Archive for the ‘Open Data’ Category

The Open Data Institute opened last year with a mission to “catalyse an open data culture that has economic, environmental and social benefits”.

As part of its work it has recently launched its Innovation Programme. The programme will help SMEs and start-ups to work with data providers, industry experts and business leaders to develop new ways to better understand how to reuse available data sets in ways which create business opportunities.

The series of events will focus on challenges formulated by industry experts and the first of these aims to tackle three challenges in the area of Crime and Justice. These challenges ask how open data projects can be constructed that achieve one of the following:

- increase community involvement with the criminal justice system

- create further evidence for what are effective interventions for rehabilitation

- address the rise in personal crime

and at the competition weekend, planned for the end of June, the ODI will make awards of up to £8k for pre-seed investment with a single final prize of up to £25k. Additionally the successful teams will be included in the ODI Start Up Programme.

SMEs and start-ups interested in taking part in the programme should sign up here:

For further information about the programme please feel free to contact Simon Whitehouse, the series lead for the Crime and Justice challenges at si@siwhitehouse.co.uk

The Council is moving on with its project to make council data available as open data. Our aim is to make

as much open data available for free. However,  there is some policy work, which includes sorting out IPR issues and which licensing to use.

However, work is going on at the same time to abstract operations data which is not currently published. This is being used to test ways of publishing data in formats which will encourage re-use, such as XML, JSON and RDF.

The current Open Data web page on birmingham.gov.uk will be replaced with a platform to provide a repository for open data as well as additional information and services, such as metadata. If you want to find out more about this project or get involved please contact raj.s.mack@birmingham.gov.uk

Back in June, we were approached to see how we could support the YRS Festival 2012, after it had outgrown its previous location in Bletchley and bring it to Birmingham. Through the hard work of many people, particularly Lara Ratnaraja and Big Cat, the Custard Factory and Birmingham, became home to the YRS Festival for the very first time.

Cllr McKay, Cabinet Member for Green, Safe and Smart City at the Show and Tell

This was a great coup for Birmingham; not only do we have the youngest population out of all the cities in Europe (so capturing the talent and ingenuity of young people resonates really well with us), but also the Open Data agenda is right at the heart of our Smart City programme. Ensuring data is open and accessible and easier to use will enable huge possibilities in the development of new apps, services and innovative products as part of this.

YRS 2012 proved just that. With access to open data and a week of intensive coding by youngsters (nigh on 500, some as young as 7!), at different centres across the country – we had a centre in Birmingham, courtesy of BCU (Millennium Point), something amazing took place. The culmination of all the hard work and late nights, ended with a massive sleepover session at the Custard Factory on Friday night  (fuelled by some 200 pizza’s) and show and tell on Saturday.

Their creations, along with the presentations were awe inspiring – postcode wars app; a way to go were some of the winners -100 projects from 38 centres; but for me it does drive home the need for us to get our data out there, and let nature do the rest.

Our thanks to Emma and her team for a brilliant event.  YRS is living proof of what is possible, highlights the significance of supporting young people to develop the skills needed for the jobs of the future and provides a great concept that we would like to explore and develop further in Birmingham.

Digital Birmingham welcomed RT Hon Francis Maude MP to Fazeley Studios, Birmingham on Wednesday 14 March where he launched a series of case studies on ”Open for Business’ which will be available through the Open Data Innovation Community hub (#odinnovation). The morning was live streamed directly to the London Digital event in the City of London.

The morning was opened by Birmingham City Council’s Deputy Leader, Paul Tilsey, where he was particularly proud that the Minister had chosen Birmingham to launch this programme.

The Minister conveyed a broader message about #opendata, its benefits and how it is fueling business growth as well as playing a key role in creating new #smes.

Francis Maude MP said:

“Birmingham did not hang around in the 20th Century when it came grasping the possibilities of a smart, connected city.”

“Digital Birmingham saw a future where the city’s local businesses, local government, local universities would grasp economic opportunities and meet social challenges by ensuring the city had 21st Century digital infrastructure and digital services.”

“And as we know tying a digital city together is intelligence sharing – data sharing – transparency. Another area where you are forging ahead and setting a global example.”

He then went on to praise a couple of Birmingham’s prime examples of effective use of #opendata, Mudlark and Digital Birmingham’s Birmingham Civic Dashboard and Integrated Transport Planning Ltd‘s Access Advisr’ which brings information about accessible transport networks together in one online location.

The Minister concluded with saying:

“I certainly look forward to seeing Birmingham build its digital infrastructure and become one of Europe’s leading Smart, Connected Cities.”

“’ll be expecting the rest of the country to follow your lead.”

The speeches were followed by group discussions about the quality of open data; how the Council should publish its data; who data is aimed at; open data uses for managers inside public services; procurement; what the government and public sector can do to encourage SMEs to use open data as well as an ‘opt out’ clause for those who do not wish for their data to be used. An outcomes report will be available soon.

Deputy Leader Paul Tisley said:

“Making data openly available provides real opportunities to transform our services and

create value for citizens and communities.”

“Entrepreneurs and businesses will play a pivotal role in driving innovation to deliver new services and applications that will create jobs and build vibrant and successful communities. Our focus is to make the data open and accessible and create the right conditions that will enable them to derive the benefits of being part of our Smart, Connected and Open City.”

We like to especially thanks Nick Booth from Podnosh for brilliantly facilitating the discussion and Daniel Cremin and his team from Civico for hooking us up to London Digital.

Click here to view the live stream and press release.

Just before Christmas we had an email pop into our Digital Birmingham inbox. It was from somebody who is setting up their own business in Birmingham. They asked us

“I was wondering if Birmingham City Council has a comprehensive list of the city centre postcodes so I could easily upload this to the admin area of my website, so when the customer places an order this will be accepted/rejected depending on the postcode.”

A couple of weeks back Digital Birmingham held an open data event in the Learning Hub at University Hospital Birmingham. The aim of it was to gather people from different areas of the public sector to talk about our plans for opening up access to data. The idea was that by doing so we would discover additional benefits for ourselves.

This is the second of two posts about issues raised within the current Cabinet Office consultation, Making Open Data Real. The consultation itself includes a total of 26 questions. So these two posts aren’t intended to be a fully comprehensive coverage, they are just two issues that I think are important.

Last week I wrote about the arguments which can be made for and against the charging for access to public data. This week I’m going to look at the question of which organisations should be covered by open data legislation.

I’m going to look at this from the point of view of a local authority and will, naturally, use examples from Birmingham.

Bin City by Mil, on Flickr

More – Making Open Data Real (2 of 2)

Governments collect and maintain large datasets. Instances of such Public Sector Information range from geographic data to census records to real time traffic flows. In recent years there has also been a move to provide open and unrestricted access to Public Sector Information by publishing it online as Open Data.

The Government has recently announced its Making Open Data Real consultation on Open Data. All of our main political parties have policies which are broadly in favour of releasing Public Sector Information as Open Data and so it might appear that there isn’t anything contentious in this.

Hee hee.

More – Making Open Data Real (1 of 2)