The path to 5-star open data: Government and aid

Steve Bratt at the World Wide Web Foundation wrote a pertinent post back in July about Open Government Data in the Caribbean.

I want to highlight a slide from his talk, which was in turn based on linked data issues detailed on w3.org and on a more recent talk by Tim Berners-Lee at the Gov 2.0 Expo earlier this year.

It’s the “Path to 5-star open government data” which I think is a pretty reasonable rating system for opening up any kind of data.

In order of increasing stariness, we have:

• 1. Put your data on the web(any format, just get it out there, overcoming social issues)
• 2. Make it available in a machine readable format (e.g. a spreadsheet or database dump instead of a PDF or image scan.)
• 3. Use a open, standard format (e.g. a domain specific XML (like IATI), RDF, JSON even CSV)
• 4. Use an open, linked data format (URLs for all things and properties so people can point to your data)
• 5. Link your data to other people’s data (Provide context and relationships and map equivalent properties etc.)

So, my answer to @BallsForAfrica‘s question is: Yes! Incoporating a map to show where your money goes is a very good start indeed.

I think one overcomes plenty of social and organisational issues by initially sharing data in this simple way. You’re already ahead of the pack in terms of geo-coding your activities – the fine folks over atAidData have been working hard on this; Owen Barder wrote a a short overview and links to the video describing their work.

And because I know you’re all curious – the core of the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI)is really just 4 things:

1. Agreement on what to publish; (e.g. project information, expected outputs and outcomes)
2. Common definitions for sharing information; (to make shared information comparable)
3. A common electronic data format; (making it easier and cheaper to share this information)
4. A code of conduct setting out what donors commit to publishing, how this will be made available, and how donors will be held accountable for compliance.

So when viewed in light of the above: sharing your project and finance data via a map interface gets you a star; show your source spreadsheets/CSVs for another star, whack it all into IATI XML and that third star is all yours; give your data some URLs and connect it to everybody else’s and you’re a 5-star transparonaut!