Open Data Institute launch open data certification scheme
The ODI used the G8 Summit to launch its global Open Data Certificate scheme, a new initiative designed to help people find, understand and use open data.
The certificates have been created to help ensure a certain level of quality to any open data that is released, and were unveiled as the G8 countries signed up to a new Open Data Charter.
‘The certificates will help to create the right conditions for innovation, making open data easier to find, share and use,’ said Gavin Starks of the ODI. ‘We want to give confidence to people to invest their time, energy, and money.’
He anticipates a wide global take-up of the certificates, which will convey the quality level of the data, (ranging from ‘Raw’ to ‘Expert’), as well as a human and machine-readable description of the data being released. It is hoped the certificates will help data users to understand the quality, licensing and usability of the data in question. It is also hoped the certificates will be able to generate confidence in the data it represents.
Jeni Tennison, technical director at the ODI, said that certification will set high expectations. ‘Anyone who gets a certificate, at whatever level, has done really well,’ she added. Organisations already signed up to the scheme include OpenStreetMap, amee (an environmental scoring system for British companies), MastodonC (energy monitoring data analysis) and Placr (transport data).
Certificates are available online at certificates.theodi.org.