Open Data: Resources and Tools

Introduction

The following links provide a brief introduction to datasets, tools and examples for working with open data. The lists of country and city open data portals are extremely incomplete, and just there to get you started.

What is open data?

Openness has a definition: The Open Definition

Other key points:

• The data must be machine readable (this doesn’t just mean digital)
• The data must be published under an open licence (e.g. Creative Commons, Open Data Commons, Open Government Licence. See also this Publisher’s Guide to Open Licenses.

Key not-for-profit organisations involved in promoting and using open data:

• Open Knowledge International
• OpenStreetMap
• Wikimedia
• Sunlight Foundation
• Open Data Institute

A quick look at Open Government Data

Overviews:

• Country Open Data Census
• Datahub
• Wikipedia Open Data page
• List of open data catalogues
• Open data being used in ‘real life’

Trans-national initiatives:

• Open Government Partnership
• G8 Open Data Charter
• INSPIRE Directive
• EU Public Datasets

Some Country-level Open Data Portals:

• UK Government Data
• US Government Data
• French Government Data
• Indian Government Data

UK City and Local Authority Portals:

• London
• Manchester
• UK Department for Communities and Local Government
• OpenlyLocal

Scotland:

• Scotland’s Open Data Catalogues
• Nesta’s Open Data Scotland Initiative
• The Scottish Government Data Strategy

Miscellaneous list of other places:

• Amsterdam
• Gent
• San Francisco
• New York

Resources for learning about data

Forumms, courses and tools:

• The Open Knowledge Discussion Forum
• data.gov.uk intro to Open Data
• School of Data Courses
• School of Data Tools
• More School of Data Tools
• Euclid (Linked Data)
• Introduction to SPARQL

Tabular Data

• 2014: The Year of CSV
• Versioning CSV
• Google Fusion tables tutorial
• More on Fusion tables

Dataviz:

• Data visualisation resources
• D3
• D3 Gallery
• Big list of D3 examples
• Raw: vector-based visualisations
• Interactive Data Visualisation Book by Scott Murray (online)

Map APIs

• EDINA Map Slides (2013) (PDF download)
• EDINA Map Example HTML (2013) (ZIP download)

SNS Linked data:

• Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation as linked data
• Schools in Scotland
• Dataset relating schools and data zones according to where the pupils from the school live
• Documentation on accessing OpenDataScotland data by API
• Tutorial on visualising data using D3.js and SPARQL

So you have a cool idea?

Before investing too much time in starting a business around open data, have a look at what others have done:

• Code for America apps
• CfA Commons
• Knight Foundation funded projects
• data.gov.uk apps
• data.gov apps
• The Best Planning Apps for 2014
• London Air
• YRS Hacks

More open data

• Guardian Newspaper datasets
• Edinburgh Apps
• YRS Datasets

Please send suggestions, corrections and updates to ewan [at] inf.ed.ac.uk

Last edited: 9 October 2016