When the UK’s data sharing website data.gov.uk launched I was pretty unimpressed. I mentioned a few things that annoyed me: Where were the examples? What were the ontologies used? Without this information the provision of a sparql endpoint is fairly meaningless.
Well it turns out that one section of the government is getting stuck in. Maybe I should have remembered that the marketeers love a launch without a product, and that the people doing the real work are up late, slaving away cursing their managers, trying to get the stuff out the door. Just saying; it’s not like I’ve ever seen anything like that in my job 
Anyway…, I already liked the efforts the UK’s ordinance survey were making and, defying the normal stereotype of public sector computing, they have not been content with their first or even their second stab at presenting a linked data interface to their info-sets.
http://data.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/ presents examples, a sparql endpoint, and the ontologies used, including the use of standard ontologies like foaf. Nice!
Now what can you do with any of this?
Well last week I was in the UK, in Kingham. If I create a sparql query like this:
Construct {
?Place a <http://data.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/ontology/50kGazetteer/NamedPlace> .
?Place a ?Type .?Place <http://http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#broader> ?BiggerPlace .
?BiggerPlace a <http://data.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/ontology/50kGazetteer/NamedPlace> .
?BiggerPlace <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#label> ?BiggerPlaceName .
?BiggerPlace <http://data.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/ontology/spatialrelations/contains> ?Place .
}
WHERE
{
?Place <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#label> ‘Kingham‘ .
?Place <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#type> ?Type .
?Place <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#type> ?Type .
?BiggerPlace <http://data.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/ontology/spatialrelations/contains> ?Place .
?BiggerPlace <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#label> ?BiggerPlaceName
}
and enter it on the endpoint page (http://api.talis.com/stores/ordnance-survey/services/sparql) then I get back a graph of information about the places that say they contain Kingham. I also get an URL for Kingham (http://data.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/id/7000000000008699*) which I can use from now on as a unique identifier in my code for the Civil Parish that is Kingham.
This to me is exactly what government should be lending to the data world. The administrative levels in the ordinance survey data can be linked through to election results, the provision of services, etc. A commitment on the part of an authority to maintain a high level of integrity for such data can provide a genuinely valuable resource.
Technology and governments do not usually go well together. The thing about data though is that it really isn’t about technology. The only criteria for success is availability.
It’s the business of governments to supply services to all their citizens and with a fair degree of equality (hopefully). To assess the success of governance requires a lot of categorization and correlation: the number of doctors per 1,000 people; the average wealth in a given district; employment levels, etc. So the work is already being done. Making it open means we get more value for our taxes, accountability increases and we get a data set that allows us to talk authoritatively of entities within a state.
http://data.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/id/7000000000008699 refers to the Civil Parish of Kingham, not the village, or some other nebulous form. The Kingham link describes the nature of this relationship by describing its type as a Civil Parish. Another graph might describe the village and also, form a relationship such as:
<http://example.com/ukplaces/villages/Kingham> <http://http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#broader <http://data.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/id/7000000000008699>
letting us know that the village and the civil parish have a strong relationship.
Sure there are things wrong with the OIS data but bucking my usual nature I’m not going to complain about them. Why? Because, I trust them to make their data even better in future. That’s a rare enough thing for me to expect in a commercial product and almost unheard of in the public sector.
Tim (not the other Tim)
*If you don’t have an rdf plugin look at these by prefixing the rdf URLs with http://demo.openlinksw.com/ode/?uri=
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