At the moment, Lincoln is standing on the edge of a huge change in the way things are done, at least as far as data is concerned. It’s been slowly pushed there by a small band of people (myself amongst them) who believe that one of the keys to making the world a better place is simply opening up data. Today it’s become clear to me that the availability of this data isn’t something that’s just wanted by an academic elite who want it ‘because it should be there’, but it’s something that’s wanted by people who just want to make things better.
Within hours of the University posting up a warning about severe weather, a Tweet dropped into my @mentions box from someone asking if there was the raw data for the warnings available. There’s already a student who’s wanting the not-yet-complete Total ReCal public timetable data for his own 3rd year project. Someone else was wanting to get hold of the GCW PC availability data. The list is endless.
So, what I’m going to try to do in some of my not-really-free time is to start the ball rolling for a website in the style of various other places around the world. Things like data.gov, data.gov.uk and data.open.ac.uk. I think data.lincoln.ac.uk should be fairly easy to rustle up. We could even use WordPress, and the whole thing is ready to go in under a day.
Who’s with me?
Don’t forget data.lincoln.gov.uk/
If the city council can do it…