Open data day 2018

Open Data Day is coming up. This year we have partnered with Open4Citizens and Ethos Lab to host an event Friday 2 March in Copenhagen (see details below).

At the event we will celebrate open data with informal socializing and short inspiring talks on open data. At the event we will announce the winner of the Danish Open Data Award 2018.

The Danish Open Data Award is a newly initiated award that will be given to a person or a group for an extraordinary effort to promote open data in Denmark. Nominations will soon be published.

Open Data Day will be celebrated with events around the globe. At the time of writing 156 events are planned to take place in places like Kyrgyzstan, Zambia, the Phillipines, the US and in Copenhagen, Denmark.

When: Friday, March 2, at 16.30-19.00
Where: IT-Universitetet, Rued Langgaards Vej 7, Copenhagen

No entrance fee, everybody is welcome, talks will be in English.

The event will be hosted by ETHOS Lab, Opendatalab Copenhagen and Open Knowledge Denmark

Link: Facebook-event

Open data service provider Viderum is working with Energinet.dk, the gas and electricity transmission system operator in Denmark, to provide near real-time access to Danish energy data. Using CKAN, an open-source platform for sharing data originally developed by Open Knowledge International, Energinet.dk’s Energy DataStore will provide easy and open access to large quantities of energy data to support the green transition and enable innovation.

Image credit: Jürgen Sandesneben, Flickr CC BY

What is the Energy DataStore?

Energinet.dk holds the energy consumption data from Danish house-holds and businesses as well as production data from windmills, solar cells and power plants. All this data will be made available in aggregated form through the Energy DataStore, including electricity market data and near-real-time information on CO2 emissions.

The Energy DataStore will be built using open-source platform CKAN, the world’s leading data management system for open data. Through the platform, users will be able to find and extract data manually or through an API.

“The Energy DataStore opens the next frontier for CKAN by expanding into large-scale, continuously growing datasets published by public sector enterprises”, writes Sebastian Moleski, Managing Director of Viderum, “We’re delighted Energinet.dk has chosen Viderum as the CKAN experts to help build this revolutionary platform. With our contribution to the success of the Energy DataStore, Viderum is taking the next step in fulfilling our mission: to make the world’s public data discoverable and accessible to everyone.”

Open Knowledge International’s commercial spin-off, Viderum, is using CKAN to build a responsive platform for Energinet.dk that publishes energy consumption data for every municipality in hourly increments with a look to provide real-time in future. The Energy DataStore will provide consumers, businesses and non-profit organizations access to information vital for consumer savings, business innovation and green technology.

As Pavel Richter, CEO of Open Knowledge International explains, “CKAN has been instrumental over the past 10 years in providing access to a wide range of government data. By using CKAN, the Energy DataStore signals a growing awareness of the value of open data and open source to society, not just for business growth and innovation, but for citizens and civil society organizations looking to use this data to address environmental issues.”

Energinet.dk hopes that by providing easily accessible energy data, citizens will feel empowered by the transparency and businesses can create new products and services, leading to more knowledge sharing around innovative business models.

Notes:

Energinet.dk

Energinet.dk owns the Danish electricity and gas transmission system – the ‘energy’ motorways. The company’s main task is to maintain the overall security of electricity and gas supply and create objective and transparent conditions for competition on the energy markets.

CKAN

CKAN is the world’s leading open-source data portal platform. It is a complete out-of-the-box software solution that makes data accessible – by providing tools to streamline publishing, sharing, finding and using data. CKAN is aimed at data publishers (national and regional governments, companies and organizations) wanting to make their data open and available. A slide-deck overview of CKAN can be found here.

Viderum

Viderum is an open data solutions provider spun off from Open Knowledge, an internationally recognized non-profit working to open knowledge and see it used to empower and improve the lives of citizens around the world.

Open Knowledge International

Open Knowledge International is a global non-profit organisation focused on realising open data’s value to society by helping civil society groups access and use data to take action on social problems. Open Knowledge International does this in three ways: 1) we show the value of open data for the work of civil society organizations; 2) we provide organisations with the tools and skills to effectively use open data; and 3) we make government information systems responsive to civil society.

Open for all. No admission fee. The talk will be in English.

Facebook-event here (if you don’t use Facebook, you can register for the event by sending us a tweet, an email or just comment below).

Place: DSSL (Digital Social Science Lab) at Det Samfundsvidenskabelige Fakultetsbibliotek (Gothersgade 140).

Time and date: Wednesday 23th November, 17.00-19.00.

An Open Information Age

How can we can build an open information age? And why should we do it? Find out with Dr Rufus Pollock, a leading global expert on digital policy, openness and innovation.

• Future of work: will robots take all the jobs – and should we care?
• Freedom: how to preserve freedom in a world of Googles and Facebooks who have the power to shape how we think and act?
• Inequality: concerned about growing inequality and the digital divide?
• Innovation: how can we harness the full power of digital tech for innovation and creativity?
• Want to build an economy and society fit for the information age?

Open information is the biggest policy opportunity of the 21st century with answers for all of these questions. Openness is central not only to creating a more innovative and transparent society but to creating one which is fair, free, healthy and wealthy

About Dr Rufus Pollock
Dr Rufus Pollock is an adviser on digital policy and openness to governments and organizations around the world. He has worked extensively as a researcher, entrepreneur and technologist on how we can build the best possible digital age — inclusive, innovative and open.

He is the President and Founder of Open Knowledge, an international non-profit organization using advocacy and technology to empower people with access to information and the capacity to use it. A pioneer in the rapidly developing area of digital policy, he has made Open Knowledge into one of the leading “think/do tanks” of the twenty-first century.

In addition to Open Knowledge, he has been involved in many other organizations such as Creative Commons, FFII and the Open Rights Group. He was previously the Mead Fellow in Economics at the University of Cambridge, where he remains an Associate of the Centre for Information and Intellectual Property Law. In 2010 he was appointed to a $1m three-year Shuttleworth Foundation Fellowship, and in 2012 he was elected an Ashoka Fellow.

If you want to help with planning or anything else related to the event, just ping us at our mailinglist.

First Impressions of Copenhagen’s City Data Exchange

Copenhagen have apparently launched their new City Data Exchange. As this is a subject which is relevant to my interests I thought I’d publish my first impressions of it.

The first thing I did was to read the terms of service. And then explore the publishing and consuming options.

Current Contents

As of today 21st May there are 56 datasets on the site. All of them are free.

The majority seem to have been uploaded by Hitachi and are copies of datasets from Copenhagen’s open data portal.

Compare, for example this dataset on the exchange and the same one on the open data portal. The open version has better metadata, clearer provenance, more choice of formats and a download process that doesn’t require a registration step. The open data portal also has more datasets than the exchange.

Consuming Data

Datasets on the exchange can apparently be downloaded as a “one time download” or purchased under a subscription model. However I’ve downloaded a few and the downloads aren’t restricted to being one-time, at least currently.

I’ve also subscribed to a free dataset. My expectation was that this would give me direct access to an API. It turns out that the developer portal is actually a completely separate website. After subscribing to a dataset I was emailed with a username and password (in clear text!) with instructions to go and log into that portal.

The list of subscriptions in the developer portal didn’t quite match what I had in the main site, as one that I’d cancelled was still active. It seems you can separately unsubscribe to them there, but its not clear what the implications of that might be.

Weirdly there’s also a prominent “close your account” button in the developer portal. Which seems a little odd. Feels like two different products or services have been grafted together.

The developer portal is very, very basic. The APIs expose by each dataset are:

• a download API that gives you the entire dataset
• a “delta” API that gives you changes made between specific dates.

There are no filtering or search options. No format options. Really there’s very little value-add at all.

Essentially the subscribing to a dataset gives you a URL from which you can fetch the dataset on a regular basis rather than having to manual download it. There’s no obvious help or support for developers creating useful applications against these APIs.

Authorising access to an API is done via an API key which is added as a URL parameter. They don’t appear to be using OAuth or similar to give extra security.

Publishing Data

In order to publish data you need to have provided a contact phone number and address. You can then provide some basic configuration for your dataset:

• Title
• Description
• Period of update: one off, hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, annual
• Whether you want to allow it to be downloaded and if so, whether its free or paid
• Whether you want to allow API access and if so, whether its free or paid

Pricing is in Kronor and you can set a price per download or a monthly price for API access (such as it is).

To provide your data you can either upload a file or give the data exchange access to an API. It looks like there’s an option to discuss how to integrate your API with their system, or you can provide some configuration options:

• Type – this has one option “Restful”
• Response Type – this has one option “JSON”
• Endpoint URL
• API Key

When uploading a dataset, you can tell it a bit about the structure of the data, specifically:

• Whether it contains geographical information, and which columns include the latititude and longitude.
• Whether it’s a time series and which column contains the timestamp

This is as far as I’ve tested with publishing, but looks like there’s a basic workflow for draft and published datasets. I got stuck because of issues trying to publish and map a dataset that I’d just downloaded from the exchange itself.

The Terms of Service

There are a number interesting things to note there:

Section 7, Payments: “we will charge Data Consumers Service Delivery Charges based on factors such as the volume of the Dataset queried and downloaded as well as the frequency of usage of the APIs to query for the Datasets”

It’s not clear what those service delivery charges will be yet. The platform doesn’t currently provide access to any paid data, so I can’t tell. But it would appear that even free data might incur some charges. Hopefully there will be a freemium model?

Seems likely though that the platform is designed to generate revenue for Hitachi through ongoing use of the APIs. But if they want to raise traffic they need to think about adding a lot more power to the APIs.

Section 7, Payments: “As a Data Consumer your account must always have a positive balance with a minimum amount as stated at our Website from time to time”

Well, this isn’t currently required during either registration or signing up to subscribe to an API. However I’m concerned that I need to let Hitachi hold money even if I’m not actively using the service.

I’ll also note that in Section 8, they say that on termination, “Any positive balance on your account will be payable to you provided we receive payment instructions.” Given that the two payment options are Paypal and Invoice, you’d think they might at least offer to refund money via PayPal for those using that option.

Section 8, Restrictions in use of the Services or Website: You may not “access, view or use the Website or Services in or in connection with the development of any product, software or service that offers any functionality similar to, or competitive with, the Services”

So I can’t, for example, take free data from the service and offer an alternative catalogue or hosting option? Or provide value-added services that enrich the freely available datasets?

This is pure protecting the platform, not enabling consumers or innovation.

Section 12, License to use the Dataset: “Subject to your payment of any applicable fees, you are granted a license by the Data Provider to use the relevant Dataset solely for the internal purposes and as otherwise set out under section 14 below. You may not sub-license such right or otherwise make the Dataset or any part thereof available to third parties.”

Data reuse rights are also addressed in Section 13 which includes the clause: “You shall not…make the Dataset or any part thereof as such available to any third party.”

While Section 14, explains that as a consumer you may “(i) copy, distribute and publish the result of the use of the Dataset, (ii) adapt and combine the Dataset with other materials and (iii) exploit commercially and noncommercially” and that: “The Data Provider acknowledges that any separate work, analysis or similar derived from the Dataset shall vest in the creator of such“.

So, while they’ve given clearly given some thought to the creation of derived works and products, which is great, the data can only be used for “internal purposes” which are not clearly defined especially with respect to the other permissions.

I think this precludes using the data in a number of useful ways. You certainly don’t have any rights to redistribute, even if the data is free.

This is not an open license. I’ve written about the impacts of non-open licenses. It appears that data publishers must agree to these terms too, so you can’t publish open data through this exchange. This is not a good outcome, especially if the city decides to publish more data here and on its open data portal.

The data that Hitachi have copied into the site is now under a custom licence. If you access the data through the Copenhagen open data portal then you are given more rights. Amusingly, the data in the exchange isn’t properly attributed, so it break the terms of the open licence. I assume Hitachi have sought explicit permission to use the data in this way?

Overall I’m extremely underwhelmed by the exchange and the developer portal. Even allowing for it being at an early stage, its a very thin offering.I built more than this with a small team of a couple of people over a few months.

It’s also not clear to me how the exchange in its current form is going to deliver on the vision. I can’t see how the exchange is really going to unlock more data from commercial organisations. The exchange does give some (basic) options for monetising data, but has nothing to say about helping with all of the other considerations important to data publishing.

GLOW – Global Legislative Openness Week 2015

English summary Open parliamentary data in Denmark and how to make use of them:
During Global Legislative Openness Week (GLOW) an event on open parliamentary data in Denmark was held at the University of Copenhagen. A civil servant from the Danish parliament (Folketinget) introduced their one-year-old open data initiative and gave an overview of the possibilities and the perspectives. Next a datajournalist from the Danish Broadcasting Corporation showcased examples of how to make stories of political and legislative data. Having access to open legislative data raises the question of how to make use of it, how to turn it into knowledge and make it accessible for a broader audience.

Kresten Morten fra DR’s undersøgende databaseredaktion fortæller om datajournalistisk dækning af dansk politik.

“Global Legislative Openness Week” (GLOW) er en uge, hvor der verden over afholdes arrangementer om åbenhed omkring lovgivning og relaterede politiske processer. Ugen er et initiativ under det internationale samarbejde “Open Government Partnership” (OGP), som Danmark har tilsluttet sig. OGP omfatter 65 lande og sigter mod at opstille konkrete, bindende mål om øget gennemsigtighed, øget borgerinddragelse, anti-korruption og anvendelse af ny teknologi til bedre regeringsførelse. I forbindelse med dette års uge afholdt Open Knowledge Danmark i samarbejde med Foreningen Gennemsigt et gå-hjem-møde om åbne lovgivningsrelaterede data og anvendelsen heraf. Kvantitativt Netværk ved Center for Valg og Partier under Københavns Universitet var værter ved arrangementet idet de havde stillet lokale til rådighed. Tak.

Til møde om åbne lovgivningsrelaterede data.

På mødet indledte projektleder for Folketingets projekt åbne data, Anders Gilbro Nielsen, med at fortælle om opbygningen af Folketingets data og mulighederne for videreanvendelse. Data kan tilgås via en API og selvom det i høj grad letter adgangen og tilgængeligheden af data, var vurderingen at det stadig er nødvendigt at have en person med programmeringskendskab ved sin side, når data skal hentes ind til f.eks. et regnearksprogram. Desuden kræver tolkning af data en vis forståelse for folketingets forretningsgange. Den lidt tekniske introduktion blev efterfulgt af et oplæg om den datajournalistiske dækning af dansk politik. Kresten Morten fra DRs undersøgende databaseredaktion vidste flere interessante eksempler, på hvordan data kan fungere som fundament for gode journalistiske historier. Kresten tog udgangspunkt i DRs dækning af folketingsvalget 2015.

Anders Gilbro fra Folketinget fortæller om mulighederne med folketingets åbne data.

Som forsøg blev mødet live-transmitteret via Periscope, hvis nogen har set med og har ideer til hvordan vi bruger dette eller tilsvarende medier bedre, så send os gerne en kommentar.

Se også: I forbindelse med Global Legislative Openness Week 2014 afholdt Open Knowledge Danmark en data-workshop om folketingets API.

Bliv introduceret til åben videnskab.
Viden og videnskablig forskning i særdeleshed bør komme alle til gode, første skridt er at gøre forskningen frit tilgængelig.

Torsdag den 25. september 2014, kl. 17.00-19.00 mødes vi på Cafe Nutid, hvor vi vil give en introduktion til ideerne om åben adgang/åben videnskab (open access/open science) samt hvordan principperne bliver anvendt i praksis. Du vil blandt andet komme til at høre om biologigaragen og citizen science, Open Access Button og open access activism. Har du selv noget på hjertet er du velkommen til at møde op og fortælle om det.

Vi håber, at dette møde kan være startskuddet til at skabe kontakter mellem andre der er interesserede i åben videnskab (open science).

Hvis du planlægger at deltage, er du meget velkommen til at tilmelde dig på eventets Facebook-side (ikke obligatorisk).

Each point represents a local polling station.

We shared our results on our blog and through Twitter, and reached out for a sensible explanation. Did the local community pull off a ferociously effective campaign? We also reached out to the authorities and asked whether they could confirm the result, and after a few hours, we got a call from the location’s election official. The official explained that, as a direct result of a human error, the Yes and No votes had been swapped at the location, turning Yes votes into No votes, and vice versa. They have reported the error, which will soon be officially amended.

Much of the media are interested in the story, and every time they ask us about it, we make sure to emphasize just how clear a case this makes for open electoral data. In this case, a human error was the cause; in other cases, open electoral data can be used to detect actual electoral fraud.

Data for the fundamental act of voting in a modern democracy are a textbook example of why data must be open. Electoral data are without a doubt of societal consequence and should always be open, easily and freely accessibly in machine-readable format, without delay and juridical restrictions. There are still inadequacies in the data available in Denmark. For instance, an excellent XML feed with electoral data is available, albeit with a level of detail insufficient for spotting errors like the one we found in our data workshop. (We relied on unofficial, scraped data.)

This particular error is of no consequence for the electoral result at large, but imagine a similar situation where access to data is not an option…

This blogpost was written by @nilleren and translated and edited by @pessimism.
This blogpost is licensed under CC-BY a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

UPDATE: This story has now been covered in a wide range of media [in Danish]: TV2, Version2, Metroxpress, Lokalavisen, dknyt, News.dk, ODAA, Odense Dataplatform, 180 Grader, Eindustry and DailyFix.

Dette er en gæsteblogpost af Paul Maassen, der er Civil Society Coordinator for Open Government Partnership (OGP). Han arbejder bl.a. med at støtte engagementet mellem OGP partnerskabet og civile stakeholders i alle programmets 63 lande, og har tidligere arbejdet som Head of Finance and Partnership for WWF Internationals ‘Global Climate & Energy Initiative’ og som Program Manager for ICT & Media programmet for den hollandske udviklingsorganisation Hivos.

Vi er i Open Knowledge Foundation Danmark meget interesserede i Open Government Partnership, og vi har tidligere bl.a. givet feedback på den nedenfor omtalte action plan. Hvis du har lyst til at være med i diskussionen og øge den danske indflydelse – så hop med på vores diskussionsliste og giv dit besyv med. Se yderligere materialer om Danmarks deltagelse nederst i denne blog post.

What is the Open Government Partnership (OGP) in 109 words?

OGP creates a platform for local reformers to make government more open. Government and civil society work together to develop and implement ambitious reforms around open government, making government more open and accountable, and to improve the responsiveness to and engagement with citizens. Since 2011, OGP has grown from 8 participating countries to now 63 – the last country to join was Tunisia. Results include a surge in open data platforms, big steps on fiscal transparency and beneficial openness in a range of countries and finally a Freedom of Information law in Brazil. There are three main steps: in the mechanism: open consultation, concrete, ambitious commitments and independent monitoring.

Looking at Denmark’s achivements

Denmarks achievements in the first round have been assessed by Mads Kæmsgaard Eberholst and his report is now online (English and Danish) and open for comments the next couple of weeks.
The results look pretty good compared to other countries. A substantial part of the commitments are actually met. Downside is the small ownership with government entities and the relative narrow set of issues addressed in the plan (tech focused). Also the actual partnership of government and civil society could still be strengthened quite a bit. The report does give good recommendations at the end.

What’s next?

This is a crucial period. With the launch of the report also comes the launch of the next consultation and negotiation for ambitious commitments. The next round needs to be better than the first for sure. Some suggestions on how to advocate around the report:
By commenting in public you can make a clear statement on what you agree with or not in the draft report. These comments will be posted alongside the final version of the report. You may also add additional information that, for whatever reasons, was not included in the report.
You can use the draft conclusions on the consultation process for the first NAP – to push your government for an improved process for the next Action Plan. A resource that can be helpful herein is the study on country experiences captured here. The IRM report will also include a useful checklist of the requirements for consultation in the OGP Articles of Governance.
You can use the draft conclusions on commitment delivery and priority setting to draft new commitments. Consulting the Open Government Guide can also be helpful in this.
You can use the draft report to start preparing your response for when the final IRM report is launched – press release, campaign etc.

In general, what is of key importance is that countries should take advantage of the release of their first IRM report to inform the development of their second Action Plan. Denmark has to submit a new draft Action Plan by April 30, discuss that at the European Regional Meeting (8/9 May Dublin) and upload the final version by June 15. That means the consultation needs to happen the next couple of months. This is the guidance that has been shared with your government – you can use it to advocate for real involvement

If you want more information about the IRM, have a look at the FAQ or contact the IRM program staff (they have an “open door” policy). If you want to know more about good press events surrounding the IRM and/or civil society responses to the report – get in touch with colleagues in South Africa  and the Philippines. Mexico, Norway, and Philippines are good examples of integrating the IRM into the next action planning cycle. Furthermore, key data of the IRM researchers will be released by the IRM team. You can find it here, including a data guide. There are plenty of open data geeks in the OGP community that can make a nicely visualised country overview and comparison out of these.

If interested, there is quite a bit of information on how other countries have done it, lessons learned from the first round, guidance on how to do consultation better. And there is a mailing list for the international civil society community around OGP.

In conclusion: the IRM is as strong as we make it. With strong input, convincing own monitoring efforts, and strategic campaigning around the report launch we can influence the strength of the second round of consultations and commitments!

Background information

Read more about Open Government Partnership on the official website. Denmark is one of the 63 members of the Open Government Partnership.

Denmark’s achievements in the first round have been assessed by journalist Mads Kæmsgaard Eberholst and his report is now online (English and Danish) and you can read submitted comments here.