GitHub tool kit covers nuts and bolts of White House Open Data Policy - FierceGovernmentIT

abernard102@gmail.com 2013-05-15

Summary:

"Along with its Open Data Policy, the White House unveiled May 9 Project Open Data, a GitHub-hosted tool kit it hopes will be the living, breathing implementation arm of its policy. The online repository provides tools for coders to adopt the policy within agencies' 6-month timeline. The use of improved metadata is a significant component of the new policy and explained more on Project Open Data. Agencies are to use the common core metadata schema, which resulted from the recommendations of a Data.gov-led metadata working group combined with existing public schemas for data catalogs, explains the site.  The Project Open Data FAQs assure users that the common core metadata schema can be easily mapped to vocabularies used by the National Information Exchange Model, information sharing environment and the federal government data committee.  According to the policy, all information will be considered 'machine-readable' if it uses the JSON file format, with the option of XML and RDFa Lite as well. RDFa Lite is a subset of the Resource Description Framework in attributes, which explains machine-readable data.  To assist agencies in implementing the schema, the GitHub site offers template data files and sample data files in various file formats. Agencies can also import CSV spreadsheets into the Catalog Generator, add metadata translation, and then generate an appropriately-formatted JSON file. The site provides tools for converting JSON and CSV files to XML or RDFa Lite.  Under the policy, agencies must have a table or list of each dataset on a '/data' webpage. This serves as the authoritatitive source of all public data at the agency, says the Project Open Data site. Each list must contain, at a minimum, the dataset name, description and URL to the dataset ...  Among other policy implementation resources on Project Open Data are case studies that highlight open data best practices, information on licenses that can be used for content, and roles and responsibilities for agency chief data officers.  Project Open Data isn't just a open-source repository, it is actually open sourced.   A 'Help improve this content' link allows GitHub members to submit pull requests to make changes to the project. To fix typos and correct broken links, users can make changes directly to the document, click 'submit' and once approved, updates will appear. (According to the FAQs on the site, the General Services Administration provides daily oversight and support for Project Open Data.) ..."

Link:

http://www.fiercegovernmentit.com/story/github-tool-kit-covers-nuts-and-bolts-white-house-open-data-policy/2013-05-13

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » abernard102@gmail.com

Tags:

oa.new oa.psi oa.policies oa.comment oa.government oa.usa oa.green oa.best_practices oa.crowd oa.metadata oa.standards oa.formats oa.floss oa.github oa.faqs oa.data.gov oa.obama_directive oa.open_data_project oa.repositories oa.data

Date tagged:

05/15/2013, 07:25

Date published:

05/15/2013, 03:25