Scottish Open Data Unconference
It’s all going on in Scotland in March. As we spring into Spring (nearly there!), we’re very excited to be sponsoring, and going, to the Scottish Open Data Unconference in Aberdeen on 14th and 15th March. Topics are pitched in the morning of each day, an agenda is created and participants talk as much as the chair.
Our colleague Jamie Whyte is lucky enough to have a ticket, so if you spot him do say hi! Here are some recent open data happenings we’ve picked up on our radar…
Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation
The Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation was released late January and we loved the accompanying briefing document, which put the numbers into context (find it here). The data’s also available on the Scottish Government’s Open Data site, where you can use the Atlas section to find key data zones and see key facts about them. The below screenshot is of the data zone which is ranked as the most deprived in the 2020 SIMD.
People are already making stuff with the data — below is a screenshot of Jamie’s lava lamp visualisation of the data.
Commentary, explanation and analysis from others include: Alasdair Rae’s summary matrix of the SIMD data by council area, a story graphic of the data, an interactive mapping tool, an analysis blog post from Scottish parliament information centre and news articles, like this one from the BBC.
W3C Community Group
Another thing we’ve noticed is that there’s preliminary work happening on GraphQL and RDF, which aims to serve as a case for future standardisation. More on this here, where you can send a request to join the group if this is your bag. It’s definitely ours!
Collaborative work with data
Last, but not least, collaboration. This is a wide concept but it’s also a trend that’s cropping up in different aspects of working with open data. Here are some we’ve noticed:
- Scotland is one of 90 members of the countries taking part in the Open Government Partnership (OGP), and just one of 15 chosen to contribute to its leadership and innovation. The second OGP Action Plan is now in its final year and aims to:
“promote trust and co-operation between government and civil society.”
- The Office for National Statistics is publishing data in a collaborative project across a spread of organisations including ONS, HMRC, MHCLG, DWP and DIT. The Connected Open Government Statistics (COGS) project involves a lot of technical collaborative work in harmonising codelists, as well as harmonising a data model and all the processes that go into it. More on this project here on the GSS blog site.
- 2019 saw a growing, collaborative API community, with API events involving government and people working with government. We went to one in Newcastle and another one’s arranged for March 16th (if you’re still hungry for more after the unconference!)
- The Open Data Institute have been busy, busy, busy. Jeni Tennison spoke about the idea of how collaboration is key for new institutions of the data age, at our Power of Data conference in October (catch that video here). The ODI have also been working on a data and public services toolkit & there’s an introductory event to this in Edinburgh just a few days before the Scottish Open Data Unconference.
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We love data and we’re delighted to be sponsoring the Scottish Open Data Unconference. See you there.
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