The Scottish Government is making our rich public sector data open for social and economic good. In statistics.gov.scot, we have an open data portal that can be used for free, by anyone and without restriction. It contains a wealth of information that describes our country and how it is changing.
For data experts, this includes API access as standard, to our 5* linked open data. This data infrastructure is used by Official Statistics producers from public bodies across Scotland to disseminate the information that they create. We have committed, in the Open Government Action Plan, to increase the amount of public sector data published as open data, and to make this information easier to find, understand and reuse.
Outline for the talk:
• What the site is
• What's in there
• What the opportunities are for analysts to use it
• Example applications
Speakers Bio's -
Bill Roberts - https://www.linkedin.com/in/bill-roberts-456a515
Bill Roberts is CEO of Swirrl, a company specialising in software for government organisations to publish their data in standards-based machine-readable ways. As well as providing the software platform for statistics.gov.scot, Swirrl works with the Office for National Statistics, Defra, MHCLG, the NHS and others on ensuring open government data can have the maximum positive impact. Swirrl is a member of the W3C and Bill is leading an activity in the W3C/OGC Spatial Data on the Web Interest Group to establish and document for Statistical Data on the Web Best Practices.
Liam Cavin is a statistician working for the Scottish Government, specialising in open data publication. This means that he is focused on giving people access to information in a form that is easy to find, free to use, and can be compared and re-used alongside other sources of information. He manages a website, called statistics.gov.scot, which is a rich source of information on Scotland and its communities.
