intelligent impact - open data cookbook

www.opendatacookbook.net

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Blogging

www.wordpress.com / www.tumblr.com

You can use a blog to share findings from your research and data exploration, and to tell the store behind the data.



Dashboards

www.sparkwi.se

A dashboard can bring together data and social media to show you an up-to-the-minute picture of stats and stories.

Tools like sparkwi.se make it easy to create your own dashboard.



Data Catalogues

http://data.gov.uk / http://data.london.gov.uk /http://datacatalogs.org/

Government data catalogues provide access to hundreds of existing open datasets. Explore the catalogues to find data that you can use.



Data journalism

Talk to a mentor

Data journalism is about finding the story in data, and sharing it.



Sourcing data: tips


Sometimes the data you want isn’t readily available in a data catalogue.

However, it might be out there. Explore advanced search techniques and approaches to scrape data from websites as well as looking into how you can use the freedom of information act to access data.



Data4NR

www.data4nr.net

Data for Neighbourhoods and Regeneration (Data4NR) provides access to national indicators and census data - as well as a range of analysis tools.

It also includes pointers to local information systems and regional data sources.



Fusion Tables

http://tables.googlelabs.com

Google Fusion Tables makes it easy to merge large datasets with a column in common. For example, combining a list of areas with their populations, with a list that shows the number of services available in that area.

Once you’ve got data in Fusion Tables it also provides powerful features for creating interactive graphs.



Google Charts

http://drive.google.com

Generate interactive charts from your data in google spreadsheets.

The charts and gadgets feature allows you to present your data in a wide range of ways, including trend lines, maps and flow charts.

You can embed the resulting chart direct into your website, or into a dashboard, as an interactive widget or a static image.



Google Spreadsheets


With google spreadsheets you can use advanced spreadsheet formulae to manipulate data coming direct from the web, from a google form, or from a manual upload.



Google Forms


You can use Google Forms to collect data. Any data that users enter into your forms will go direct into a secure online spreadsheet.

Forms can be sent by e-mail or embedded on your website. Alternative survey tools for collecting data also exist, including toolkit for data collection on mobile devices.



Impact Assessment App

www.impactassessmentapp.com

The Impact Assessment App is used by frontline workers in communities to collect and organise data about how they are helping people and connect that with stories told by the people being helped.



Infographic tools

http://infogr.am / http://piktochart.com/

Infographics can be a powerful way of communicating data and stories.

Online tools like infogr.am and piktochart let you input your data and layout an infographic direct in your web browser.



Many Eyes

http://many-eyes.com

IBM Many Eyes is an online visualisation tool.

It it well suited to multi-variable analysis, and has a range of bubble chart options that can help you to explore how different variables in a dataset relate.



MapIt / GeoData Services

http://mapit.mysociety.org

Often when you end up with location name, ward code, post code or some other identifier you might need to convert it into another format, fetch co-ordinates or otherwise manipulate it.

That’s where tools like MapIt come in.

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Mapping

Ask your mentor...

Putting data on a map can help you to see geographical trends and patterns. Many forms of map exist, from marker-based maps, to heat maps.

Combining different data sources on a map can help you identify gaps between services and need.

Geocoding tools can help prepare data for mapping.



Monitoring online conversations

hootsuite / topsy / etc.

People are already talking about the issues you wish to influence. You can monitor these conversations using simple searches or more sophisticated tools, such as hootsuite, or topsy. This also helps you decide where to share you information



NHS Information Centre

www.ic.nhs.uk

The NHS Information Centre contains detailed information from across the NHS, covering hospitals, primary care, mental health, patient experience, prescribing, public health, social care and the health workforce.

Many datasets are provided with regional and local breakdowns.



Open Refine

www.openrefine.org

Open Refine is a power-tool for working with data. It can help you to clean up datasets, restructure data, and fetch extra information to add to your dataset from the web.

It runs on your computer, and can be used for private and open data.



Sharing social media skills

http://socialmediasurgery.com/

Spreading social media and digital skills into communities and into the voluntary sector will widen the voices heard, the stories gathered and the networks for sharing and campaigning.



Social Reporting

AudioBoo.com / YouTube.com etc.

Social reporting means Capturing what’s going in in you world and sharing it on web tools. they could be a blog, or youtube, or audioboo or similar. It could include sharing the documents you are reading - even the events that get e-mailed to you.

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Tableau Public

www.tableausoftware.com

Tableau is desktop software for working with data, helping you to build dynamic visualisations and rich dashboards.

With tableau you can drill down into data to explore trends and patterns, and to present your findings in compelling graphics.



The Data Hub

www.thedatahub.org

The Data Hub is a public data catalogue for open data. Use it to find and share open data.

You can use the groups feature of the Data Hub to curate your own collection of datasets. In doing so, you add to the stock of common knowledge about datasets, and benefit from the curation of common datasets that others have already done.

The Data Hub has an open API which makes it easy to take content from the Data Hub site live into your own website.

intelligent impact - open data cookbook

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