Openly Local is Live
London: 13 October 2009
Openly Local is a new project to develop an open and unified way of accessing local government information.
To date, they have opened up data from 40 UK local authorities and are still adding more regularly with more date types being opened.
This is what they have to say about their work.
What is Openly Local?
Openly Local is a place to access data about the workings of your Local Council, without having to poke around through dense, difficult-to-navigate websites
Is that all?
Well, no useful though that would be, the key is to put that information into a structured form, so it can be reused by mash-ups, in data feeds (such as your calendar), or for comparative analysis
Why do this?
We wanted access to this data, and there was no way of getting it, so we scratched our own itch, so to speak.
How to I get this info on my site/hyperlocal blog?
If you're a programmer, check out our simple API. Otherwise we now have a Google gadget, and are working on other widgets.
Why is my local council not listed on here?
Probably it's because we haven't gotten around to it yet (but by all means email us at countculture@googlemail.com and we'll try to prioritize). Occasionally it's because the council website is very tricky to parse (i.e. the information is so badly arranged it's difficult to extract) -- even then it's not impossible, and again do contact us and we'll try to do it sooner rather than later.
I'm from a council and we don't want our data on here
Really? OK. First we ask you to think again. A working democracy require both transparency and the engagement of its citizens in the process, and that's what we're about. If you have specific concerns, please email countculture@googlemail.com
What are your politics?
Openly Local is not affiliated with, supporter of or linked in any way with any political organization
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