GTFS Open Transport Data Format

Posted on 1 April 2011 by Jag Goraya

Hat tip and thanks to Chris Osborne and his team from ITO, who have converted a lot of the TransXChange and NaPTAN data that we have for the Transport Hack Day into the GTFS open format. He’s also put together some pointers below for collaborators to quickly get up to speed and sink their teeth into the datasets.

The datasets are available in the project Dropbox – access to that is by invitation to folks who have signed up for the Hack Day, so please do and then have a scan of the other datasets too.

Continue reading →

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Transport Hack Day Datasets

Posted on 31 March 2011 by Jag Goraya

Folks who have signed up as a Transport Collaborator for the Hack Day (2 Apr) has been invited to access the datasets for the Transport Hack Day, which are being stored on Dropbox.  Some of the sets come with documentation which it’s worth having a look through.

Here’s a rundown of what is currently (or expected to be) available. Unless otherwise stated, the data is for South Yorkshire only. Most of it is for Sheffield, but Doncaster, Rotherham and Barnsley borough data is provided in some cases.  Continue reading →

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Updates : February 2011

Posted on 9 March 2011 by Jag Goraya

This month’s meetup was jam-packed with updates, insights and open data goodness:

  • Sheffield City Council update (from Chris Stewart)
  • Transport Hack Day (Sat 2 Apr)
  • Open Data Summit (Wed 13 Apr)
  • Semantic Web Overview (from Ian Ibbotson)
  • CLG Consultation: Local Authority Proposed Code of Practice
  • BIS/Cabinet Office Consultation: Public Data Corporation

Here’s the prezi show covering most of that, with roundup of further updates on the following pages.  Skip over to here to get a roundup of Ian’s semantic web overview and here to get a summary of the consultation response. Continue reading →

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Response to Transparency Code Consultation

Posted on 9 March 2011 by Jag Goraya

As far as the Communities and Local Government proposal for local authority transparency does go, there are still questions about the type of datasets it mandates, the support it provisions for facilitating informed dialogue about data-driven democratic accountability, the standard of consistency it will drive and where it fits in an increasingly complex web of government legislation in this area. Continue reading →

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Transport Hack Day: 2 Apr 2011

Posted on 2 March 2011 by Jag Goraya

Open Data Sheffield is hosting a hands-on hackday to play, experiment and build cool stuff with public transport data.

We’re inviting designers, developers and citizens to come together and spend a day mashing up ideas, creating prototypes and building apps that take advantage of some of the vast amounts of transport and traffic data that are publicly available within the region.

You don’t need to have technical skills to get involved. Ideas people, project wranglers, app testers are also warmly invited to come along and get stuck in.

Whether you can make it to the hackday or not, you can still get involved by checking out some of datasets available and throwing around ideas to find collaborators and hack-magicians.
Continue reading →

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Semantic Web Overview

Posted on 24 February 2011 by Jag Goraya

Ian Ibbotson treated us to an overview of the semantic web in February’s Open Data Sheffield meetup. Some of the really interesting highlights (apart from the background to the Dublin Core standard) were around the appropriateness of semantic web technology. I’ll probably over-simplify this for local authority and developer communities below, so be sure to get the fuller picture in Ian’s presentation.
Continue reading →

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Parking Fines

Posted on 23 February 2011 by Saul Cozens

Someone at work pointed out that the information of every parking fine in Sheffield for the last 5 years is available via this WhatDoTheyKnow.com FOI request.

The data is from 2006 to 2010 and seems to contain every parking ticket location, time date, violation and payment type.  The location is not geocoded, but rather has a road name.  Still this might be enough to visualise this on a map.

Anyone up for this?

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Protection of Freedoms Bill Amendments

Posted on 22 February 2011 by Jag Goraya

The government seems to be going into overdrive with the open data agenda at the moment. Along with consultations for both the wide-ranging local authority code of practice and the Public Data Corporation (which we’ll take closer looks at in the February Open Data Sheffield meetup on Wed 23 Feb), amendments have also been tabled to the Protection of Freedoms Bill.

Buried among the many proposed changes to the Bill is an update to Part 6 concerning the ‘Freedom of Information and Data Protection: Publication of certain datasets.’ This will oblige public authorities not only to release their raw, unadapted datasets on request but to make it available in re-usable format and license.

The actual wording of the amendments as well as full contextual details of the Bill documents can be found at the Parliament website.  The second reading of the bill in the House of Commons is due on 1 March 2011.

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Open Data Sheffield Meetup: 23 Feb 2011

Posted on 17 February 2011 by Jag Goraya

Open Data Sheffield is a community of local authority staff, third sector workers, citizens, geeks, academics, journalists and public data providers collaborating to increase public sector transparency in the region and make it easier for citizens to understand the decisions and services that affect them.

Anyone is welcome who has an interest in unlocking the mysteries of public data, presenting meaningful ways to reveal the underlying stories behind policy making and public sector performance or wants to help local bodies engage with the community to create and publish coherent and useful open data.

This month

Doors open at 6pm for registration, drinks, pre-meeting chat and maybe a round of the updated Open Data Mashup game.  We’ll kick off from about 6.30pm.

The main feature this month will be the Open Data 101. Ian Ibbotson gives us the lowdown on some of the fundamentals of open and linked data, from creating it, storing it, manipulating it and presenting it.

The government’s proposed code of practice for local authority data transparency has been unveiled and we’ll take a closer look at this with some of the affected bodies to see how well it serves the needs of the open data community.

We’ll roll into a conversation about Data Laundering, and look at the best options for a stopgap data cleaning (or clearing) repository. This could be key where data is released from different public bodies to the local open data community, before it gets to more permanent stores, such as data.gov.uk.

Chris Stewart from Sheffield City Council’s will give an update on the Council progress with open data. We’ll also have some news and planning about the forthcoming Transport Hack Day and Open Data Summit.

There’s also space for Open Floor for you to show’n'tell your open data projects (let us know if you have something to share), and ask your questions about Open Data. We’ll use these to build up an FAW

We’ll wrap up by 8.30pm and head Onwards to a nearby pub for a sociable drink to explore ideas with other collaborators.

Future meetings

We’re interested to hear about the topics that you may want to learn more about and discuss in future gatherings, as well as receiving offers from potential speakers or workshop facilitators for future sessions, whether that’s about datasets, tools, techniques and technologies, or sharing use cases and case studies to help make sense of it all. Get in touch if you want to contribute.

You can also keep up-to-date and follow the developments by joining in the online group. There is a Twitter channel – @opensheffield – that you may want to follow. We’ll also be posting updates and publishing information about publicly released data on the website.

Open Data Sheffield is an initiative of the GIST Foundation, a non-profit organisation that champions grassroots technology and social innovation in South Yorkshire.

The GIST Lab is a community collaboration space operated by The GIST Foundation in partnership with the Showroom Workstation.  Find directions here.

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What’s on your transport data wishlist?

Posted on 16 February 2011 by Jag Goraya

We’re in the throes of planning a Transport Hack Day with SYPTE.  They are having a look around their silos for data they may be able to get hold of for us.  Here’s the latest:

We can provide access to:

  • Live bus public transport feeds (at a national level if you want) through an open API
  • Static timetable information for bus (annual snapshot available on data.gov.uk, this would be more up to date)
  • Bus Stop locations (quarterly available on data.gov.uk, this would be more up to date)
  • Traffic CCTV
  • Car Park data incl what little live info available in South Yorkshire
  • Anything else on gettheresooner.travelsouthyorkshire.com

What else do people think we’ve got that they may want access to?

So there you have it.  If you have some ideas about what related data you may like to get your hands on to mashup, clean or visualise, let SYPTE know in the comments below.  Give some context too if you can, by briefly describing the use cases around the data application.

Update: The date for the hack day will be Sat 2 Apr. You can register for it here.

By the way, this hack day is likely to be either 2 or 9 April in Sheffield’s GIST Lab. If there’s a strong preference for one or other date, let us know now – we’ll need to firm the date by the end of next week (25 Feb)  but you can (should) influence this.

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