[Mustapha Mokrane]

Dear Lesley, All,
The idea of a DataHack during International Data Week is excellent and I
support the initiative to contact the Australian GovHack initiators to help
us with such a proposal!
However, I agree with Simon that the focus of our organizations (RDA,
CODATA and WDS) is *research data.* Accordingly, I suggest that datasets be
selected from either WDS Members, Open Research Data repositories
or DATAGOV as long as they qualify as research datasets. We need this
activity to demonstrate that something useful, meaningful and meeting
scientific standards can be produced from research datasets for
researchers, governments, policy makers or citizens. In this context, we
need to think carefully about the quality of the datasets and the
trustworthiness of the data sources.
WDS research data repositories are certified infrastructures and WDS
datasets come with a minimum of scientific quality-assurance. Datasets
provided by several WDS data holders are discoverable through DATAGOV
portals, such as the NASA DAACs and NOAA Data Centres holdings (more than 9
Petabytes only for NASA) through the US DATAGOV portal. However, I am
afraid that unlike in Australia and the US a majority of datasets available
through the other DATAGOV portals are still sourced from government
administrations, local authorities or government related bodies and do not
cover the research data landscape adequately. An example is the DATA.GOV.UK
portal which features a limited number of datasets provided by the UK NERC
Data Centres, when these hold significant datasets. Likewise, dataset
served by PANGAEA an important international data centre located in Germany
are not discoverable through the GOVDATA.DE portal (and not because of a
lack of openness or interoperability!)
Datasets on DATAGOV portals are of course provided in CSV, XML and other
standard exchange formats, but the data formats are not standardized for
the same type of data even within one portal and let alone across the
various national portals, making it extremely difficult to exploit these in
a useful way. Also some datasets available through DATAGOV portals have no
scientific basis and not even an official label (for e.g the wikipedia-like
crowdsourced and otherwise interesting Open Food Facts dataset provided on
DATA.GOUV.FR). These datasets might be fit for purpose to generate
consumers mobile apps, but I doubt their relevance for research or policy
making.
My conclusion is that an IDW DataHack should clearly focus on research data
and aim for the use of quality-assured data.
Best wishes.
Mustapha
—
*Mustapha Mokrane*, PhD. | Executive Director
World Data System-International Programme Office
c/o NICT, 4-2-1 Nukui-kitamachi, Koganei, Tokyo 184-8795, Japan
Tel: +81 4 2327 6004 Fax: +81 4 2327 6490 Mob:+81 90 5790 4732
***@***.***-wds.org | http://www.icsu-wds.org

Discussion

[Francine Berman]

I like the idea of a datahack / data challenge for IWD and have been talking with some folks independently about the possibility of taking this on, at least for P8. The idea was to do some kind of data challenge in an area of U.S. national importance (which is likely an area of global importance) and to get some of the folks who have been doing data meetups involved in running it. Can we put this on the agenda for our calls (once we get the location and date set … ☺). Having one as a shared effort has the potential of even more impact. It was great seeing many of you in Paris last week!
Fran
Dr. Francine Berman
Chair, Research Data Alliance / US
Edward P. Hamilton Distinguished Professor of Computer Science
Director, Center for a Digital Society
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
http://www.cs.rpi.edu/~bermaf/
From: mustapha.mokrane=***@***.***-groups.org [mailto:***@***.***-groups.org] On Behalf Of Mustapha Mokrane
Sent: Tuesday, September 29, 2015 3:44 AM
To: Lesley Wyborn; International Data Week including P8
Cc: Parsons, Mark; Geoffrey Boulton; CODATA ED; Ross Wilkinson; Andrew Treloar; Jane Hunter; Sandy Harrison; ***@***.***
Subject: [idw] Re: Doing a GovHack for International Data Week in 2016.
Dear Lesley, All,
The idea of a DataHack during International Data Week is excellent and I support the initiative to contact the Australian GovHack initiators to help us with such a proposal!
However, I agree with Simon that the focus of our organizations (RDA, CODATA and WDS) is research data. Accordingly, I suggest that datasets be selected from either WDS Members, Open Research Data repositories or DATAGOV as long as they qualify as research datasets. We need this activity to demonstrate that something useful, meaningful and meeting scientific standards can be produced from research datasets for researchers, governments, policy makers or citizens. In this context, we need to think carefully about the quality of the datasets and the trustworthiness of the data sources.
WDS research data repositories are certified infrastructures and WDS datasets come with a minimum of scientif! ic quality-assurance. Datasets provided by several WDS data holders are discoverable through DATAGOV portals, such as the NASA DAACs and NOAA Data Centres holdings (more than 9 Petabytes only for NASA) through the US DATAGOV portal. However, I am afraid that unlike in Australia and the US a majority of datasets available through the other DATAGOV portals are still sourced from government administrations, local authorities or government related bodies and do not cover the research data landscape adequately. An example is the DATA.GOV.UK portal which features a limited number of datasets provided by the UK NERC Data Centres, when these hold significant datasets. Likewise, dataset served by PANGAEA an important international data centre located in Germany are not discoverable through the GOVDATA.DE portal (and not because of a lack of openness or interoperability!)
Datasets on DATAGOV portals are of course provided in CSV, XML and other standard exchange formats, but the data formats are not standardized for the same type of data even within one portal and let alone across the various national portals, making it extremely difficult to exploit these in a useful way. Also some datasets available through DATAGOV portals have no scientific basis and not even an official label (for e.g the wikipedia-like crowdsourced and otherwise interesting Open Food Facts dataset provided on DATA.GOUV.FR). These datasets might be fit for purpose to generate consumers mobile apps, but I doubt their relevance for research or policy making.
My conclusion is that an IDW DataHack should clearly focus on research data and aim for the use of quality-assured data.
Best wishes.
Mustapha
—
[https://www.google.com/a/cpanel/icsu-wds.org/images/logo.gif%5D
Mustapha Mokrane, PhD. | Executive Director
World Data System-International Programme Office
c/o NICT, 4-2-1 Nukui-kitamachi, Koganei, Tokyo 184-8795, Japan
Tel: +81 4 2327 6004 Fax: +81 4 2327 6490 Mob:+81 90 5790 4732
***@***.***-wds.org | http://www.icsu-wds.org
On 29 September 2015 at 00:23, CODATA ED wrote:
Dear all,
Likewise, I think this is a great idea.
This certainly provides a good opportunity to draw attention on the WDS data but it think we would be missing a trick if that were the only focus. Any international, Open research data should be in scope.
As for the Australian organiser of GovHack, I see no reason to delay contacting her and arranging a call in due course.
Best wishes,
Simon.
___________________________
NEW! CODATA International News and Discussion List: http://lists.codata.org/mailman/listinfo/codata-international_lists.coda…
Data Science Journal: http://datascience.codata.org/
Geoffrey Boulton, ‘Open Data and the Future of Science’: http://www.codata.org/news/43/62/Geoffrey-Boulton-ANDS-Webinar-Open-Data…
___________________________
Dr Simon Hodson | Executive Director CODATA | http://www.codata.org
E-Mail: ***@***.*** | Twitter: @simonhodson99 | Skype: simonhodson99
Blog: http://www.codata.org/blog
Diary: http://bit.ly/simonhodson99-calendar
Tel (Office): +33 1 45 25 04 96 | Tel (Cell): +33 6 86 30 42 59
CODATA (ICSU Committee on Data for Science and Technology), 5 rue Auguste Vacquerie, 75016 Paris, FRANCE
On 28 Sep 2015, at 17:01, Lesley Wyborn wrote:
Hi Mark
I think it varies from country to country.
Because in Australia, the effort was made to get the 8.5 PB of the major
government data collections onto the Research Infrastructures, but still
have these data accessible through the data.gov.au portal, the data.gov.au
collection absolutely swamps the WDS. In fact in Australia we only have 2
WDS centres to my knowledge and these only have tens of TB¹s of data.
Being more practical, if we are going to progress this idea further, we
should perhaps involve the Australian organiser of GovHack. Let me know
when you want to do that, as she has been running it for about 5 years and
is full of lessons lea! rn¹t stories.
Take care
Lesley
—–Original Message—–
From: “Parsons, Mark”

Date: Monday, 28 September 2015 4:48 pm
To: Geoffrey Boulton
Cc: Lesley Wyborn , Mustapha Mokrane
, “***@***.***“
, Simon Hodson , Ross
Wilkinson , Andrew Treloar

Subject: Re: Doing a GovHack for International Data Week in 2016.
I like the idea too. (I copy the IDW address for the record). I
especially like the idea of including WDS data. Indeed, I think that
should be the focus. The WDS nodes have more research data than the
data.govs
cheers,
-m.
On Sep 28, 2015, at 12:40 PM, Geoffrey Boulton
wrote:
Great idea. Lets do it. Well done Lesley.
Geoffrey
Quoting Lesley Wyborn on Sun, 27 Sep 2015
16:30:18 +0000:
Dear all
As promised to a couple! of you here are some links to the Australian
GovHack week in 2015.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GovHack and https://www.govhack.org/
The idea is that “people are encouraged to form small teams of
competitors to produce any kind of “hack” using Open Australian
government data in around 46 hours, from Friday evening to Sunday
afternoon (it is like a lockup).
The format of a “hack” is unspecified, but the most common are web
applications, mobile applications, or visualisations. Together with all
source code deposited in an open source repository and open-licensed,
each team is judged on a three-minute video they must produce,
demonstrating what they have produced and its future potential.”
The teams are usually supported by custodians that own the bigger data
sets and that provid! e staff who can answer questions on the data.
The Australian GovHack runs with support from both the Government
agencies and commercial entities (list for 2015 is on
https://www.govhack.org/sponsorship/ ) The sponsors provide prize money
and some funding to run it. However, in Australia it is also supported
by a band of extremely enthusiastic volunteers: without them it would
fail.
I think it would be great to run a hack on the weekend before
International Data Week in 2016, with the winners announced in the
conference.
For international data week you could focus on all international
data.gov.xx’s (as Mark suggested), or we could expand it out to involve
open data from the WDS. As it is international data week, we could
specify that we need a global application and that data from at least 2
continents must be included.
Take care
Lesley
PS it was great seeing you all last week (well almost – we missed
Geoffrey!)
—
The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
Scotland, with registration number SC005336.

[Simon Hodson]

> Can we put this on the agenda for our calls (once we get the location and date set … J). Having one as a shared effort has the potential of even more impact.
Completely agreed. I think this is an ideal activity to have as one of the attractions of the (joint) International Data Forum day.
Best wishes,
Simon.
___________________________
NEW! Get Ready to Apply for the CODATA-RDA Research Data Science Summer School http://www.codata.org/news/75/62/Get-Ready-to-Apply-for-the-CODATA-RDA-R…
CODATA International News and Discussion List: http://lists.codata.org/mailman/listinfo/codata-international_lists.coda…
Data Science Journal: http://datascience.codata.org/
___________________________
Dr Simon Hodson | Executive Director CODATA | http://www.codata.org
E-Mail: ***@***.*** | Twitter: @simonhodson99 | Skype: simonhodson99
Blog: http://www.codata.org/blog
Diary: http://bit.ly/simonhodson99-calendar
Tel (Office): +33 1 45 25 04 96 | Tel (Cell): +33 6 86 30 42 59
CODATA (ICSU Committee on Data for Science and Technology), 5 rue Auguste Vacquerie, 75016 Paris, FRANCE
On 29 Sep 2015, at 12:37, Berman wrote:
> I like the idea of a datahack / data challenge for IWD and have been talking with some folks independently about the possibility of taking this on, at least for P8. The idea was to do some kind of data challenge in an area of U.S. national importance (which is likely an area of global importance) and to get some of the folks who have been doing data meetups involved in running it. Can we put this on the agenda for our calls (once we get the location and date set … J). Having one as a shared effort has the potential of even more impact. It was great seeing many of you in Paris last week!
> Fran
>
> Dr. Francine Berman
> Chair, Research Data Alliance / US
> Edward P. Hamilton Distinguished Professor of Computer Science
> Director, Center for a Digital Society
> Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
> http://www.cs.rpi.edu/~bermaf/
>
> From: mustapha.mokrane=***@***.***-groups.org [mailto:***@***.***-groups.org] On Behalf Of Mustapha Mokrane
> Sent: Tuesday, September 29, 2015 3:44 AM
> To: Lesley Wyborn; International Data Week including P8
> Cc: Parsons, Mark; Geoffrey Boulton; CODATA ED; Ross Wilkinson; Andrew Treloar; Jane Hunter; Sandy Harrison; ***@***.***
> Subject: [idw] Re: Doing a GovHack for International Data Week in 2016.
>
> Dear Lesley, All,
>
> The idea of a DataHack during International Data Week is excellent and I support the initiative to contact the Australian GovHack initiators to help us with such a proposal!
>
> However, I agree with Simon that the focus of our organizations (RDA, CODATA and WDS) is research data. Accordingly, I suggest that datasets be selected from either WDS Members, Open Research Data repositories or DATAGOV as long as they qualify as research datasets. We need this activity to demonstrate that something useful, meaningful and meeting scientific standards can be produced from research datasets for researchers, governments, policy makers or citizens. In this context, we need to think carefully about the quality of the datasets and the trustworthiness of the data sources.
>
> WDS research data repositories are certified infrastructures and WDS datasets come with a minimum of scientif! ic quality-assurance. Datasets provided by several WDS data holders are discoverable through DATAGOV portals, such as the NASA DAACs and NOAA Data Centres holdings (more than 9 Petabytes only for NASA) through the US DATAGOV portal. However, I am afraid that unlike in Australia and the US a majority of datasets available through the other DATAGOV portals are still sourced from government administrations, local authorities or government related bodies and do not cover the research data landscape adequately. An example is the DATA.GOV.UK portal which features a limited number of datasets provided by the UK NERC Data Centres, when these hold significant datasets. Likewise, dataset served by PANGAEA an important international data centre located in Germany are not discoverable through the GOVDATA.DE portal (and not because of a lack of openness or interoperability!)
>
> Datasets on DATAGOV portals are of course provided in CSV, XML and other standard exchange formats, but the data formats are not standardized for the same type of data even within one portal and let alone across the various national portals, making it extremely difficult to exploit these in a useful way. Also some datasets available through DATAGOV portals have no scientific basis and not even an official label (for e.g the wikipedia-like crowdsourced and otherwise interesting Open Food Facts dataset provided on DATA.GOUV.FR). These datasets might be fit for purpose to generate consumers mobile apps, but I doubt their relevance for research or policy making.
>
> My conclusion is that an IDW DataHack should clearly focus on research data and aim for the use of quality-assured data.
>
> Best wishes.
> Mustapha
>
> —
>
> Mustapha Mokrane, PhD. | Executive Director
> World Data System-International Programme Office
> c/o NICT, 4-2-1 Nukui-kitamachi, Koganei, Tokyo 184-8795, Japan
> Tel: +81 4 2327 6004 Fax: +81 4 2327 6490 Mob:+81 90 5790 4732
> ***@***.***-wds.org | http://www.icsu-wds.org
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On 29 September 2015 at 00:23, CODATA ED wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> Likewise, I think this is a great idea.
>
> This certainly provides a good opportunity to draw attention on the WDS data but it think we would be missing a trick if that were the only focus. Any international, Open research data should be in scope.
>
> As for the Australian organiser of GovHack, I see no reason to delay contacting her and arranging a call in due course.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Simon.
> ___________________________
>
> NEW! CODATA International News and Discussion List: http://lists.codata.org/mailman/listinfo/codata-international_lists.coda…
>
> Data Science Journal: http://datascience.codata.org/
>
> Geoffrey Boulton, ‘Open Data and the Future of Science’: http://www.codata.org/news/43/62/Geoffrey-Boulton-ANDS-Webinar-Open-Data…
> ___________________________
> Dr Simon Hodson | Executive Director CODATA | http://www.codata.org
>
> E-Mail: ***@***.*** | Twitter: @simonhodson99 | Skype: simonhodson99
> Blog: http://www.codata.org/blog
> Diary: http://bit.ly/simonhodson99-calendar
> Tel (Office): +33 1 45 25 04 96 | Tel (Cell): +33 6 86 30 42 59
>
> CODATA (ICSU Committee on Data for Science and Technology), 5 rue Auguste Vacquerie, 75016 Paris, FRANCE
>
>
> On 28 Sep 2015, at 17:01, Lesley Wyborn wrote:
>
>
> Hi Mark
>
> I think it varies from country to country.
>
> Because in Australia, the effort was made to get the 8.5 PB of the major
> government data collections onto the Research Infrastructures, but still
> have these data accessible through the data.gov.au portal, the data.gov.au
> collection absolutely swamps the WDS. In fact in Australia we only have 2
> WDS centres to my knowledge and these only have tens of TB¹s of data.
>
> Being more practical, if we are going to progress this idea further, we
> should perhaps involve the Australian organiser of GovHack. Let me know
> when you want to do that, as she has been running it for about 5 years and
> is full of lessons lea! rn¹t stories.
>
> Take care
>
>
> Lesley
>
>
>
>
>
> —–Original Message—–
> From: “Parsons, Mark”

> Date: Monday, 28 September 2015 4:48 pm
> To: Geoffrey Boulton
> Cc: Lesley Wyborn , Mustapha Mokrane
> , “***@***.***“
> , Simon Hodson , Ross
> Wilkinson , Andrew Treloar
>
> Subject: Re: Doing a GovHack for International Data Week in 2016.
>
>
> I like the idea too. (I copy the IDW address for the record). I
> especially like the idea of including WDS data. Indeed, I think that
> should be the focus. The WDS nodes have more research data than the
> data.govs
>
> cheers,
>
> -m.
>
> On Sep 28, 2015, at 12:40 PM, Geoffrey Boulton
> wrote:
>
> Great idea. Lets do it. Well done Lesley.
>
>
> Geoffrey
>
>
> Quoting Lesley Wyborn on Sun, 27 Sep 2015
> 16:30:18 +0000:
>
>
> Dear all
>
> As promised to a couple! of you here are some links to the Australian
> GovHack week in 2015.
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GovHack and https://www.govhack.org/
>
> The idea is that “people are encouraged to form small teams of
> competitors to produce any kind of “hack” using Open Australian
> government data in around 46 hours, from Friday evening to Sunday
> afternoon (it is like a lockup).
>
> The format of a “hack” is unspecified, but the most common are web
> applications, mobile applications, or visualisations. Together with all
> source code deposited in an open source repository and open-licensed,
> each team is judged on a three-minute video they must produce,
> demonstrating what they have produced and its future potential.”
>
> The teams are usually supported by custodians that own the bigger data
> sets and that provid! e staff who can answer questions on the data.
>
> The Australian GovHack runs with support from both the Government
> agencies and commercial entities (list for 2015 is on
> https://www.govhack.org/sponsorship/ ) The sponsors provide prize money
> and some funding to run it. However, in Australia it is also supported
> by a band of extremely enthusiastic volunteers: without them it would
> fail.
>
> I think it would be great to run a hack on the weekend before
> International Data Week in 2016, with the winners announced in the
> conference.
>
> For international data week you could focus on all international
> data.gov.xx’s (as Mark suggested), or we could expand it out to involve
> open data from the WDS. As it is international data week, we could
> specify that we need a global application and that data from at least 2
> continents must be included.
>
> Take care
>
>
> Lesley
> PS it was great seeing you all last week (well almost – we missed
> Geoffrey!)
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> —
> The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
> Scotland, with registration number SC005336.
>
>
>
>
>
> Can we put this on the agenda for our calls (once we get the location and date set … J). Having one as a shared effort has the potential of even more impact.
Completely agreed. I think this is an ideal activity to have as one of the attractions of the (joint) International Data Forum day.
Best wishes,
Simon.
___________________________
NEW! Get Ready to Apply for the CODATA-RDA Research Data Science Summer School http://www.codata.org/news/75/62/Get-Ready-to-Apply-for-the-CODATA-RDA-R…
CODATA International News and Discussion List: http://lists.codata.org/mailman/listinfo/codata-international_lists.coda…
Data Science Journal: http://datascience.codata.org/
___________________________
Dr Simon Hodson | Executive Director CODATA | http://www.codata.org
E-Mail: ***@***.*** | Twitter: @simonhodson99 | Skype: simonhodson99
Blog: http://www.codata.org/blog
Diary: http://bit.ly/simonhodson99-calendar
Tel (Office): +33 1 45 25 04 96 | Tel (Cell): +33 6 86 30 42 59
CODATA (ICSU Committee on Data for Science and Technology), 5 rue Auguste Vacquerie, 75016 Paris, FRANCE

[Francine Berman]

Hi Geoffrey,
No, I think you are exactly right. It seemed to me like we might pull it off (at least on our side) if we can engaged the meetup folks who are doing this regularly and thoroughly. I completely we agree that we need to be really careful that whomever is doing it can follow-up and be responsible for its success. Look forward to talking with you all about this.
Fran
Dr. Francine Berman
Chair, Research Data Alliance / US
Edward P. Hamilton Distinguished Professor of Computer Science
Director, Center for a Digital Society
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
http://www.cs.rpi.edu/~bermaf/
—–Original Message—–
From: Geoffrey Boulton [mailto:***@***.***]
Sent: Tuesday, September 29, 2015 7:49 AM
To: Simon CODATA
Cc: Berman, Fran; Mustapha Mokrane; Lesley Wyborn; International Data Week including P8; Parsons, Mark; Ross Wilkinson; Andrew Treloar; Jane Hunter; Sandy Harrison; ***@***.***; Meleco, Yolanda Anne
Subject: Re: [idw] Re: Doing a GovHack for International Data Week in 2016.
If carefully planned and well-orchestrated, this could be a global event involving several/many countries and issues and be both a valuable demonstrator and an awareness raiser. We have time to plan.
Do we have the resources? Or am I spoiling a good idea by over-inflating it?
Best wishes
Geoffrey
Quoting Simon CODATA on Tue, 29 Sep 2015 12:42:49 +0100:
—
The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336.

[Author]

Replies