The World Bank has confirmed that it will not support the use of Google Map Maker for citizen-mapping efforts unless it gives users free access to the map data they create.</p><p>
The World Bank and Google have launched a project using crowd-sourcing to populate maps with the locations of public services in the developing world – a resource which could be used by many different groups in humanitarian and longer-term development work.

Good move by the World Bank.

We are inviting people from outside The National Archives to work with us, to apply changes to the legislation in the database. Quality is maintained through our editorial practice and a stringent process of review. It is an exciting time as private sector companies are now investing, employing people to work with us to bring the database up to date and to maintain it.

Really interesting. Build the API first, make the API available, get people involved. And you think government is behind the times?

Very cool interactive from the Guardian's first Open Weekend.

The Guardian published quite a good <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/mar/14/free-data-francis-maude">article</a> on Wednesday in relation to a public <a href="http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/news/open-data-innovation-community-francis-maude-speech">announcement</a> on Open Data by Francis Maude, and we wrote a response highlighting some issues the Guardian missed.

 While the advances since 2006 are undeniable, the comment above shows there is a long way to go. The new Public Data Group that will amalgamate OS, Land Registry and some other data providers will perpetuate the monopoly model while giving away minor data concessions. The issue here is the basic core public data infrastructure (mapping, stats, etc.) required for every other service and open data project. This is the "too difficult" box that could hamper innovation beyond some college project apps.

No argument about this - there is a lot still to do.

Chris Applegate:

I was too busy adding the features for @whensmybus, and that’s one reason why it took me five months to write its counterpart, @whensmytube, which I launched last week. But there’s a stack of other reasons why it took so long. It didn’t seem too difficult to begin with. Just like with buses, Transport for London have made their Tube departure data open-source (via a system called TrackerNet), as well as the locations of all their stations. It would be pretty simple to do the same for tube data as it would for bus data, right?

Wrong.

Fascinating look into the hassle of not-quite-open data.

Now when you type a postcode into Google Maps, it shows you the outline.Here's how SW1A 1AA (a certain central London residence) looks. And if you're wondering - the freeing of the postcode data does follow a long-running campaign by Guardian Technology.

Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude:

Open standards are vital for progressing this work and I encourage you to share your views in this consultation.

Get stuck in - or you can't complain in the future.

Massachusetts-based publishing house, Astrolabe, abruptly dropped its months-old database case Wednesday after getting legal threats from the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The EFF said the lawsuit was an affront to the legal system, as historical facts are not subject to copyright.

“Thus, we can only conclude that neither you nor your client conducted even a cursory legal or factual investigation prior to filing the complaint, much less a reasonable one,” EFF attorney Corynne McSherry wrote to Astrolabe. The EFF also sought sanctions unless the lawsuit was dismissed.

The publisher markets its data to astrology buffs “seeking to determine the historical time at any given time in any particular location, worldwide,” and claimed ownership to the data in its “AC International Atlas” and “ACS American Atlas” software programs.

Astrolabe took EFF’s threat seriously, dropped the case and issued a public apology.

Don't mess with the EFF. (Thanks @rquick for the link.)

Amazingly impressive: Liverpool's ScraperWiki goes from strength to strength (financially):

Today we closed our round of investment from Enterprise Ventures and Blue Fountain.

In total, provided we hit certain milestones next August, and with the Knight Foundation money, this means we have a cool $1,000,000 of capital.

And also now has the Canonical CEO joining to chair the board. Bonus points: she's female, improving the gender ratio.

"So the other day a reader sent me an email pointing me to a story in iPolitics titled "StatsCan anticipates $2M loss from move to open data" and asked me what I thought.

"Frustrated, was my response."

Points out how the "cost" figures for making data open are often pulled out of the air. Canada is getting towards open data, but it's a fight.

Michael Cross, co-founder of the Free Our Data campaign: "Earlier this week, the vice president of the European Commission, Neelie Kroes, called for action to turn this information into gold.

"'Taxpayers have already paid for this information, the least we can do now is give it back to those who want to use it in new ways that help people and create jobs and growth,' she says.

"She was following a lead set by the UK government. In his autumn statement last month, Chancellor George Osborne promised to open for re-use government data sets covering transport and especially health.

"'Making more public sector information available will help catalyse new markets and innovative products and services as well as improving standards and transparency in public services,' the Treasury said.

"The presumption is that all Crown Copyright data will be available under an 'open government licence', which allows its re-use in apps and other commercial products without the need to seek permission.

"The Europe-wide policy announced this week would take this even further."

"The homepage of the projects database has a new look. There is a list of our latest projects and the most recently published project documents, including new business cases. You can search by sector and keyword, or by finding a country on the world map.
When you view a project, instead of just seeing the title and description, you now see a colourful pie chart showing the project budget by sector. Hover over each sector with your mouse to see the latest budget for that sector. This is an excellent way of illustrating how DFID-funded projects can target a variety of priorities."

What's not visible is the number of very smart people who are working in the background to get more and more government websites not just up to date, but to incorporate some future vision.

"I will be talking in London on Wednesday at a workshop on Anonymity, Privacy, and Open Data about the difficulty of anonymising medical records properly. I’ll be on a panel with Kieron O’Hara who wrote a report on open data for the Cabinet Office earlier this year, and a spokesman from the ICO."

Professor Ross Anderson is always worth listening to. Get along there.

"Previously, large data sets such as the mapping of the Human Genome and the US Census data required hours or days to locate, download, customize, and analyze. Now, anyone can access these data sets from their Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances and start computing on the data within minutes."

Wow.

"The Government first set out its policy on the use of open source in 2004. This was restated in both 2009 and 2010.

The Government ICT Strategy states that “Where appropriate, Government will procure open source solutions.”

To support this, Action 3 of the Strategy says that “To create a level playing field for the use of innovative ICT solutions, the Government will publish a toolkit for procurers on best practice for evaluating the use of open source solutions.”

"The following set of documents make up that toolkit…The purpose of this toolkit is to ensure that there is a level playing field for open source and proprietary software and that some of the myths associated with open source are dispelled.

"It is intended for those who need to consider, evaluate or procure open source solutions as well as anyone just wanting to know more about open source."

We strongly suspect this is the work of Liam Maxwell. In which case he has moved fast. This bodes well.

Very clever - takes the so-far published news list and shows it in an accessible and really striking form.

"I'm writing to you and not Network Rail as they have told me that First Great Western manage the operations of ticket gates at Paddington.

"Every time I try to put my ticket in the ticket barrier to exit at Paddington, the 'seek assistance' message is displayed and I need to join a queue to be let out."

Have you done anything on FixMyTransport lately? Why not?

Not time travel, please note.

Very nice, although it would be good to be able to drill down to more details such as suppliers. That really would be impressive. And it goes back to 1700. (That's not 5pm.)

"Francis Maude has confirmed that it will adopt royalty-free standards, to deliver a level playing field for open source<br />
"Maude, minister for the Cabinet Office, has clarified the government’s policy on seeking open standards when procuring IT equipment, following confusion over whether “open standards” means Royalty-Free (RF) or Fair, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory (FRAND).Technologies available under RF conditions, can be used freely, while those under FRAND terms require users to pay a “reasonable” royalty. The HTTP protocol is free, for instance, while technologies for 3G communications are FRAND."<br />
<br />
Important distinction.

"Today, we're very pleased to announce the beta mobile web version of CycleStreets – written by me, project-managed by Martin, and funded by Cycling Scotland:<br />
"It's at <a href="http://m.cyclestreets.net/">http://m.cyclestreets.net/</a>.<br />
"Built in jQuery Mobile and HTML5, this extends CycleStreets' mobile support beyond our well-received Android and iPhone apps to cover other platforms, including iPad and BlackBerry."<br />
<br />
Yay for Cyclestreets!

From the OpenViz blog: "Those of you with longer memories will recall my post back in May, promoting the then new triple store for DCLG’s Indices of Deprivation.<br />
"I’d love to report that this has generated a flurry of new apps.  I think I’m not alone when I say: we need some more real-world examples which show us the true power and potential of blending together different data sources….over the web…..using open standards."<br />
<br />
Very impressive demonstration. The thought that occurs on seeing it is that indices don't tell you much about behaviour or other things; they don't provide any predictive power, and that's what's lacking.

A fun open data project in Toronto, Canada: "The City's controversial Core Service Review, a consultant-led examination of which municipal services might be cut or reduced for cost savings, involved public consultations in May and June. Those consultations generated over 13,000 responses from residents who either attended a consultation session, or filled out a form online.<br />
"The City, being the City, crunched all that data into some black-and-white PDFs and posted it on an obscure section of its website. Brian Gilham had other ideas.<br />
"What Toronto Said, a cleanly designed website that Gilham, a professional web designer, built over the course of three weeks in his spare time, provides a search-bar interface for the entire corpus of feedback data. It makes filtering the raw opinions of thousands of Torontonians about as simple as using Google to find a recipe for soup. It launches August 29."

"If you look at data.gov.uk in detail you will find that it is stuffed with organograms and spending declarations, and that many of the datasets that started publishing have already ceased (e.g. A&E activity. Most government agencies still seem to be operating ‘user pays’ policies when you get beyond headline free data releases e.g. Meteorological Office data services. So while there are some notably early successes, there is clearly much more to do."

"From Brazil to France to Australia to India, new laws and platforms are giving citizens new means to ask for, demand or simply create greater government transparency. The open data movement has truly gone global, with 19 international open data websites live around the globe. This week, the world will see another open government platform go live in Kenya."<br />
<br />
Amazing.

"Data on the performance of GPs, schools and details of sentences passed by individual courts is to be released in open, standardised format under the government's latest transparency initiative, to be announced on Thursday.<br />
"A letter on the new Number 10 Downing Street website, launched on Thursday, promises 'the most ambitious open data agenda of any government in the world.'"<br />
<br />
Other events may have overshadowed this, but it's very significant.

Requires you to have your own server, and written for Linux (or Mac OSX). Clever, if you have the chops to make it work.

A company called Courtel has the contract for putting court listing information on the courtserve.net site. But it seems to have... misread its contract in a restrictive fashion.

This is really interesting to play with. Uses data from public health observatories - who had hell's own fight a few years ago trying to publish data on Ordnance Survey maps online. Now: fixed.

Oh, wow - government department data as real proper RDF. This is amazing.

This is exactly the sort of thing that we want open data to create.

It didn't sound that content-ful when he read it out, either - open data hirings and cyberattacks apart.

"Can't figure out which bus to take in London? Click on 2 points on the map and we'll tell you!"<br />
<br />
Really we need to have these for all cities. 

"We’re mere days away from the big reveal of Alphagov, the prototype ‘single domain’ website which will set a challenging vision of what a unified, user-focused front end to UK government could look like.<br />
"I’ve been relatively close to the project, from unofficial chats with project lead Tom Loosemore and others in dingy Lambeth North pubs before the thing had a name, to more formal advice lately on how Departments do their digital communications – and how Alphagov could help them do it better. (Though if I’m honest, an index card saying “F*** IE6” is the contribution I’m proudest of).<br />
"Without giving the game away too much, here’s a taste of what’s coming to a browser near you soon, and some speculation on the stir it will surely cause."<br />
<br />
Read on...