12 reasons your open data isn't really open

Open data for humans

12 March

2018

Maarten Lambrechts

@maartenzam

Open Belgium

Louvain-la-Neuve

I don't want to criticise open data publishers

I want to raise a concern

In the Flemish parliament, you have people working hard and people doing nothing.

Open data?

Everyone must be able to use, reuse and redistribute — there should be no discrimination against fields of endeavour or against persons or groups.

Is your data accessible to non-programmers?

I

Is your data human readable?

By other humans than you and your peers?

Provide non-technical and easy-to-digest views of your data

Do you provide documentation, examples and tutorials on how to use the data?

II

Are you giving context to your data?

III

Are you publishing the data (+docs!) in more than 1 language?

IV

Are you publishing docs compatible with screen readers?

V

The data must also be available in a convenient and modifiable form.

Opening data better

>

Opening more data

VI

Are you marketing your datasets?

VII

Promote your "best" data (newest, most relevant, highest quality, ...)

 

Track usage and promote most popular datasets

Are you providing previews of your data?

VIII

Users want everything in one place

IX

Is your UI user tested?

X

Is your open data searchable?

XI

Avoid hiding data in the deep web

 

Have good descriptions, with the right keywords

Is your open data embeddable?

XII

Thanks!

www.maartenlambrechts.com

@maartenzam