Fingal Open Data
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Dominic Byrne
Nov 30, 2010, 4:42:00 PM11/30/10
to Open Data Ireland
Hi all,
As some of you already know, Fingal County Council have created an
Open Data site - http://data.fingal.ie with an initial 70 datasets.
We would welcome your feedback on the site and datasets - either to
this group or via the contact email on the site. Our hope is that
this data will be used to create new apps, services, etc. as well as
contributing to greater transparency. If you create something
interesting with the data we would be interested in hearing about it.
Our plans for developments to the site include a showcase of
interesting uses and a forum for suggestions. We would welcome
requests for the addition of further datasets and we will do our best
to make them available or to explain any difficulties involved.
Thanks,
Dominic.
--
Dominic Byrne,
Assistant Head of I.T.,
Fingal County Council.
http://data.fingal.ie
http://www.fingalcoco.ie
As some of you already know, Fingal County Council have created an
Open Data site - http://data.fingal.ie with an initial 70 datasets.
We would welcome your feedback on the site and datasets - either to
this group or via the contact email on the site. Our hope is that
this data will be used to create new apps, services, etc. as well as
contributing to greater transparency. If you create something
interesting with the data we would be interested in hearing about it.
Our plans for developments to the site include a showcase of
interesting uses and a forum for suggestions. We would welcome
requests for the addition of further datasets and we will do our best
to make them available or to explain any difficulties involved.
Thanks,
Dominic.
--
Dominic Byrne,
Assistant Head of I.T.,
Fingal County Council.
http://data.fingal.ie
http://www.fingalcoco.ie
Dermot McNally
Nov 30, 2010, 5:28:25 PM11/30/10
to Open Data Ireland
On Nov 30, 9:42 pm, Dominic Byrne <dominic.by...@fingalcoco.ie> wrote:
> As some of you already know, Fingal County Council have created an
> Open Data site -http://data.fingal.iewith an initial 70 datasets.
> As some of you already know, Fingal County Council have created an
>
> We would welcome your feedback on the site and datasets - either to
> this group or via the contact email on the site. Our hope is that
Hi Dominic, and good to see you here. Naturally, my first question was
> We would welcome your feedback on the site and datasets - either to
> this group or via the contact email on the site. Our hope is that
"how open?", so I went off to check the licence:
http://data.fingal.ie/licence/default.aspx
Unfortunately a broken link. I'm itching to take a look once it's
fixes, though.
Regards,
Dermot
Cian Ginty
Nov 30, 2010, 5:43:06 PM11/30/10
to open-dat...@googlegroups.com
Hi,
If anybody wants to get started before Fingal replies... The about
section of http://data.fingal.ie/ says it's a 'PSI general licence'.
See http://psi.gov.ie/ or view the PDF licence here directly --
http://psi.gov.ie/files/2010/03/PSI-Licence.pdf.
Regards,
Cian
--
Cian Ginty
E: cian....@gmail.com
P: 087 25 13 706
W: http://www.cianginty.com/
Dermot McNally
Nov 30, 2010, 5:54:40 PM11/30/10
to Open Data Ireland
Thanks Cian for the pointer.
I've read down through the document, but section 5 represents a show-
stopped for my own (admittedly rather specific) interests:
5.1. The benefit of this License may not be sub-licensed
My Open Data project of interest is OpenStreetMap, which is typical of
many open data initiatives in that it is geared at giving data to
people with as few strings attached as possible in order to limit as
little as possible their ability to use the data in unexpected or
creative ways.
Clearly, any geographical data we might obtain is only of use to OSM
users if it may be placed in our map data set, under the OSM licence
(currently CC BY SA, but hoping to change to The Open Database
Licence). The right to do so is denied us by section 5 as quoted
above.
It may be that others will derive some benefit from the licence you
have chosen, but it's not open enough for OSM purposes.
Regards,
Dermot
I've read down through the document, but section 5 represents a show-
stopped for my own (admittedly rather specific) interests:
5.1. The benefit of this License may not be sub-licensed
My Open Data project of interest is OpenStreetMap, which is typical of
many open data initiatives in that it is geared at giving data to
people with as few strings attached as possible in order to limit as
little as possible their ability to use the data in unexpected or
creative ways.
Clearly, any geographical data we might obtain is only of use to OSM
users if it may be placed in our map data set, under the OSM licence
(currently CC BY SA, but hoping to change to The Open Database
Licence). The right to do so is denied us by section 5 as quoted
above.
It may be that others will derive some benefit from the licence you
have chosen, but it's not open enough for OSM purposes.
Regards,
Dermot
Dominic Byrne
Dec 1, 2010, 4:31:06 AM12/1/10
to Open Data Ireland
Hi,
We'll get that broken link fixed - the links are correct in the
metadata pages. Thanks Cian for posting the link.
I hadn't anticipated that the licence would cause that problem,
Dermot. Our objective for the site is the same as yours in that we
want to have as few restrictions as possible and we want to encourage
creative use. We were looking for a mechanism that would enable us to
publish the data quickly. As the PSI licence existed and seemed to
meet these needs, we decided to use it.
I'll look into the issue and see if we can use a modified version of
the licence or replace it with an alternative licence. However, this
make take a bit of time. I'll keep this group informed of progress.
Regards,
Dominic.
We'll get that broken link fixed - the links are correct in the
metadata pages. Thanks Cian for posting the link.
I hadn't anticipated that the licence would cause that problem,
Dermot. Our objective for the site is the same as yours in that we
want to have as few restrictions as possible and we want to encourage
creative use. We were looking for a mechanism that would enable us to
publish the data quickly. As the PSI licence existed and seemed to
meet these needs, we decided to use it.
I'll look into the issue and see if we can use a modified version of
the licence or replace it with an alternative licence. However, this
make take a bit of time. I'll keep this group informed of progress.
Regards,
Dominic.
Michael Hausenblas
Dec 1, 2010, 4:36:09 AM12/1/10
to open-dat...@googlegroups.com
Dominic,
Awesome work re Fingal Open Data! This is a trailblazing example in Irleand
of what can be achieved bottom-up, if people are motivated and 'get it' -
congrats!
I have (yet another) question re the license - as you can tell, this is
essential for the usage of the data in applications: I've started to add
Fingal datasets to the Irish CKAN instance [1] but sort of unsure re the
status, can you advise, please?
Cheers,
Michael
[1] http://ie.ckan.net/package/fingal-ab-social-class-household
--
Dr. Michael Hausenblas, Research Fellow
LiDRC - Linked Data Research Centre
DERI - Digital Enterprise Research Institute
NUIG - National University of Ireland, Galway
Ireland, Europe
Tel. +353 91 495730
http://linkeddata.deri.ie/
http://sw-app.org/about.html
Tim McCarthy (NUIM)
Dec 1, 2010, 6:52:26 AM12/1/10
to open-dat...@googlegroups.com
Re. PSI GENERAL LICENCE No.: 2005/08/01....for comparison, here's a
quick snapshot of 'Open Data' Licenses/Terms of Use/Policy/T&Cs around
the globe...these include
1. London Datastore -
http://data.london.gov.uk/datastore/terms-and-conditions
2. Surrey, Canada - http://www.surrey.ca/city-services/658.aspx (Open
Data Commons)
3. DataSF - http://datasf.org/page.php?page=TOU
4. Vancouver - http://data.vancouver.ca/termsOfUse.htm
5. New South Wales - http://data.nsw.gov.au/policy.php
rgds
tim
Richard Cyganiak
Dec 1, 2010, 8:23:10 AM12/1/10
to open-dat...@googlegroups.com
On 1 Dec 2010, at 11:52, Tim McCarthy (NUIM) wrote:
> Re. PSI GENERAL LICENCE No.: 2005/08/01....for comparison, here's a
> quick snapshot of 'Open Data' Licenses/Terms of Use/Policy/T&Cs
> around the globe...these include
>
> 1. London Datastore - http://data.london.gov.uk/datastore/terms-and-conditions
> 2. Surrey, Canada - http://www.surrey.ca/city-services/658.aspx
> (Open Data Commons)
> 3. DataSF - http://datasf.org/page.php?page=TOU
> 4. Vancouver - http://data.vancouver.ca/termsOfUse.htm
> 5. New South Wales - http://data.nsw.gov.au/policy.php
> Re. PSI GENERAL LICENCE No.: 2005/08/01....for comparison, here's a
> quick snapshot of 'Open Data' Licenses/Terms of Use/Policy/T&Cs
> around the globe...these include
>
> 1. London Datastore - http://data.london.gov.uk/datastore/terms-and-conditions
> 2. Surrey, Canada - http://www.surrey.ca/city-services/658.aspx
> (Open Data Commons)
> 3. DataSF - http://datasf.org/page.php?page=TOU
> 4. Vancouver - http://data.vancouver.ca/termsOfUse.htm
> 5. New South Wales - http://data.nsw.gov.au/policy.php
There's also the UK Open Government Licence, announced a few weeks
ago, which will be the default licence for government-published data
in the UK. It's interesting because it's designed specifically for
data, is tailored to the local legal environment, and is quite
readable compared to most license documents.
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/
Best,
Richard
Jonathan Gray
Dec 1, 2010, 9:59:34 AM12/1/10
to open-dat...@googlegroups.com
And several more *highly* desirable options (generic licenses are
often better for users than bespoke ones!):
often better for users than bespoke ones!):
http://www.opendatacommons.org/licenses/
http://www.opendatacommons.org/licenses/pddl/
http://www.opendatacommons.org/licenses/by/
http://www.opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/
http://creativecommons.org/choose/zero/
Whatever mechanism you use, ideally it would be compliant with:
http://www.opendefinition.org/
--
Jonathan Gray
Community Coordinator
The Open Knowledge Foundation
http://blog.okfn.org
uoc
Dec 1, 2010, 10:09:25 AM12/1/10
to open-dat...@googlegroups.com
Maybe Im just too cynical, too impatient, but the EU directive [1]
behind the PSI really seems to me to be a bit short-of-the-mark. It
states that
So Fingal really are to be applauded for leading the way on this - lets hope others follow suit.
[1] EU Directive 2003/98/EC, http://psi.gov.ie/files/2010/03/19052005-EU-Directive-Final-text1.pdf
"This Directive should apply to documents that are made accessible for re-use when public sector bodies license, sell, disseminate, exchange or give out information."So, this is then taken to refer to those "documents" which are currently available on existing public service web sites, and not the data, that most people here at least, crave. Most of the Co. Co's, and the Depts list on the PSI site adhere to this line - the Dept of Social Protection [prev. Welfare] however quickly starts to talk about FoI for "routinely published information". There doesn't seem to be any impetus to open up government data any further.
So Fingal really are to be applauded for leading the way on this - lets hope others follow suit.
[1] EU Directive 2003/98/EC, http://psi.gov.ie/files/2010/03/19052005-EU-Directive-Final-text1.pdf
Dominic Byrne
Dec 1, 2010, 11:41:14 AM12/1/10
to Open Data Ireland
Hi,
It's interesting that you highlight the term 'documents', as when we
were considering at the PSI licence for Fingal Open Data, we thought
it might be too restrictive on those grounds. However, the directive
defines documents as "(a) any content whatever its medium (written on
paper or stored in electronic form or as a sound, visual or
audiovisual recording);" and the Irish PSI licence states that it
"shall apply to all or part of any form of document, record or data,
whether in physical, electronic or other form."
So the PSI directive seems to be fine in this regard - if interpreted
correctly.
With regard to opening up data, we hope that by launching and
promoting our website, that we can help to create the impetus.
However, I think that if we are to persuade the wider community of the
benefits of Open Data, then we are going to need real examples of the
data is being used in apps, visualisations, etc. So, we're looking
forward to seeing some uses of Fingal's data and we would welcome any
suggestions for ways in which we could facilitate this.
Regards,
Dominic.
On Dec 1, 3:09 pm, uoc <uoc...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Maybe Im just too cynical, too impatient, but the EU directive [1]
> behind the PSI really seems to me to be a bit short-of-the-mark. It
> states that
>
> "This Directive should apply to documents that are made accessible
> for re-use when public sector bodies license, sell, disseminate,
> exchange or give out information."
>
> So, this is then taken to refer to those "documents" which are currently
> available on existing public service web sites, and not the data, that
> most people here at least, crave. Most of the Co. Co's, and the Depts
> list on the PSI site adhere to this line - the Dept of Social Protection
> [prev. Welfare] however quickly starts to talk about FoI for "routinely
> published information". There doesn't seem to be any impetus to open up
> government data any further.
>
> So Fingal really are to be applauded for leading the way on this - lets
> hope others follow suit.
>
> [1] EU Directive 2003/98/EC,http://psi.gov.ie/files/2010/03/19052005-EU-Directive-Final-text1.pdf
> >> 5. New South Wales -http://data.nsw.gov.au/policy.php
> >>> Dermot- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
It's interesting that you highlight the term 'documents', as when we
were considering at the PSI licence for Fingal Open Data, we thought
it might be too restrictive on those grounds. However, the directive
defines documents as "(a) any content whatever its medium (written on
paper or stored in electronic form or as a sound, visual or
audiovisual recording);" and the Irish PSI licence states that it
"shall apply to all or part of any form of document, record or data,
whether in physical, electronic or other form."
So the PSI directive seems to be fine in this regard - if interpreted
correctly.
With regard to opening up data, we hope that by launching and
promoting our website, that we can help to create the impetus.
However, I think that if we are to persuade the wider community of the
benefits of Open Data, then we are going to need real examples of the
data is being used in apps, visualisations, etc. So, we're looking
forward to seeing some uses of Fingal's data and we would welcome any
suggestions for ways in which we could facilitate this.
Regards,
Dominic.
On Dec 1, 3:09 pm, uoc <uoc...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Maybe Im just too cynical, too impatient, but the EU directive [1]
> behind the PSI really seems to me to be a bit short-of-the-mark. It
> states that
>
> "This Directive should apply to documents that are made accessible
> for re-use when public sector bodies license, sell, disseminate,
> exchange or give out information."
>
> So, this is then taken to refer to those "documents" which are currently
> available on existing public service web sites, and not the data, that
> most people here at least, crave. Most of the Co. Co's, and the Depts
> list on the PSI site adhere to this line - the Dept of Social Protection
> [prev. Welfare] however quickly starts to talk about FoI for "routinely
> published information". There doesn't seem to be any impetus to open up
> government data any further.
>
> So Fingal really are to be applauded for leading the way on this - lets
> hope others follow suit.
>
>
> On 01/12/2010 13:23, Richard Cyganiak wrote:
>
>
>
> > On 1 Dec 2010, at 11:52, Tim McCarthy (NUIM) wrote:
> >> Re. PSI GENERAL LICENCE No.: 2005/08/01....for comparison, here's a
> >> quick snapshot of 'Open Data' Licenses/Terms of Use/Policy/T&Cs
> >> around the globe...these include
>
> >> 1. London Datastore -
> >>http://data.london.gov.uk/datastore/terms-and-conditions
> >> 2. Surrey, Canada -http://www.surrey.ca/city-services/658.aspx(Open
> >> Data Commons)
> >> 3. DataSF -http://datasf.org/page.php?page=TOU
> >> 4. Vancouver -http://data.vancouver.ca/termsOfUse.htm
> On 01/12/2010 13:23, Richard Cyganiak wrote:
>
>
>
> > On 1 Dec 2010, at 11:52, Tim McCarthy (NUIM) wrote:
> >> Re. PSI GENERAL LICENCE No.: 2005/08/01....for comparison, here's a
> >> quick snapshot of 'Open Data' Licenses/Terms of Use/Policy/T&Cs
> >> around the globe...these include
>
> >> 1. London Datastore -
> >>http://data.london.gov.uk/datastore/terms-and-conditions
> >> 2. Surrey, Canada -http://www.surrey.ca/city-services/658.aspx(Open
> >> Data Commons)
> >> 3. DataSF -http://datasf.org/page.php?page=TOU
> >> 5. New South Wales -http://data.nsw.gov.au/policy.php
>
> - Show quoted text -
Kevin C
Dec 2, 2010, 6:12:10 AM12/2/10
to Open Data Ireland
Hi Dominic,
I just wanted to say congratulations on this, I'm really excited to
see something like this in Ireland.
It's also very useful to have a good example to point people to when
talking about Open Data.
Have you heard much else about initiatives like this in other areas/
ireland wide?
Thanks,
Kevin
On Nov 30, 10:42 pm, Dominic Byrne <dominic.by...@fingalcoco.ie>
wrote:
I just wanted to say congratulations on this, I'm really excited to
see something like this in Ireland.
It's also very useful to have a good example to point people to when
talking about Open Data.
Have you heard much else about initiatives like this in other areas/
ireland wide?
Thanks,
Kevin
On Nov 30, 10:42 pm, Dominic Byrne <dominic.by...@fingalcoco.ie>
wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> As some of you already know, Fingal County Council have created an
> Open Data site -http://data.fingal.iewith an initial 70 datasets.
>
> As some of you already know, Fingal County Council have created an
l e
Jan 13, 2011, 1:04:14 PM1/13/11
to open-dat...@googlegroups.com
emailed fingal open data people about their minutes and agendas no reply, these basic stats are fine but need to be able to digest what's actually happening
Can you see what you can do with meetings agendas and minutes in terms of making them more accessible.
Certainly interested in seeing meeting agendas in something other then Word .docs, eg
and some way to extract and filter these http://www.fingalcoco.ie/Minutes/
Dominic Byrne
Jan 14, 2011, 9:10:57 AM1/14/11
to Open Data Ireland
Hi,
Apologies for not replying to your email. We’ve been trying to figure
out the best approach to this. Come to think of it, we should
probably have just posted the issues here and opened up the
discussion, so here goes ..
There is no problem in principle with making this data available in
open formats. The difficulty is in ensuring that it’s provided in a
manner that (i) is manageable - both for ourselves in publishing and
for anyone who might want to consume it, and (ii) enables on-going
publication of data as new minutes/agendas are published.
The minutes data is currently managed by an internally developed
system, that produces each individual minute item in HTML format and
manages the relationships between the minute items, the full meeting
minutes, meeting type and dates. These minutes are stored in a SQL
database – including HTML tags. It would be possible for us to
publish the minutes data tables and the database schema and we will go
ahead and do so if that is useful. We would have to look into what
would be involved in updating this each time new minutes are
published. Technically, that is not difficult – it’s just that all of
the data published to date has been dumped from the source systems.
We do, of course, want to move to a situation where relevant updates
to datasets are automatically uploaded to the site when data updates
occur in the source system, but that will take time to implement
across all systems.
This raises the question of what is the appropriate way to update
datasets that are published. Is it acceptable that we simply replace
the old version of a dataset with the updated version, and that the
metadata reflects the update frequency?
Regarding the agendas data, this is published manually to our website
via our Content Management System. This is a simple publication of
the existing agenda notifications that are sent to the Elected
Representatives regarding the meetings. There is no IT system behind
this – they are all produced in Word and then uploaded to the site.
We might be able to publish them in PDF format, but PDF isn’t an open
format. I can’t think of any quick way of getting these documents
into an open format, but I’d welcome suggestions.
We are considering implementing a system to manage the agendas in a
more structured manner, which would probably result in agendas being
stored in a database and therefore facilitate open publishing, but
there is no timescale on this at the moment.
While we want to publish as much of our data as possible as Open Data,
it is going to take some time to do so, and we are going to face
different challenges with different datasets depending on the type of
data, the source IT system, frequency of updates, etc. Initially, we
have concentrated on data that was relatively straightforward to
publish and we would like to build from there.
Ideally, we would like to publish data that is going to be used for
something such as building apps, visualisations, etc. That’s not the
only factor of course and we will aim to publish as much data as we
can anyway. Nevertheless, it would help us if we understood what the
data might be used for or more importantly, the best approach to
publishing. While static uploads of CSV, XML and KML are fine to
start with, presumably we should be aiming to provide the data via
APIs, linked data or open databases – which would seem to us to be the
best way of handling the minutes and agendas data.
We would welcome any comments from the group on this.
We would also be interested in finding out whether there is any merit
in organising a get-together to discuss what datasets people would
like to see, what formats we should provide them in, what approach we
should be taking to progressing Open Data in Fingal (and beyond), etc.
Regards,
Dominic.
On Jan 13, 6:04 pm, l e <expectationl...@gmail.com> wrote:
> emailed fingal open data people about their minutes and agendas no reply,
> these basic stats are fine but need to be able to digest what's actually
> happening
>
> Can you see what you can do with meetings agendas and minutes in terms of
> making them more accessible.
>
> Certainly interested in seeing meeting agendas in something other then Word
> .docs, eg
>
> http://www.fingalcoco.ie/YourLocalCouncil/LocalDemocracy/Meetings/201...
Apologies for not replying to your email. We’ve been trying to figure
out the best approach to this. Come to think of it, we should
probably have just posted the issues here and opened up the
discussion, so here goes ..
There is no problem in principle with making this data available in
open formats. The difficulty is in ensuring that it’s provided in a
manner that (i) is manageable - both for ourselves in publishing and
for anyone who might want to consume it, and (ii) enables on-going
publication of data as new minutes/agendas are published.
The minutes data is currently managed by an internally developed
system, that produces each individual minute item in HTML format and
manages the relationships between the minute items, the full meeting
minutes, meeting type and dates. These minutes are stored in a SQL
database – including HTML tags. It would be possible for us to
publish the minutes data tables and the database schema and we will go
ahead and do so if that is useful. We would have to look into what
would be involved in updating this each time new minutes are
published. Technically, that is not difficult – it’s just that all of
the data published to date has been dumped from the source systems.
We do, of course, want to move to a situation where relevant updates
to datasets are automatically uploaded to the site when data updates
occur in the source system, but that will take time to implement
across all systems.
This raises the question of what is the appropriate way to update
datasets that are published. Is it acceptable that we simply replace
the old version of a dataset with the updated version, and that the
metadata reflects the update frequency?
Regarding the agendas data, this is published manually to our website
via our Content Management System. This is a simple publication of
the existing agenda notifications that are sent to the Elected
Representatives regarding the meetings. There is no IT system behind
this – they are all produced in Word and then uploaded to the site.
We might be able to publish them in PDF format, but PDF isn’t an open
format. I can’t think of any quick way of getting these documents
into an open format, but I’d welcome suggestions.
We are considering implementing a system to manage the agendas in a
more structured manner, which would probably result in agendas being
stored in a database and therefore facilitate open publishing, but
there is no timescale on this at the moment.
While we want to publish as much of our data as possible as Open Data,
it is going to take some time to do so, and we are going to face
different challenges with different datasets depending on the type of
data, the source IT system, frequency of updates, etc. Initially, we
have concentrated on data that was relatively straightforward to
publish and we would like to build from there.
Ideally, we would like to publish data that is going to be used for
something such as building apps, visualisations, etc. That’s not the
only factor of course and we will aim to publish as much data as we
can anyway. Nevertheless, it would help us if we understood what the
data might be used for or more importantly, the best approach to
publishing. While static uploads of CSV, XML and KML are fine to
start with, presumably we should be aiming to provide the data via
APIs, linked data or open databases – which would seem to us to be the
best way of handling the minutes and agendas data.
We would welcome any comments from the group on this.
We would also be interested in finding out whether there is any merit
in organising a get-together to discuss what datasets people would
like to see, what formats we should provide them in, what approach we
should be taking to progressing Open Data in Fingal (and beyond), etc.
Regards,
Dominic.
On Jan 13, 6:04 pm, l e <expectationl...@gmail.com> wrote:
> emailed fingal open data people about their minutes and agendas no reply,
> these basic stats are fine but need to be able to digest what's actually
> happening
>
> Can you see what you can do with meetings agendas and minutes in terms of
> making them more accessible.
>
> Certainly interested in seeing meeting agendas in something other then Word
> .docs, eg
>
l e
Jan 17, 2011, 11:33:55 AM1/17/11
to open-dat...@googlegroups.com
well there might a chance I could scrap pdf, less so with .docs, just put it in html, then it would be accessible, could make a rss out of it, that data will only become useful as a background for whats actually happening in the council. let not make the perfect the enemy of the better. I scrapped various things off the fingal site using http://open.dapper.net/ and http://feed43.com but found scrapping the minutes data impossible.
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