enabling re-use via ckan: discoverability and interoperability
DESCRIPTION
Talk at @OpenDataWeek in Marseille focused on how technology can power discoverability and interoperability and why they are important. Showcases CKAN's search and discovery functionality, harvesting abilities and data catalog interoperability protocol.TRANSCRIPT
Enabling re-use
CKANOpen Knowledge FoundationIrina Bolychevsky (@shevski)
ckan.org okfn.org
We are a global movement to open up knowledge around the world and see it used and useful.
The Open Knowledge Foundation
okfn.org
We build tools and communities to educate, empower and connect people.
OpenDataProtocols.org
What's the point of open data?
The point is re-use, democratization and enabling individuals to drive:
● innovation & the economy● government transparency &
accountability
Context:● Explosion of digital information● Ever improving information technology
Open data is not a hobby it's a movement
Valuable core datasets not open
Data often buried in government web pages
Not machine readable, bad quality data
Hard to find, connect and link data
What problems are we facing?
Open Solution
Step 1: get the data openly licensed
Step 2: make it accessible - metadata, formats, portal (ckan.org)
Step 3: start building, linking and turning data into something more - information
CKAN at a glance
Metadata catalogData management platformOpen Source - everything developed on GitHubFree community and paid support availableExtensible flexible componentized architectureDeveloper friendlyRich JSON APIInteroperable
CKAN serves two main use cases
1. search and discoverability for re-users of data
2. data management tools for publishers
1. Discoverability
Search and discovery
Online home for data
Central keyword search
Facet by tags, location, format, licence...
Browse by groups, keywords, publishers
Link to datasets or data directly
Previews and data exploration
Data explorer allows filtering, editing, plotting, graphing and embedding
2. Interoperability
Harvesting and normalization
Get metadata from external catalogs and endpoints
CKAN will parse, validate and normalise to create metadata records that look the same to end users no matter where they came from
We can currently harvest: other CKAN catalogs, CSW endpoints and WAFs serving ISO 19139 documents + others
Used by governments, organizations and communities around the world
ckan.org/instances/
More generally: federation
Search across numerous different catalogs in aggregator sites (such as publicdata.eu)
Data Catalog Interoperability Protocol: http://spec.datacatalogs.org/
Spec.datacatalogs.org
