A report by Wendy Hall, Nigel Shadbolt, Thanassis Tiropanis, Kieron O’Hara and Tim Davies, describing the ways in which the charitable sector can utilise Open Data to improve intelligence gathering, the targeting of services, knowledge sharing and collaboration with other organisations. The report also discusses technical and organisational challenges in the use of Open Data and makes recommendations for its implementation in the charitable sector.
Research paper by Tope Omitola, Andre Freitas, Edward Curry, Sean O’Riain, Nicholas Gibbins and Nigel Shadbolt on a formal model of IDT (Interactive Data Transformation). IDT tools allow re-purposing of data by standardisation of heterogeneous data sets. They can also perform data quality assurance. The paper discusses the implementation and validation of the model on the IDT platform Google Refine.
A paper by Igor Popov, M. C. Schraefel, Gianluca Correndo, Wendy Hall and Nigel Shadbolt on “Mash-point:” a new framework for a user-friendly system to enable access to linked data.
A paper by Hugh Glaser and Harry Halpin, published in the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) Internet Computing magazine, suggesting various methods for using linked data to solve the problem of identity.
A research paper by Yunjia Li, Mike Wald, Tope Omitola, Nigel Shadbolt and Gary Wills on using Linked Data principles to reference, describe, interlink or search media fragments (e.g. an area of an image or a segment of a video). The paper includes a discussion of the implementation of a model to allow Google to index media fragments, which will increase their online presence.
A research paper by Max Van Kleek, Daniel A. Smith, Nigel R. Shadbolt and M. C. Schraefel on the problems and frustrations of using disparate systems for managing personal data. A new web-standards based architecture for consolidating personal information systems called the WebBox is proposed.
The UK Government has announced up to £10m funding for a new world-leading Open Data Institute to innovate, exploit and research Open Data opportunities. It will be co-directed by Professor Nigel Shadbolt and Professor Sir Tim Berners-Lee.
The new Institute will be based in Shoreditch, the newly designated ‘Tech City UK’ area of London, where there is a huge concentration of Web 2.0 start-ups, and it will involve business and academic institutions.
The Open Data Institute is intended to help demonstrate the commercial value of public data and the impact of open data policies on the realisation of this value. The Institute will also help develop the capability of UK businesses to exploit open data opportunities, with support from University researchers. It will help the public sector use its own data more effectively and it will engage with developers and the private and public sectors to build supply chains and commercial outlets for public data. The Government is to commit up to £10m over five years to support the Open Data Institute through the Technology Strategy Board – in a match-funded collaboration with industry and academic centres.
Professor Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, Public Sector Transparency board member and new director of the ODI, said: “One of the reasons the Web worked was because people reused each other’s content in ways never imagined by those who created it. The same will be true of Open Data. The Institute will allow us to provide the tools, skills and methods to support the creation of new value using Open Government Data.”
Professor Nigel Shadbolt, Founding Partner of Seme4 Ltd, Head of the Web and Internet Science Group at the University of Southampton, Public Sector Transparency board member and new director of the ODI said:
“Data is the new raw material of the 21st century and the UK is world-leading in the release of Open Government Data. Open Government Data not only increases transparency and accountability but also creates economic and social value. The Institute will help business to realise this value and foster a generation of open data entrepreneurs.”
The new Institute is one of a number of measures that the Government announced today as part of a larger initiative to boost UK economic growth.
In collaboration with the EnAKTing Project, Seme4 have produced See UK, a demonstrator that gives an end-user visualisation of multiple Open Datasets against a geographic background.
See UK
(http://apps.seme4.com/see-uk/)
is a simple visualisation of data that has geographic aspects
and has been published as machine-interpretable Linked Data.
See UK uses data that has been sourced from data.gov.uk and processed
into Linked Data where necessary, but is also designed to be able to use
other sources where available. All the datasets are then enriched, by
calculating area totals from point data and inferring aggregate values
for regions that do not have explicit data values, and further
enriched by establishing linkage between the datasets.
These enriched datasets are available directly from the
EnAKTing Project,
and can be accessed using the links below.
The visualisation provides a view centred on a chosen region of
specified size, and most noticeably gives a “pie-chart” that shows the
viewer how that region compares with similar regions around it. It
is thus designed to focus on the information most relevant to the
user. Colour indicates the “worst” (red) and “best” (green) areas
from those shown. This pie-chart is shown in preference to simply
colouring the map itself, as a coloured map confuses the map
features with the data being visualised.
It also gives some context of the real geography
involved, so that a full picture is seen. The user can navigate by
looking and clicking on the pie-chart, or the map, and can thus move
around using whatever view they are taking of the data presentation. A
search by postcode functionality is also supported, aiding the user in
finding specific locations.
An important aspect of the visualisation is that cross-dataset
correlation can be achieved and presented in a natural fashion, as
the data can be viewed as normalised by population or area, in
addition to the raw values. The user can therefore see how regions
compare in terms of, for example, crime density by population or
area, rather than just knowing that their county has little crime,
and guessing this is because the county has a small population or
area.
See UK has been produced as a collaborative activity between Seme4 Ltd.
and members of the EnAKTing project at the University of Southampton.
For further details please contact Hugh Glaser
or Ian Millard; feedback on this application is very
welcome.
The talk at the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) conference was part of the session entitled “What is the Business Administrative Case for Linked Data?”
The JISC provides leadership and support for the use of I.T. in post-16 and Higher Education establishments in the U.K. The annual JISC conference is aimed at a range of people, including those responsible for I.T. policy, those responsible for I.T. resources and researchers in the area. It was held in Liverpool on the 14th – 15th of March 2011.
The session explained the concepts of Linked Data, described how it can enable data to be shared and discussed how it can increase efficiency.
Research paper on Distributed Human Computation (DHC) by Yang Yang, Priyanka Singh, Jiadi Yao, Ching-man Au Yeung, Amir Zareian, Xiaowei Wang, Zhonglun Cai, Manuel Salvadores, Nicholas Gibbins, Wendy Hall, and Nigel Shadbolt