.

Please, no complex XML schemas, no big upfront design, no grand
interconnected visions.

Just readable documentation, example code and a support contact who
knows what they're talking about. For the best example, look at the
Flickr API. http://flickr.com/services/api/

I don't mind if it's REST, XML-RPC or whatever. As long as I can
understand how to get the data in and out without having to buy into
your grand software architecture or bespoke software, then that's fine.

--
Tom Taylor
t...@tomtaylor.co.uk
http://tomtaylor.co.uk
+44 (0)7811 249572