How PDF can help Government Open Data policies | Public Policy blog by Adobe

"...even though Adobe no longer owns or controls the PDF format (it became an open standard maintained by ISO in 2008), earlier in 2017 we kicked off a project with the Open Data Institute in the UK to understand how PDFs were being used with data, and to document best practices for storing data so that it can be easily accessed again.

ODI have just blogged about their work, and it makes interesting reading. It’s clear that there are scenarios – such as Urban Planning or scientific publishing – where it is, and always will be, important to make data available in both a human-readable and a machine-readable format. When used properly, PDF can help with the presentational aspect and still ensure that the data is reusable by machines.

ODI has also established a PDF Open Data Community Group in the W3C to provide a new forum for exchanging ideas on the use of PDF for open data. We hope that the methods they discover can have broad applicability across the world. It’s free to join, and anyone who’s interested can sign up. Join the discussion!

We think that this project will offer an important boost to the Open Data community, useful guidance to data publishers, and provide timely support to open data policies worldwide. The right data infrastructure can help drive growth and innovation everywhere, and PDF clearly has a role to play."