About Open Data Aha!

According to the Open Data Institute (ODI):

Open data is data that anyone can access, use and share.

There’s increasing evidence – from right across the world – that open data can help:

  • Screenshot 2016-02-16 10.23.03
    Mapping open data-related stories from across the world

    save lives

  • reduce costs
  • reduce crime
  • create wealth
  • educate people
  • improve health
  • increase efficiency
  • prevent corruption
  • support democracy
  • predict extreme events
  • inform decision-making
  • inspire new business models
  • create ‘smart’ or ‘smarter’ cities and communities
  • establish and maintain national /local infrastructure
  • do other neat stuff that we haven’t even imagined, yet…

Open Data stories – Tapping the source

The mouth of the Amazon River
The mouth of the Amazon River

Some organisations – like the Open Data Institute (ODI) and Open Knowledge Foundation (OKFN) – produce a constant flow of articles involving open data.

Others – like regional newspapers, charities, and individual bloggers – might mention ‘open data’ very rarely, and may not even use those words.

Some stories can be buried within academic research papers, written using language that only a few highly qualified people can understand.

With the ever-increasing flow of information, stories involving open data can be easily missed, or become difficult to find.

Open Data – Aha! aims to tap open data-related stories at-source, add them to a larger pool, and begin to look for patterns, gaps, trends and techniques which might be re-usable elsewhere.

In time, this site will include regular commentary and analysis, looking across the spectrum of open data stories.

We also intend to publish the list of stories  about open data as open data.

Hunting and gathering

Open data - Aha!
Open data – Aha!

However, it’s still early days and, right now the focus is on finding ‘stories’ and their sources, and making them available through the Open Data – Aha! web site, including  on a map.

All stories are tagged, albeit quite arbitrarily at the moment – tags and categories will be rationalised once there’s enough of them to make it a worthwhile exercise.

All content shared through this site includes an acknowledgement at the beginning of each post, linking back to the original publisher’s web site. Tags are also created for the original publisher and author (where they can be identified).

Photo credit

Mouths of amazon geocover 1990“. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.