Appendix III: Existing Work

Legal and licensing standards

0 The Open Knowledge Definition (OKD) sets out principles to define the ‘open’ in open knowledge. The term knowledge is used broadly and it includes all forms of data, content such as music, films or books as well any other type of information.

0 In the simplest form the definition can be summed up in the statement that “A piece of knowledge is open if you are free to use, reuse, and redistribute it”.

0 For full details see:

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• http://opendefinition.org

Format standards

0 There are a plethora of definitions of what an ‘open standard’ is – from the legal definitions of international standards organisations and national governments to definitions from companies, NGOs and influential technologists.

0 For further information see:

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• http://www.openformats.org/main
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_format

0 A list of file formats, including information on which are machine readable, is available at:

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• http://wiki.okfn.org/projects/iai/registry

0 For web publishing standards, see the World Wide Web Consortium:

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• http://www.w3.org/

Data and metadata standards

Resource description

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• CKAN metadata. Minimum of required metadata for open datasets. See:
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  • CKAN: http://ckan.net/
  • Example package: http://www.ckan.net/package/read/at-budget
• Dublin Core
• Suggestion for OECD dataset metadata standard

Data models

0 There are also a range of standards for publishing different kinds of data, including:

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• Statistical Data and Metadata Exchange (SDSX)
• International Development Markup Language (DML)
• Financial Information eXchange (FIX)
• Financial products Markup Language (FpML)
• eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL)

Other relevant work

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• Josh Tauberer, Open Government Data
• Improving Access to Government through Better Use of the Web, W3C Interest Group Note, 12 May 2009
• Power of Information Review
• Tim Berners-Lee, Putting Government Data online