Making data public

I’ve been discussing with a council what data should be made open via an Open Referral UK data feed - through the API.

Data you will not want to expose includes:

  • services for internal use that are not available to people outside your organisation
  • records that are archived (no longer live)
  • fields that should not be made public, e.g. the location of a refuge

In keeping with the ethos of open data and the Local Digital Declaration, most data should be open and available under an Open Government Licence or equivalent that allows free use for any legal (commercial or non-commercial use) purpose. Data in most council directories is public anyway. The standard just makes reuse easier.