Modelling Government in Scotland on Wikidata

This was one of three projects which were worked on during CTC24 – Open In Practice. We asked Jan Ainali, who led the project, to explain it for those who were not present at the weekend event.

Why did we run this project? 

On Wikidata, there is a WikiProject for getting all the government agencies of all levels and the whole world properly modeled. Since it is a huge project, every way to try to break it down to bite size pieces are necessary. Work on the UK was already started, so it made a lot of sense trying to complete Scotland.

Work done before CTC24

In October during Scottish Open Data Unconference 2021 we got started on this task. We found some good sources and made fine progress, completing several categories of agencies. By completing here, I mean that we made sure there were items in Wikidata representing the agencies and that they were well enough modeled so that we could query for them. But we weren’t done, and some of the trickiest parts remained. 

What we achieved at CTC24, what impact we hope it will have

With a joint effort, we managed to sort out how the judicial system was organized, which was something that remained unclear since the last session. Most time was spent in researching to understand it, and when that was done, it was fairly straightforward to create items for the courts that were missing and to model the others in a way that made it possible to query for them. We also managed to sort out some other small tasks from the last event, and finally we could produce one huge query to get all Scottish agencies at once:  https://w.wiki/4TpN

Now we think this is the most complete and up-to-date list of Scottish agencies. If we are wrong about that, we would love feedback so that we can improve it.

What next – how can people get involved?

A few things are happening right now. First, we are importing agencies into the Govdirectory platform that is a more user-friendly view of Wikidata. We have already imported the local authorities, NHS boards and Health and Social Care Partnerships. You can find that data here: https://www.govdirectory.org/united-kingdom/

Since the large query was a bit messy, we will also try to improve the modeling in Wikidata. You are more than welcome to help with this. This will make queries for everybody simpler, and we will continuously be importing more agencies to the platform as we get done.

You can also help by adding contact points like email, official websites, social media accounts to the Wikidata items. You can either use the Wikidata button on the Govdirectory website, or you can go to the WikiProject page on Wikidata and run some queries there to find items to improve. https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikiProject_Govdirectory/United_Kingdom

Header Image by Jan Ainali, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons