UK Launches Open Data Site; Puts Data.gov to Shame | Hacker News Reader

UK Launches Open Data Site; Puts Data.gov to Shame

readwriteweb.com

38 pointsvijayr11 comments

Um, no.

Some of these "datasets" are links to web sites: http://data.gov.uk/dataset/england-national-crime-mapping

Some are applications based on UK data which are run by non-governmental organizations or individuals: http://data.gov.uk/apps/post-box-finder-0

It's unfortunate RWW chose to take a confrontational and disparaging tone about US open data efforts. The US provides a vast amount of open, public domain, datasets.

link bait articles get you more traffic, just the fact of the web

I wanted to look at some traffic-related dataset and the download link linked back to the homepage. The site is poorly put together as far as I can tell.

http://data.gov.uk/

Looks like some of the data sets are in PDF :-(

Is there any standard, to publish these data sets? If yes, why can't the governments, municipal corporations etc agree on publishing the data in that format? It would be much easier to build apps ...

A "Standard" to rule them all is probably a bad idea here, but I agree that PDF is really not appropriate for any data you'd like to process further.

The datasets can really vary in terms of characteristics, so while XML might make sense for one, CSV might be completely appropriate for another. And that's perfectly OK with me, so long as they document the fields and how to parse it.

After we built StimulusWatch, we waited patiently for data.gov to arrive, and quite honestly it was shameful from day one. No other site is needed to shame data.gov. :-/

We should be putting our foot down more often and flagging these linkbait articles. I did.

It's based on Drupal.

Nice to see the UK being innovative. sigh

What's your point?

I believe Sir Berners-Lee's personal website is powered by Drupal and he has endorsed it in writing before this - so this is no suprise.

I am glad to see a government project capitalising on Open Source and owning the software they use rather than the usual UK debacle of Microsoft Consultancies and non-ownership of poorly customised and badly broken foriegn owned closed source code.

Finally an ounce of sanity.

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