Presentation given at a workshop organised by the ODI for a group of visitors from South Korea

1. UK central, national and local
government: publishing government
data using linked open data
Dr. Bill Roberts
Swirrl
15 December 2015

3. http://swirrl.com
@swirrl
@billroberts

4. Overview
• Why are UK government organisations
publishing linked open data?
• How has Swirrl helped?
• Benefits
• Challenges
• Lessons learned

5. Why?
• (Transparency)
• Effective sharing of data:
– Within their own organisation
– With public sector partners
– With business
• Monitoring progress on policies
• Targeting resources
• Targeting investment

6. Why Linked Data?
• Integration of data across organisation
boundaries
• Build on architecture of the web

7. How?
• Make more/better data available
• Enable new methods and improved quality of
analysis
• Combine data from different sources
• Save time for analysts

8. Swirrl
• PublishMyData
– Data management
– Extract, Transform, Load (Grafter)
– Search, browse, visualise
– API, SPARQL query, data download
• Data modelling
• Data processing
• SaaS

9. Examples

10. Benefits
• Data is easier to find
• Data from different sources can be selected
and combined
• Data is (can be) up to date and well
documented
• Data is accessible by API

11. Challenges
• New skills needed in public sector
organisations
– Going beyond Excel
– Linked Data
– Programming and visualisation
– Web instead of paper!
• Business case: quantifying benefits
• Standards
• Open data and personal data

12. Lessons learned
• Different audiences have different needs
• Need to promote the role of 'data
intermediary'
• Skills development in the public sector
• Data cleaning and standardisation is time
consuming (but worth it)
• Need to actively engage with data consumers
• Big opportunities!