Jason Hare's Data Management Blog

  Friday, 27th September 2013:  A CKAN hackathon takes place tomorrow ( Saturday ,  28th September ) at TCube in Dublin bringing together IT specialists, political representatives and members of the public with an interest in making data open.    Developers, designers, journalists, academics, policy makers, creative thinkers, civil servants, entrepreneurs and interested parties are invited to the event which aims to provide the people of Ireland with a single access point to the information collected by their government by deploying a Central Open Data Portal.  Open, usable and available knowledge will lead to greater transparency for Irish citizens and accountability from Irish representatives.  Hackathon organizer and Ambassador for Ireland of the Open Knowledge Foundation, Denis Parfenov, commented: "We strongly believe that comprehensive and meaningful information has the potential to empower better evidence based decision-making for all of us: abo...

The first day of the training course Open Data in Practice in the Open Data Institute. The first day included 8 hours with short breaks for coffee. Our class of 12 people listened to a few lectures and learned about the world of open data (Discovering Data on the Web). The lectures led by David Tarrant of the University of Southampton were lively and moved along at a brisk pace. The format of the presentation was accessible and an accommodating way to learn about open data, the evolution of the web, data formats, why and where these formats are used. Dave also delivered a separate lecture on related data and the RDF-model of data. This was a much more interesting area of open data. I will organize and publish my thoughts and notes I made ​​during the class. Amazingly, our group included several people I have known only virtually. One of these virtual friends was Jason Hare, who I met on the Internet a few months ago on the basis of open data. He heads a wonderful project on open data o...

In my previous blog posting I discussed some of the problems with accountability data schools generate and the accessibility of that data by parents, business people and tax payers. The accountability portals and school websites do not speak to the issues that these groups of citizens are seeking. Parents in particular are looking for ways to engage with the district and that want that engagement to be data driven. That is, decisions by school administrators, parents, voters on referendums should be based on data rather than Colbert's brilliant fake word "Truthiness". Apples2Apples: The Good Stuff What could a data driven school portal look like? It could be a Socrata or CKAN instance run by the district or parents. One does not have to imagine what a school open data portal would like. +Jeanne Marie Olson pointed me to CPS Apples2Apples . This is an excellent example of open data using open source tools and crowd-sourcing the effort to create an engaging data experienc...

  The School District Data Deluge I can think of two good reasons why the K-12 vertical is a natural fit for an open data initiative. School performance data: School performance data directly affects the economy through home sales the vitality of a neighborhood community centered around a school. Open data needs to start early as part of the class curriculum and be blended with STEM subjects. Students will need to understand data, how it is consumed and how it can be effectively produced and accessed. Most school districts across North Carolina and elsewhere are still in the process of building their data system technology capacity. An examination of district and state level capacity with respect to data systems needs to take into account the multiple types of systems containing data concerning students and other aspects of the education system. Data is not just generated around student performance and accountability. Public safety, transportation, spending per capita on students, ...