UKGovCamp

Dave, some people (*really*) don’t like RDF (which is fine). They therefore tend to think we shouldn’t worry about using RDF for government data publishing. Lets just fling CSV or XML files on the web, they say. Well, that’s a good place to start but I think we are moving on from there (just as we did with web 1.0, by using CSS. By analogy, you could think of ’open data’ as ’building websites’, and ’linked data’ as ’using html + new fangled css’). I should add, as a Linked Data advocate I take the criticisms of RDF very seriously – they tend to have a good basis. By listening, thinking about and then addressing those criticisms, I believe we have rapidly transformed the case for using Linked Data. We have now figured out the sweet spots for using Linked Data for publishing government data. This is as much about using Linked Data as an underpinning technology that enables us to publish data in ways that make it *really* easy to consume, in all the different formats people want (XML, JSON, CSV), as it is about encouraging people using technologies like SPARQL (that’s a big lesson for me of the last 6 months). Paradoxically, it is about using a technology that some people can find initially hard to make accessing data easy for everyone (without having to learn RDF). It is also about publishing data responsibly, which means saying where the data is from and providing a proper context. A big topic, and no doubt others will disagree. I think Linked Data has much to offer open data, but they are not exactly the same, and for sure, Linked Data isn’t the only way to publish open government data.