Open Data

Open data is public data (such as data relating to taxes, the climate, education, public spending etc) that has been made ‘open’ (available for all to see, use and distribute without cost or need to seek permission) by means of an open licence.

while true founders Adam and Paul have decades of experience supporting organizations worldwide to embrace the benefits of open data. They spent years at the forefront of open data thought leadership while working in senior management at the world’s largest open data nonprofit, the Open Knowledge Foundation (OKF), and worked together as CEO and Senior Engineer of a private open-source software company with ties to OKF. Both are particularly active in the Israeli open data space, with Paul having played a major role in opening up the country’s municipal data, work which Adam continues through the nonprofit The Public Knowledge Workshop (‘Hasadna’), of which he is co-founder.

Governments all over the world publish open data via what are known as open data portals or platforms like data.gov, data.gov.uk and data.gov.au. It is also becoming more common for other types of organization, particularly private companies, to openly publish certain datasets. An energy provider, for example, might publish energy consumption data to support climate change research, or a fashion retailer might publish data to make their supply chain more transparent. In any case, organizations can have multiple motivations for publishing data openly, among them transparency, innovation and compliance.

There are many practical considerations that need to be taken into account when publishing or working with open data. A popular tool used for publishing open data is The Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network (CKAN), an open-source software that is trusted by multiple governments and other major organizations. One feature of CKAN that makes it so popular for publishing open data is its rich options for metadata tagging. Having quality metadata (data about data, like when it was produced, who produced it, when it was last updated etc) is crucial for data governance and ensuring that the end consumer has all the information they need to validate and use the data. Ensuring the published data is licensed correctly is also key to maximising open data’s impact.

If your organization needs to publish open data for the purposes of compliance or as part of a transparency initiative, or you are simply interested in exploring the possibility of using or publishing open data, while true can help. We can design, implement and maintain the right technical infrastructure, help you choose the right licence, and advise you on best practices.