Members Sue Ball and Edafe Onerhime have been collaborating through Leeds Creative Time Bank around ‘Open Data’. With 5 hours of timebank credits, Sue Ball requested Edafe Onerhime to use her skills as an Open Data Specialist to investigate empty commercial property and land in Leeds South Bank. Edafe has produced an online map using business rates data from Leeds Data Mill to which Sue is ‘pinning’ images of each unit via twitter ( see image above). This map will be developed through public participative walks and other forms of public interface to consider the wider regeneration of this area of the city. Sue will be putting more requests through the timebank network.
What is Open Data?
Open data is data that can be freely used, reused and redistributed by anyone – subject only, at most, to the requirement to attribute and share alike…and can be defined in three categories…
Availability and Access: the data must be available as a whole and at no more than a reasonable reproduction cost, preferably by downloading over the internet. The data must also be available in a convenient and modifiable form.
Reuse and Redistribution: the data must be provided under terms that permit reuse and redistribution including the intermixing with other datasets.
Universal Participation: everyone must be able to use, reuse and redistribute – there should be no discrimination against fields of endeavour or against persons or groups. For example, ‘non-commercial’ restrictions that would prevent ‘commercial’ use, or restrictions of use for certain purposes (e.g. only in education), are not allowed. This allows ‘inter-operability’…or connection, coproduction, collaboration. Inter-operability denotes the ability of diverse systems and organizations to work together (inter-operate). In this case, it is the ability to inter-operate – or intermix – different datasets.