This is an update on the projects which have been funded by the Release of Data Fund. It is wonderful to see how much data and capacity has already been realised from a relatively small fund through the creative proposals the Open Data community has put forward for ODUG to consider.
The process of selection and due-diligence for the allocation of funding (also checking that the agreed results are being delivered) has been light-touch, but exemplary. This demonstrates how a government funding process can be both robust and speedy. This process was not burdened down with too much bureaucracy; we said “Apply for this money, tell-us what you want to do with it, be sure that you can do it in a few months, be prepared for us to report publicly on what you are doing and whether you are on track, and be prepared to share your results openly with others”. We received over 100 applications for funding and 30 projects were approved.
The Release of Data Fund was announced in the Autumn Statement 2011. There were three open bidding tranches. ODUG was made responsible for collaborating with the wider Open Data User community to prioritise those bids we felt were the strongest and most cost effective. The priority bids were assessed by a decision-making panel including representatives from the Public Sector Transparency Board (PSTB), the Cabinet Office and both the Central and Local Breakthrough Funds. The Minister for the Cabinet Office, Francis Maude gave approval and then Cabinet Office officials pushed the bids through the internal finance (small gripe - the slowest part of the process!) to get the funds sent.
Here’s what has been achieved so far through the projects the Release of Data Fund has funded:
|
Project |
Owner | What the project delivers | Funding (£k) | Project Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Tranche 1 – Total £1.5m |
||||
|
Housing Big Data: From Big Data to Open Data |
The Housing Association’s Charitable Trust |
Anonymised extracts of Housing Association Data released as Open Data |
90.0 |
Completed |
|
Leeds Data Mill |
Leeds City Council |
Launch of Leeds Data Mill including a vast number of local data sets released as Open Data and open source CKAN code for other Local Authorities to use |
100.0 |
Completed |
| Data downloads from legislation.gov.uk | The National Archives | Makes UK legislation data available for bulk download. Brings UK into line with best practise on legislation data | 75.0 | Completed |
| Local Government Data Incentive Scheme | Local Government Association | Incentive scheme to encourage Local Authorities to release local datasets across three themes (Public Toilets, Planning and Licensing) against standard schemas to start to build open national views of open local data. | 730.0 | In Progress |
| CKAN Data Issue Tracker | Open Knowledge Foundation | Support for easy reporting of issues with datasets lost, missing, lacking documentation. Allows better monitoring of data repository quality. Available for reuse on CKAN | 150.0 | Completed |
| UK Local Open Data Census | Open Knowledge Foundation | Survey of the availability of Open Data at local and city level across the UK | 95.0 | Completed |
| Public Sector Open Data Training | Open Data Institute | Make foundation level Open Data training available to individual public servants | 50.0 | In Progress |
| Public Sector Open Data Training | Open Knowledge Foundation | Make foundation level Open Data training available to individual public servants | 50.0 | In Progress |
| Open Data Procurement | Open Data Institute | Development of guidance and support to enable systemic changes in IT procurement to fully support Open Data in new IT systems | 100.0 | In Progress |
| Troubled Families Ecosystem | Tameside Council | A ‘local data ecosystem’ to provide standards and a framework that facilitates data linking across policy areas to improve insights and include opinions from citizens and third party sources. | 50.0 | In Progress |
| Tranche 2 – Total £1.34m | ||||
| Flood Data | Environment Agency | Enable the release of National Flood Risk Assessment as Open Data to allow wider use and analysis of potential future flooding events | 337.0 | In Progress |
| Open Addressing | Open Data Institute | Project to deliver a genuinely Open National Address Dataset for the UK based on data which is not subject to third party Intellectual Property restrictions and using a crowd-sourcing approach | 411.6 | In Progress |
| National Cancer Intelligence | Public Health England | To deliver multiple anonymised cancer datasets as Open Data | 200.0 | In Progress |
| Trafford Innovation Lab | Trafford Council | A local initiative to bring together stakeholders to identify and release more local data as Open Data | 50.0 | In Progress |
| Greater Manchester Infrastructure Platform | Greater Manchester LEP, (New Economy Manchester) | To develop an open interactive mapping tool of critical infrastructure in Greater Manchester (GM). | 330.0 | In Progress |
| Public Access, Births, Marriages, Deaths | Free UK Genealogy | To provide a publicly accessible database of the index of Births, Marriages and Death between 1983 and 2006 | 12.0 | Due diligence |
| Tranche 3 – Total £1.12m | ||||
| Open Data Publisher Maturity | Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs | Create a tool for DEFRA bodies to assess their maturity as Open Data publishers | 58.0 | Starting |
| Cambridgeshire Open-Data Partners: Open Technology for an Open Partnership | Cambridgeshire County Council | To spread best-practise in Open Data across a partnership of public sector data owners in Cambridgeshire | 122.0 | Starting |
| Educational Establishments Term Dates Database | Traveline Information Limited (TIL) | To build a database of academic term dates for educational establishments that can be referenced to existing Transport Open Data sources and DfES databases | 16.8 | Starting |
| National Operator Codes Database | Traveline Information Limited (TIL) | To build an open National Operator Codes (NOC) database for transport operators | 66.0 | Starting |
| Buy Social Directory Open Data | Social Enterprise UK | To track government spending with Social Enterprises by assigning URI codes and making them open | 47.0 | Starting |
| Electoral Open Data Publishing Platform and Standards | Open Data Institute | Create an open source platform and a set of tools and standards that are suitable for local and central UK Government to publish open electoral and voting data on the web | 109.8 | Due diligence |
| Releasing Nature's Hidden Knowledge | National Biodiversity Network Trust | Capture and make available 15 priority biodiversity datasets. This amounts to approximately half a million individual wildlife observations for England. | 148.8 | Starting |
| Anonymisation Capability | UK Anonymisation Network | To raise the capability of organisations in reducing the risk of releasing identifiable personal information when releasing Open Data | 76.8 | Starting |
| Birmingham Data and Skills Hub | Birmingham City Council | To develop an online hub and tools to release local data as Open Data | 123.7 | Starting |
| Giving patients and service users access to Mental Health Data | Open Public Services Network | To deliver Information about the quality of mental health counselling services as Open Data | 85.2 | Starting |
| Open Data in the Adult Social Care sector | FutureGov | To map and audit datasets to release suitable datasets on Adult Social Care as Open Data | 95.8 | Starting |
| My London | Greater London Authority | To deliver a showcase for linked API accessible Open Data | 33.5 | Starting |
| Improving the Publication of Public Finances | Open Knowledge Foundation | To develop a Spend Reporting Dashboard to track publication and quality of spend data released as Open Data | 80.0 | Starting |
| Bridging the Gap – Enabling and Automating Data Donation | Milton Keynes Council | To work in conjunction with the Open University to develop skills and capacity of Local Authority Data Owners, their partners and the community. Development of open APIs to curate and disseminate high-value datasets as Open Data | 62.0 | Starting |
Here are some quotes from successful bidders:
“Leeds Data Mill was one of the projects selected in the first tranche of funding from the Release of Data Fund. The support from Government has been fantastic and it’s a great achievement for the city to be recognised as a leader in this field. Leeds Data Mill is working on a series of projects to help us to have greater insight into the city and to effectively plan and manage resources and bring communities together.”
Councillor Lucinda Yeadon (Leeds County Council)
“This funding is fantastic news and has allowed us to be innovative in finding solutions to enhance our open transport data to make it even more useful to our users and customers. This will create possibilities for new and better quality products and services for people travelling in GB”.
Julie Williams (Traveline)
"Support from the ODUG / Cabinet Office has made a huge difference, allowing us, for example, to provide training in essential data skills to hundreds of people from government officials to activists as part of our School of Data program".
Rufus Pollock (Open Knowledge Foundation)
"The #goodlaw hackathon showed what's possible with legislation data. The RoDF helped us release that data, in bulk, in easy formats to use".
John Sheridan (National Archives)
“Addresses are an essential part of the UK’s national information infrastructure. They are used in a huge number of datasets, from lists of schools to car parks. Open address information helps to improve data quality and add value to data. This grant will help to explore how modern, collaborative approaches to data management can reduce maintenance costs, improve quality and enhance the utility of address data.”
Jeni Tennison (Open Data Institute)
Our next challenge is to publicise these projects to make sure best practise is shared. We also wanted to demonstrate to government that it is possible to achieve tangible results really quickly in the technology sector and that things can and do go right with technical projects if they are approached with the right level of specification, expectation and governance. We now want to make the case for further funding to help the community deliver more great stuff! So please share these results widely.
We will be publishing a full report on these Release of Data Fund projects before the end of the financial year; covering the details of the finished projects (Tranche 1) including case studies and also the latest progress on the ongoing and newly started projects (Tranches 2 & 3).
In the meantime well done to all the successful bidders for these funds – competition was tough!
Heather Savory
Chair Open Data User Group (ODUG)
December 2014
7 comments
Comment by Anonymous posted on
access to the document is the first base of open
Comment by Pablo Bones posted on
Hi - is it possible that we could get links to all the relevant projects within this page rather than having to go off and navigate individual websites to try and find information? Thanks, Pablo.
Comment by jamie_whyte posted on
Hello! Here's a link to the blog for Trafford Innovation and Intelligence Lab - http://traffordinnovationlab.wordpress.com
Thanks
Jamie
Comment by Pablo Bones posted on
That's great, thanks Jamie.
Comment by Owen Boswarva posted on
I've made the table above into a spreadsheet and annotated it with links to further information about the projects, where available: Release of Data Fund projects.
-- Owen Boswarva, 10/12/2014
Comment by Pablo Bones posted on
That is perfect. Thank you Owen.
Comment by michaelg posted on
Please can you kindly allocate funds to the DVLA to release a useful and meaningful vechicle dataset.