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UK – There is no shortage of open data – Is anyone using it?

ComputerWeekly.com: “The UK government’s data portal, data.gov.uk, currently shows 36,552 published datasets available, but how usable are they, and is anyone actually downloading them?…There are examples of data being linked in useful ways. In several, but by no means all, cities in the UK and Europe, Citymapper draws on open datasets, including mapping data and public transport timetables, to show people where they are and what their options are for getting where they want to go. To do this, the data should, first and foremost, be available and up to date. It should also be in machine-readable format. Bus timetables in PDF form are not much fun for human beings – and they are almost useless for navigation apps. Citymapper is often cited as an open data success story, but is comparatively rare. A counter example was raised at the summit by a question concerning threesixtygiving.org. On its website, threesixtygiving says it “supports organisations to publish their grants data in an open, standardised way and helps people to understand and use the data in order to support decision-making and learning across the charitable giving sector”. But a questioner from the floor pointed out that UK government data on grants is not currently open…”

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