Ogiek Peoples visualizing their traditional lands Nessuit, Kenya, Good practices in participatory Mapping (2009), International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)
Haklay, Muki. 2013. “Citizen Science and Volunteered Geographic Information: Overview and Typology of Participation.” In Crowdsourcing Geographic Knowledge, edited by Daniel Sui, Sarah Elwood, and Michael Goodchild, 105–22. Springer Netherlands.
Hickling Arthurs Low (HAL), 2012, Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) Primer, CANADIAN GEOSPATIAL DATA INFRASTRUCTURE INFORMATION PRODUCT 21e, Science & Technology Policy Research and Analysis Resource team, GeoConnections. Ottawa: Natural Resources Canada.
Engler, Nate ,Teresa Scassa, and Taylor, D. R. Fraser , 2014, Cybercartography and Volunteered Geographic Information, Chapter 4 in D.R. Fraser Taylor and Tracey P. Lauriault, Developments in the Theory and Practice of Cybercartography, 2nd Edition, Elsevier.
Canadian Geomatics Community Strategy “White Paper” and Scenarios, 2013, prepared for Natural Resources Canada by Hickling Arthurs Low Corporation (HAL).
This document (French and English) is the last in a series that I wrote while in Canada on the preservation of geospatial data and I just received the finals today. Fitting, since I have now been in Ireland for exactly one year today. The past is however always part of the present and the future is it not? In my view, the preservation of data should be part of any spatial data infrastructure and open data strategy. It is simply part of the lifecycle management of a nations knowledge resources. Data are modern artifacts as important as manuscripts, films or paintings. If we invest so much in their capture, then we should also invest in their long term maintenance.
This primer is part of a series of Operational Policy documents developed by GeoConnections intended to inform Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure (CGDI) stakeholders about the nature and scope of digital geospatial data archiving and preservation and the realities, challenges and good practices of related operational policies. GeoConnections produces a number of excellent documents on a wide range of contemporary data topics such as VGI, managing sensitive environmental data, data licences, data access, best practices for sharing data, open source, and a host of many others that are very relevant to governments world wide.
This primer starts by examining preservation responsibilities, legislation, acts, directives and policies. 3 preservation frameworks were also discussed:
The Canada centre for Remote Sensing (CCRS) Earth Observation Data Management System (EODMS)
Land Information Ontario (LIO) Geographic Information Archive (GIA)
Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO), the Integrated Science Data Management Service (ISDM)
International Polar Year (IPY) Data Preservation
Finally, the section on Establishing a Geospatial Data Preservation System guides data creators and preservers through a series of processes based on the frameworks, case studies, and guidelines.
GeoConnections has been studying the preservation and archiving of geospatial data since 2005. The following are the three reports in this series.
Geospatial Data Preservation Primer GeoConnections (2013) Tracey P. Lauriault, Ed Kennedy, with digital preservation subject matter expertise from Yvette Hackett, Library and Archives Canada Retired, reviewed by Marcel Fortin, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) & Map Librarian. Map and Data Library, University of Toronto. Hickling Arthurs and Low (HAL)
These documents are not for the faint at heart, but they inform practioners in all sectors, they are governmentality in action and are the datasets upon which critical data studies take shape.
Note – I have received some feedback since last night and have updated the post accordingly. Thanks to those who provided it!
The Republic of Ireland, Department of Public Expenditures and Reform (DPER) launched its first Open Data Pilot Portal data.gov.ie on July 22nd. The new portal was created by INSIGHT Galway who answered the DPER call for tender of January 24, 2014. The following suite of products were delivered on April 7th and officially approved by the Government on July 1st. This is an important milestone.
On the following day, July 23rd, the Government released Ireland’s first Open Government Partnership (OGP) National Action Plan. The newly launched data.gov.ie portal falls within Ireland’s OGP Plan under section 4 entitled: Open Data and Transparency – opening-up Government data for greater accountability, improving public services and achieving economic growth. It was also something civil society, academia and government have been advocating for, for some time.
The first draft of this plan was released at the OGP European Regional Meetings held in Dublin in May of 2014, and part of the package of deliverables listed above are related to Ireland’s May 2013 commitments to join the OGP. The Government also aspires to sign onto the G8 Open Data Charter. The OGP plan was informed by a number of stakeholders from civil society, academia and the public and private sectors. The documentation related to this process is available on the OGP page for Ireland and on the Open Knowledge Foundation Ireland website. There are many strategies in these reports, if implemented, will greatly make government more accessible and transparent to the public.
Subsequently, the DPER invited members of the public service, involved with the production and dissemination of public sector data in Ireland, to attend an information session, held on the 29th of July, to discuss the documents, the portal, to solicit feedback on the development of an open data strategy for the Republic and to seek support. A public briefing will also be held September 8th with civil society stakeholders and the public who have been actively engaged in the production of the OGP DRAFT Plan and engaged in Open Data and open government in Ireland.
This blog post is the first of a three part series on open data.
This post sketches part of the open data landscape for the past 5 years.
The next post will discuss the DPER/INSIGHT documents, the portal and provide recommendations.
The final will discuss the open government plan.
Sketching the Open Data Landscape in Ireland
Members of the Programmable City Project have been actively engaged in the theory and practice of open data and making data accessible in both Ireland and Canada for 15 years. As part of this ERC funded Project researchers are producing open data genealogies and data assemblages for Ireland, Canada and Boston in the US. The following is but a sketch of the open data landscape in Ireland. In the last 5 years much important work has been done prior to the DPER launch and it important to feature some of this work as it provides context to the Irish Open Data Story.
The public sector in collaboration with the private and academic sectors have been advocating for both open data and open government for some time. For example, In June of 2011, National Cross Industry Working Group was formed “to support and inform government in the delivery of their Open Data objectives. [They were] committed to realising Open Data opportunities for Government, society and industry while simultaneously re-enforcing [Ireland’s] international reputation as a global technology hub”. Their Report includes recommendations, many of which were included in the DPER/INSIGHT reports and a history of open data activities from 2009-2011. WG members also held a number of events as part of Open Data Week between Nov. 7-11 in 2011. Shrotly thereafter, on November 17, 2011, the DPER as part of its 2011 Public Sector Reform Plan includes making data more accessible and opening government more broadly. The current DPER/INSIGHT reports are therefore not the first time the government announces open data and open government plans.
data.gov.ie is also not the first portal as other levels of government, civil society and academia, as well as the private sector have: produced their own portals, have integrated portals; have shared some of their own datasets; have added value to some; have produced some civic apps and have helped shape the discourse of openess.
Many of the early public and academic sector data dissemination initiatives, in Ireland would not be considered as pure ‘open data’ according to the Open Definition. Some of the County level portals listed below might not meet all of the open criteria, since many stipulate that data cannot be used for commercial purposes or passed onto third party entities. The Fingal Open Data portal is the exception. These would be classified as open access to data projects. They are nonetheless precursors to the ‘open data’ DPER launch. These initiatives have been sharing their data as part of their normal dissemination practices or as an institutional policy. For example, statistical and geospatial data producing communities in particular are renowned for their good practices in Ireland and internationally.
The following is a selection of open access, open data and transparency initiatives in Ireland:
Kildare Street (launched 2009) makes parliamentary records accessible and records what parliamentarians say and do;
Active Citizen (founded 2010) has been working with andadvocating for Ireland becoming a member of the Open Government Partnership since 2011, and develop. In 2012 an OGP Business Case which included the fostering of an open data ecosystem was provided to DPER. It founded the Open Knowledge Foundation Ireland local group (2013) which became OKF Ireland Chapter (2014);
CKan Open Data Portal (launched September 2013), it is no longer on line. An inventory of close to 200 public sector data initiatives were added into this demo portal during a one day hackathon;
AIRO.ie (All-Island Research Observatory launched 2010), disseminates datasets from agencies both from the North and the South as interactive online graphs and maps and also in an open data store. It was initially the Cross-Border Regional Research Observatory founded in 2006.
Public, Academic and Private Sector Partnership
Dublinked.ie(Launched June 2011), a partnership project which disseminates a variety of static and real time data.
Public & Private Sector
There are far too many open access to data initiatives in Ireland to list here, the DPER/INSIGHT Data Audit Report provides a partial list, organizations like AIRO have created their own inventories which they make accessible in their Data Store, the Irish Spatial Data Exchange(ISDE) has integrated the metadata of a number of important data catalogs, dublinked.ie lists hundreds in their portal and the Ckan portal, now offline, listed close to 200 initiatives in a one day hackathon. The private sector also disseminates data on behalf and with the public sector. ESRI Ireland for examples disseminate data in a number of ways, as products and as web services services. Finally, there is also the GeoPortal.ie which was developed by the Department of Environment, Community & Local Government (DECLG) and Ordnance Survey Ireland (OSi) with guidance and oversight fromIrish public bodies on the Irish Spatial Data Infrastructure (ISDI) project steering committee.
The following is a very small list of how some public sector organization open access to data initiatives disseminate their data:
integrated and interoperability – spatial data infrastructures, and spatial data strategies are integrated web based geospatial data delivery processes that include standards, portals, interoperability and framework data. Geoportal, ESRI, AIRO, EPA, Marine, Fingal, Roscommon, DECLG mentioned earlier and many others have been disseminating their data in this way for quite some time.
terms and conditions – some data are shared according to pre-existing agreements between researcher and research participant (e.g., Irish Qualitative Data Archive);
practices – whereby data that are value added (e.g., cleaned, aggregated, geocoded, mapped, visualized, analyzed) often in partnership with a public sector institution are simply disseminated as data or rendered into maps (E.g., All-Island Research Observatory).
Linked data: data are made discoverable according to linked data principlessuch as the Central Statistics Office.
Shaping the Terrain:
There a number of initiatives that help shape debates on openness and transparency and some of these are:
TheStory.ie sheds light on law, policy and freedom of information in Ireland (based on Gavin’s Blog launched in 2002);
Creative Commons Ireland produces open licences enabling data producers to share their data more openly (founded in 2003);
Coder Dojo builds capacity by teaching people to code and to understand open source and open data (founded in 2011);
advocating open access publishing, Open Access Ireland (committee formed in 2012).
Code for Ireland (launched January 2014), apps are voluntarily created in a hackathon type of environment with open data, or data are produced to address civic issues and these are rendered into apps.
A number of app contests and hackathons have been taking place since 2010.
Indicators and Evaluation
Ireland’s openness has also been ranked according to a number of measures, and these too have inspired action within and outside the public service. These ranking schemes were discussed in an earlier post entitled on Mapping Openness and Transparency.
Research
Finally, there are research projects which are part of a new emerging field called critical data studies, The Programmable City Project being one of the few doing so internationally, and data discovery and semantic interoperability projects such as the INSIGHT Linked Data project based at NUIG.
Open Data Assemblage
The above is by no means complete nor exhaustive list of projects and activities. For instance the open source community; the private sector (e.g., IBM); lawyers, geomaticians, scientists, programmers, journalists, business associations, citizen scientists, and other individuals; are part of this landscape. As are those who provide collaborative working spaces (e.g., T-Cube); sponsors of open data events (i.e., ESRI) or donate space (i.e., the Engine Yard, Facebook); informal virtual server use arrangements, or the library community. Furthermore, only the OGP, EU and OKF are mentioned as international influences, yet there are other national programs (e.g., UK, US), NGOs, standards organizations, and data infrastructures that are a part of this story. A data assemblage analysis will be used as a way to situate these actors in the open data and the data landscape in Ireland in general.
Some motivating factors and issues:
Open data stakeholders prior to the launch of the DPER/INSIGHT documents and the portal, were motivated into action because of a number of issues beyond transparency, efficiency and collaboration. The following is a sample of some of the more high level issues:
the disappointment and missed public benefit opportunity of the postal code system (eircode.ie) in Ireland, both how it is being deployed, the cost recovery model and the regressive licencing regime (See Map Scribbles for details). the fees, and general lackadaisical approach to fulfilling Freedom of Information requests, See The Story for backgrounder.
the cost recovery and licencing practices of the Ordnance Survey Ireland (OSI). OSI produces important framework data that are mostly inaccessible to civil society, and are costly even to the public sector, who also have to pay for them. The OSI has however begun to share some of its data to some academic institutions. Beyond access, it means that important work is not being done, effort is being duplicated, and framework data standards are being undermined as people are creating their own datasets. Open Street Map in Ireland is an OSI workaround, and in the UK, the lack of access to OS data spearheaded the UK Guardian open data campaign.
Uncertainty about the procurement agreements between the city and the private sector regarding access to data and the science behind the deployment of smart city like sensor initiatives.
These issues have not gone away, and some were debated during the Open Government Partnership meetings in Dublin, have been discussed in the media, and the DPER/INSIGHT Best Practice Handbook briefly addresses others.
Local Context:
Finally, the local context matters, the history of the public sector and its reform, the political economy which includes foreign direct investment and the political system in general provide a backdrop for the unique made in Ireland version of open data. This will be studied more fully as part of the Programmable City genealogical and data assemblage research.
Until then, this sketch of the Irish open data landscape illustrates the rich culture of openness in Ireland, has identified some programs, stakeholders and issues that pre-existed release of data.gov.ie and the DPER/INSIGHT documents. The documents did not discuss these projects in any great detail, which is unfortunate as much expertise exists in and outside of the public sector in Ireland and capturing best practices and mobilizing that knowledge would be beneficial. Others were very briefly addressed in the Open Government Plan.
The DPER did however invite some of these actors to their July 29th and the up and coming September meetings and there is now a mandate for greater collaboration between stakeholders and the government. And DPER is soliciting feedback more generally on these plans.
These seminar videos explore systems such as The City Dashboard and the rise of the Internet of Things (IoT) in terms of data collection, visualization and analysis. Joining these up creates a move towards the Smart City and via innovations in IoT a look towards augmented reality pointing towards the the creation of a ‘Smart Citizen‘, ‘the Quantified Self’ and ultimately a Smart City.
Bio: Dr Andrew Hudson-Smith is Director of the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA) at The Bartlett, University College London, Reader in Digital Urban Systems and Editor-in-Chief of Future Internet Journal. He is also an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a member of the Greater London Authority Smart London Board and Course Founder of the MRes in Advanced Spatial Analysis and Visualisation and MSc in Smart Cities at University College London.
While there I was struck by the number of times maps were displayed. The mapping of public policy issues related to openness seems to have become a normalized communication method to show how countries fare according to a number of indicators that aim to measure how transparent, prone to corruption, engagemed civil society is, or how open in terms of data, open in terms of information, and open in terms of government nation states are.
What the maps show is how jurisdictionally bound up policy, law and regulatory matters concerning data are. The maps reveal how techno-political processes are sociospatial practices and how these sociospatial matters are delineated by territorial boundaries. What is less obvious, are the narratives about how the particularities of the spatial relations within these territories shape how the same policies, laws and regulation are differentially enacted.
Below are 10 world maps which depict a wide range of indicators and sub-indicators, indices, scorecards, and standards. Some simply show if a country is a member of an institution or is a signatory to an international agreement. Most are interactive except for one, they all provide links to reports and methodologies, some more extensive than others. Some of the maps are a call to action; others are created to solicit input from the crowd, while most are created to demonstrate how countries fare against each other according to their schemes. One map is a discovery map to a large number of indicators found in an indicator portal while another shows the breadth of civil society participation. These maps are created in a variety of customized systems while three rely on third party platforms such as Google Maps or Open Street Maps. They are published by a variety of organizations such as transnational institutions, well resourced think tanks or civil society organizations.
We do not know the impact these maps have on the minds of the decision makers for whom they are aimed, but I do know that these are often shown as backdrops to discussions at international meetings such as the OGP to make a point about who is and is not in an open and transparent club. They are therefore political tools, used to do discursive work. They do not simply represent the open data landscape, but actively help (re)produce it. As such, they demand further scrutiny as to the data assemblage surrounding them (amalgams of systems of thought, forms of knowledge, finance, political economies, governmentalities and legalities, materialities and infrastructures, practices, organisations and institutions, subjectivities and communities, places, and marketplaces), the instrumental rationality underpinning them, and the power/knowledge exercised through them.
This is work that we are presently conducting on the Programmable City project, which will complement a critical study concerning city data, indicators, benchmarking and dashboards, and we’ll return to them in future blog posts.
Users land on a blank blue world map of countries delineated by a thick white line, from which they select a country of interest. Once selected a series of indicators and indices such as the ‘Corruption measurement tools’, ‘Measuring transparency’ and ‘Other governance and development indicators’ appear. These are measured according rankings to a given n, scored as a percentage and whether or not the country is a signatory to a convention and if it is enforced. The numbers are derived from national statistics and surveys. The indicators are:
Corruption Perceptions Index (2013), Transparency International
Control of Corruption (2010), World Bank dimension of Worldwide Governance Indicators
The Bribe Payer’s Index (2011), Transparency International
Global Corruption Barometer (2013), Transparency International
OECD Anti-Bribery Convention (2011)
Financial Secrecy Index (2011), Tax Justice Network
Open Budget Index (2010), International Budget Partnership
Global Competitiveness Index (2012-2013), World Economic Forum Global Competitiveness Index
Judicial Independence (2011-2012), World Economic Forum Global Competitiveness Index
Human Development Index (2011), United Nations
Rule of Law (2010), World Bank dimension of Worldwide Governance Indicators
Press Freedom Index (2011-2012) Reporters Without Borders
Voice & Accountability (2010), World Bank dimension of Worldwide Governance Indicators
By clicking on the question mark beside the indicators, a pop up window with some basic metadata appears. The window describes what is being measured and points to its source.
The page includes links to related reports, and a comments section where numerous and colourful opinions are provided!
Users land on a Google Map API mashup of Government, Citizen and Private Open Government initiatives. They are given the option to zoom in to see local initiatives. In this case, users are led to a typology of initiatives which define what Open Government means from civil society’s point of view.
Initiatives are classified with respect to the following categories 1) Transparency, 2) Participation and 3) Accountability. The development of the Open Government Standards are being coordinated by “Access Info Europe, a human rights organisation dedicated to the promotion and protection of the right of access to information in Europe and the defence of civil liberties and human rights with the aim of facilitating public participation in the decision-making process and demanding responsibility from governments”.
Definitions, parameters and criteria for a number of sub-indicators are being crowsourced in the online forms like the following for Openness:
The following is a list of standards that are a currently under development.
This is an interactive Open Street Map (OSM) Mapbox map depicting the locations where there is Global Integrity fieldwork national reports arranged by the year these were published. Reports are called Country Assessments and each includes: a qualitative Reporter’s Notebook and a quantitative Integrity Indicators scorecard.
The Integrity Indicators scorecard assesses “the existence, effectiveness, and citizen access to key governance and anti-corruption mechanisms through more than 300 actionable indicators. They are scored by a lead in-country researcher and blindly reviewed by a panel of peer reviewers, a mix of other in-country experts as well as outside experts. Reporter’s Notebooks are reported and written by in-country journalists and blindly reviewed by the same peer review panel”.
Users select a country, and below the map a number of scorecard indicators appear. Scorecard indicators are arranged into 6 major categories:
Non-Governmental Organizations, Public Information and Media
Elections
Government Conflicts of Interest Safeguards & Checks and Balances
Public Administration and Professionalism
Government Oversight and Controls
Anti-Corruption Legal Framework, Judicial Impartiality, and Law Enforcement Professionalism
Users can then access how each score was derived by following sub-category links. Below is an example of legislation and the score associated with the Political Financing Transparency indicator which is a sub-class of the Elections category.
PDF copies of the reports are also available, as are spreadsheets of the data used to derive them.
This is an interactive map depicting the World Bank’s Global Integrity Index, which is one of its Actionable Governance Indicators (AGIs). AGIs “focus on specific and narrowly-defined aspects of governance, rather than broad dimensions. These indicators are clearly defined, providing information on the discrete elements of governance reforms, often capturing data on the “missing middle” in the outcome chain”. The map allows users to select from a drop down menu which includes a subset of AGI indicator – the portal contains thousands. The interactive and downloadable map aims to graphically demonstrate the progress of governance reform worldwide. The map is but a small picture of what the Portal contains and below is a Governance At A Glance country report for Ireland.
And here is a data availability table, also for Ireland.
The interactive map depicts the countries that have signed onto the Open Government Partnership and in which cohort they belong. Users can select their country of choice which hyperlinks to that country’s membership status and its progress to date in meeting the criteria for membership, where it ranks in terms of commitment and links to related documents such as action plans and progress reports. It is interesting to note, that the Independent Review Mechanism reports are not included in this list. Canada’s IRM report was submitted in 2014.
The Open Data Barometer map depicts the 77 countries the Open Data Institute has evaluated. This map assesses how open data policies are implemented in these countries according to three main indicators:
Readiness of:
government,
citizens and civil society and
entrepreneurs and business,
Implementation based on the availability a variety of datasets within the following sub-categories:
accountability
social policy
Innovation
The following Emerging Impacts :
Political
Social
Economic
These are also graphically depicted in a radar chart, as well as a bubble chart where the size of the bubble represents the availability of the datasets per category and if these sets meet the Open Definition Criteria. The data and associated methodologies are explained in the website about the report.
This is a static map depicting where Open Contracting Support and Tools are implemented. Sadly, the 5 indicators depicted on the map were not explained or described. I would have to contact them at a later time to find out!
This map is depicting the findings of the World Freedom Index Report for 2014, with a particular focus on how countries rose and fell from the previous year. 180 Countries are scored against the following criteria which are based partly on a questionnaire, violence committed against journalists the algorithm of which is clearly defined in the PDF copy of the report. Data and the report are fully downloadable, and more detailed maps with a legend are provided in the report itself and a methodology report.
This is an interactive map that depicts the pledges made by nationally elected political officials to the European Parliament and asking them to commit to “stand-up for citizens and democracy against the excessive lobbying influence of banks and big business in the EU?” Mousing over a country triggers a pop-up menu which lists which party has made a commitment, while clicking on the map directs users to the page below which is a tool whereby citizens can fill in a form letter and have it sent to their elected officials to solicit them to pledge.
This is a partially curated and partially crowsourced map on the OGP Civil Society Hub Website. The starred drops represent countries that are official OGP members, while the red drops represent any number of civil society organizations that have in some way engaged with the OGP, some of which are transnational while others are national or sub-national entities. Once a location is selected, a pop-up menu appears that includes a national flag, a link to that nation state’s official OGP member site, and provides users with the option to pick from who is involved, a selection of topic areas or a list of information resources. The map is a means to find people and activities and also a means by which to have people self identify and be recognized as civil society actors but also to connect people.
Session 4: Programmable City Project Team, included project introductions from Postdoctoral Researchers and PhD students. Here are links to the slides the complete program.
Robert Bradshaw, Smart Bikeshare
Dr Sophia Maalsen, How are discourses and practices of city governance translated into code?
Jim Merricks White, Towards a Digital Urban Commons:Developing a situated computing praxis for a more direct democracy
Alan Moore, The Role of Dublin in the Global Innovation Network of Cloud Computing
Dr Leighton Evans, How does software alter the forms and nature of work?
Darach Mac Donncha, ‘How software is discursively produced and legitimised by vested interests’
