Tag Archives: open data

VIDEO: Big data, open data, linked data and other big ideas that data journalists need to know about

Leave a reply

Three key terms you might hear used in data journalism circles are “open data“, “linked data” and “big data“. This video, made for students on the MA in Data Journalism at Birmingham City University, explores definitions of the three terms, explains some of the jargon used in relation to them, and the critical and ethical issues to consider in relation to open and big data in particular.

Three other video clips are mentioned in the video, and these are embedded below. First of all, Tim Berners-Lee‘s 2009 call for “raw data now”, where he outlined the potential of open and linked data…

Continue reading →

How to search for information in data black holes: Barbara Maseda and the Inventario project

Leave a reply

Barbara Maseda

Image from Knight Center

Ahead of a Global Investigative Journalism Conference panel on reporting in countries without press freedom, Liana Bravo spoke to Cuban data journalist Barbara Maseda about launching a data portal for journalists in an environment where no official data is published.

Bárbara Maseda has dedicated the last four years to publishing data where none exists. “In Cuba we use investigative journalism tools to search for information that elsewhere in the world would be in a press release,” she says. Other journalists’ data problems, such as receiving data in formats that are difficult to analyse, “are my highest aspirations”.

In 2018 she created ‘Inventario’, an open data project for Cuba. “In Cuba data is treated as confidential information. The government does not give data — or when it does, they are not disaggregated,” she says. Continue reading →

Data journalism in Hungary: how Átlátszó’s new datavis project seeks to be both investigative and educational

Leave a reply

In Hungary, not-for-profit news site Átlátszó has launched a full-time data team to create a wide range of data visualisations and data-driven stories. Amanda Loviza spoke to data journalist Attila Bátorfy about his plans to have Átló raise the quality of data journalism in Hungary.

Átlátszó was created in 2011 as Hungary’s first crowd-funded independent investigative news site, with a stated goal of holding the powerful accountable.

Data journalist Attila Bátorfy joined the site two and a half years ago. It was not long before he told editor-in-chief Tamás Bodoky that the site needed a whole separate team to produce higher quality data visualisations. Continue reading →

Britain does a great job of opening its data, except for what journalists really want

3 Replies

Fighting with inflatable hammers? Image by Joe Shlabotnik. Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Journalist SA Mathieson has used open data in Britain to put together an impressive new ebook. In a guest post for OJB he looks at the country’s strengths when it comes to open data — and the problems still facing journalists who want to see how the public’s money is spent.

It is tough for a British journalist to admit that their government does something well, but here goes: when it comes to openly releasing data, Great Britain (in other words England, Scotland and Wales) is second only to Taiwan according to the Global Open Data Index.

Westminster gets maximum marks for releasing data on the government’s budget, national statistics, administrative boundaries, national maps, air quality and company registers. Continue reading →

Teaching data journalism in developing countries: lessons from ODECA

5 Replies

Eva Constantaras

Eva Constantaras

Eva Constantaras is a data journalist and trainer who recently wrote the Data Journalism Manual for the UN Development Program. In a special guest post she talks about the background to the manual, her experiences in working with journalists and professors who want to introduce data journalism techniques in developing nations, and why the biggest challenges not technological, but cultural.

Over the last few years, there has been a significant shift in global experiments in data journalism education away from short term activities like boot camps and hackathons to more sustained and sustainable interventions including fellowships and institutes.

There is a growing awareness that the challenge of teaching data journalism in many countries is split straight down the middle between teaching data and teaching journalism — where neither data science nor public interest journalism are particularly common. Open data can be a boon to democracy — but only if there are professionals capable and motivated to transform that data into information for the public. Continue reading →

Civio and transparency in Spain: “We fight for public access to data”

Leave a reply

Javier de la Vega

Javier de la Vega

Spanish citizens are now a step closer to understanding how power operates in the country, and how decisions affect them, thanks to the work of organisations like Civio fighting for transparency and access to public data. In October their work was recognised with the Gabriel Garcia Marquez award in innovative journalism for their investigations Medicamentalia. In a guest post for OJB, Nuria Riquelme Palazón spoke with Javier de la Vega, one of the members of Civio.

Access to public information, accountability and participatory democracy may have been a reality in many countries for some time — but in Spain they sounded like a utopia. Entrepreneur Jacobo Elosua and computer technician David Cabo decided that this had to change.

The pair used their savings to build an organisation with the intention of serving those active citizens who, like them, believed in transparency: Civio Foundation.

Taking inspiration from organisations like mySociety in the UK, Ciudadano Inteligente in Chile and the Sunlight Foundation in the USA, they began the long process in 2011. Continue reading →

We are proposing to hand away property details at the very point journalists need them most

1 Reply

offshore property private eye

Late last year, as the government indicated it was prepared to water down the Freedom of Information Act, industry publication Press Gazette launched a petition. It was one of a range of factors which led to a promise to leave the Act alone.

This year we face a similar threat. But the industry press is silent. Press Gazette say nothing. Hold The Front Page is empty of reference.

What am I talking about? The Land Registry.

The government is holding a consultation on moving Land Registry operations to the private sector, and with one week left the industry press needs to wake up. Continue reading →

Comparison chart between Glasgow and national average

How Scotland made its council audit data less open (with happy ending)

Leave a reply

Once upon a time Audit Scotland published performance data for every council in Scotland. The approach was simple: a spreadsheet for every council with dozens of indicators across several pages.

audit scotland data

Audit Scotland data from 2012/13

As far as open data goes it wasn’t ideal: comparing councils involved manually downloading spreadsheets and combining them, unless you wrote a scraper to do that for you. Which is what I did last year while working with the Sunday Post on a series of stories.

But at least you had the data in some sort of raw format.

If you look for the data this year, however, you will find things a little more complicated:

“The local government community now produce council performance information through the Local Government Benchmarking Framework.”

Now there’s a middleman. And here things start to go downhill (before a happy ending). Continue reading →

Keeping up to date with FOI and open data: new mailing list launched

3 Replies

Transparency Bulletin by FOIDirectory

Matt Burgess, the man behind FOI Directory (and the former editor of Help Me Investigate Education) has launched a new weekly email newsletter providing regular updates on developments in Freedom of Information and transparency. Continue reading →

MPs’ CVs now available in the Democracy Club App

Leave a reply

democracy_club screenshot

The developers group Democracy Club have created an app which collects the CVs of candidates standing in the general election.

Democracy Club CVs is intended to help constituents get access to information on their candidates’ experience and background.

Users can also use the site to ask candidates for their CVs by sending an email or tweeting them. Continue reading →