Inclusive and collaborative digital development
A recently completed study examined railway operators perspectives on digital value creation within the partnership between Swedish Transport Administration and national railway operators for data and information exchange. The first mechanism identified of three, highlights value creation of data and information exchange and alignment of information system used within the collaboration.
Continue reading “Interoperability for digital resource and infrastructure – Digital value creation part 1”
The attention to make data available in machine-readable formats is something that is addressed in more articles related to open data for better proliferation. The Swedish government is proposing a bill for better reuse of public transportation data trough machine-readable format and we have addressed the importance of machine-readable format in a article about liquid open data. What is often not mentioned is the importance of metadata in regards to machine-readable formats to augment use and reuse of data. Therefore, we want to give our perspective on why metadata are an indistinguishable part of open data and machine-readable formats. Continue reading “Machine-readable in open data context”
The Swedish transport administration authority Trafikverket, offering several open data services. One of these is the API for traffic information, which contains data and information for nation-wide train and road traffic. The API began as a information service for train, which was later on expanded to include road data. Our reviews of open APIs are part of an effort to highlight barriers and requirements from a user perspective. We hope that the reviews providing constructive feedback to the data owners, and inspire others by showing examples and solutions. Read more about the background to why we are reviewing open APIs and open data sources.
Continue reading “Review of Trafikverket open API for traffic information”
Västtrafik handles and coordinate all public transport in west Sweden with the city of Gothenburg as its main transit hub. Västtrafik offers several APIs to search and plan journeys by train, tram, ferries and bus in West Sweden. The API can be found at Västtrafiks development portal (in Swedish), which serves as a focal point for their open API service. The aim of our reviews of open API:s is to shed light on common obstacles and requirements from a user perspective. Note that the portal around the API is in Swedish, but the documentation and the API syntax is in English. The review will try to guide user with no knowledge in Swedish on how to get started. Continue reading “Review of Västtrafik open API for public transport”
Open data is undergoing a paradigm change where the focus is shifting to user demand driven publication of data in machine-readable formats, with open standards and licenses that is appropriate for its application area. This is often refereed to as “liquid information” or “liquid data” which can be read about in this report from McKinsey’s 2013. The report address the potential value that can be achieved if standards, formats and metadata are functional for its intended use. Open data 2.0 is another emerging term which refers to data that is being made available based on demand and provides means for participation and collaboration, where users can report suggestions for improvement and provide feedback on flawed data. Continue reading “User demand driven and machine-readable open data”
For the data to be put to use, there are several common obstacles that needs to be mediated. Previous article explained the affect of deficient metadata and choice of formats that makes data more inaccessible in regards to machine readability. Still data are being published today which raise barriers and impedes usability instead of the opposite. A swift overview of the registered datasets on the Swedish national portal for open data Öppnadata.se (similar to data.gov), shows that the most common format is ZIP. This format is one of the worst in regard to metadata and machine readability. Which shows that open data owners and providers in Sweden at least, don’t follow good practice and principles concerning putting data on the web. Continue reading “The Swedish national open data portal drops in ranking”
People working with data knows the importance of metadata for its usefulness. Metadata are needed to describe characteristics of data, such as whom and when it was created. Still there are data that are published without sufficient description of its characteristics, which will limit the use and affect user trust. It seems that owners and providers of open data are not taking the usability perspective and focusing more on publish data regardless if metadata is complete or insufficient. Continue reading “Metadata and the implication of data format choice”