The movement to make publicly available various forms of government data is not on the face of it something new, governments in the UK and elsewhere have been publishing their data for many years. However the interest in publishing in easily reusable open formats and particularly as Linked Data requires a change in the current processes of government and this proposal for change must be supported by compelling arguments. The call for 'Raw Data Now' signals the keenness from citizens to contribute to the process of making public data public, but their efforts need to be guided by an early contributions from government, in particular the publication of terminologies and ontologies/classification schemes, and of appropriate URI designs. We will also explore what is needed to help communities to take advantage of open data, and what some of the implications are for both citizen and government.

1. Open Data, Open Government
Part1: Vague, but exciting!
Peter Winstanley
The Scottish Government

2. 2

4. Browse Scottish Executive Statistics
Crime and Justice
Housing and Regeneration
Planning

6. http://simd.scotland.gov.uk/Glasgow-City

7. http://simd.scotland.gov.uk/Edinburgh-City

12. Better Signposting

15. • We can call the circles nodes, and the arrows links. Suppose each
node is like a small note, summary article, or comment. I'm not
over concerned here with whether it has text or graphics or
both. Ideally, it represents or describes one particular person or
object. Examples of nodes can be
• People
• Software modules
• Groups of people
• Projects
• Concepts
• Documents
• Types of hardware
• Specific hardware objects
• The arrows which links circle A to circle B can mean, for example,
that A...
• depends on B
• is part of B
• made B
• refers to B
• uses B
• is an example of B
Berners-Lee, 1989

19. Shared vocabulary for
‘things’

20. … and their relationships

21. … gives a self-organising structure