John Sheridan

2 March 2011

Linked Government Data

“With linked data, when you have some of it, you can find other, related, data.”

Tim Berners-Lee,

“Linked Data Design Issues”http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/LinkedData.html

Henry Maudslay (1771–1831)

He also developed the first industrially practical screw-cutting lathe in 1800, allowing standardisation of screw thread sizes for the first time. This allowed the concept of interchangeability (a idea that was already taking hold) to be practically applied to nuts and bolts. Before this, all nuts and bolts had to be made as matching pairs only. This meant that when machines were disassembled, careful account had to be kept of the matching nuts and bolts ready for when reassembly took place.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Maudslay

Five stars

* make your stuff available on the Web (whatever format) under an open licence

** make it available as structured data (e.g., Excel instead of image scan of a table)

*** use non-proprietary formats (e.g., CSV instead of Excel)

**** use URIs to identify things, so that people can point at your stuff

***** link your data to other data to provide context

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Three projects

• data.gov.uko Supporting the transparency agenda with Linked Data

• legislation.gov.uko First step towards a Linked Data Statute Book

• nationalarchives.gov.uko Semantic Knowledge Base for the Web Archive

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“The Government believes that we need to throw open the doors of public

bodies, to enable the public to hold politicians and public bodies to account.”

The Coalition Agreement.

“We will ensure that all data published by public bodies is published in an open

and standardised format, so that it can be used easily and with minimal cost by

third parties.”

The Coalition Agreement.

We are:

• developing standards for responsible publishing of key types of data (financial data, organisation data, aggregate statistics, location data)

• developing guidance, practices and tools that make it easy to publish data in Linked Data form, at low cost

• making it easy for people to consume data in a programmatic way (the Linked Data API as well as native Linked Data techniques such as the provision of SPARQL Endpoints)

STANDARDS

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2008 2009 2010

A 1,345 1,456 2,301

B 2,112 3,543 2,111

C 2,345 2,987 2,455

D 6,342 6,256 6,123

E 7,435 7,432 8,102

Transaction Date Supplier Amount

A-1263 09/09/2010 Spottiswoode & Co £ 2,345

A-1264 09/09/2010 JSB & Sons £ 2,111

A-1265 09/09/2010 BLG Ltd £ 2,455

A-1266 09/09/2010 Spottiswoode & Co £ 6,123

A-1267 09/09/2010 BLG Ltd £ 8,102

Director General

Director (Operations)

Director (Strategy)

Deputy Director (A)

Deputy Director (A)

Standards

• Re-use where we can, create where we must• Small, high level, light weight vocabularies

o Examples include datacube, organization, provenance• Create local specialisations

o Examples include payments, central-government• Post hoc linking

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DATA

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http://reference.data.gov.uk/id/day/2011-01-13

http://reference.data.gov.uk/id/department/CO

http://transport.data.gov.uk/id/station/WAT

http://education.data.gov.uk/id/school/341451

http://location.data.gov.uk/id/3245677362123

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/id/ukpga/2009/12/section/2

PRODUCTION

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Gridworks (Google Refine)

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Gridworks: map and export Linked Data

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PUBLICATION

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Linked Data API

• Open Standard• Generic approach for creating APIs from Linked Data• Sits on top of a Linked Data store• Several implementations, most mature is Puelia• Examples for education and transport• Also, organisations, payments information

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UNAMBIGUOUS DEFINITIONSAnd wouldn’t it be cool if we had…

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Legislation as data

• Three considerations for legislation as datao Typographic layouto Versioning / changes over timeo Semantics

• Semantic representation using RDF and Linked Datao URIs for thingso RDF data modelo subject - property - object

• Requires granular URIs to name thingso Identifiero Documento Representation

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“A” changes “B” when “C” says so

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“A” changes “B” when “C” says so

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“A” changes “B” when “C” says so

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Academies Act 2010

Section 19 (2)

Academies Act 2010

Section 12 (4)

SI 2010/1937 Schedule 3

Charities Act 1993 Schedule

2 (ca)

Secretary of State

Confers power

Makes

Commences

Inserts text into

Legislation URIs

• Identifiero http://www.legislation.gov.uk/id/{type}/{year}/{number}/section/{number}o eg http://www.legislation.gov.uk/id/ukpga/2010/32/section/12/4

• Documento http://www.legislation.gov.uk/{type}/{year}/{number}/section/{number}o eg http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/32/section/12#section-12-4

• Representationso /data.xmlo /data.xhto /data.pdfo /data.rdfo and for any list, /data.feed

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Legislation URIs, time and extents

• Identifiero http://www.legislation.gov.uk/id/{type}/{year}/{number}/section/{number}

• eg http://www.legislation.gov.uk/id/ukpga/2010/32/section/12/4

• Document versionso In force

• eg http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/32/section/12o Prospective

• eg http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/32/section/12/prospectiveo Point in time

• eg http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/32/section/12/2010-12-01o Extents

• eg http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/32/section/12/england

• eg http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/32/section/12/scotland

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Web Archive - Semantic Knowledge Base

• The National Archives operates the UK Government Website Archive

• Second most used web archive in the world• Links to withdrawn documents are maintained – preserving

wide variety of information, from datasets to documents and press releases

• Web archives are notoriously difficult to search using standard search technology – size, number of duplicates

• Procured SKB, competitive process• Solution being delivered by a consortium (technologies from

Ontotext, University of Sheffield)

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