Hello and welcome to Open Kent's first newsletter. It has been created to keep you up to speed with what we are doing for the project and update you on progress.
Open Kent is a Kent Connects project, designed to enable partners across Kent to manage, share and visualize their public data.
Take a Look
We want as many councils and Kent partners involved as possible and we understand that making the process simple and easy to use will generate more appeal.
Therefore we have produced a step by step guide found here, which show you how your organisation and your users can use Open Kent.
You can also find on the website the newly added 'terms and conditions' on what to prepare before you plan to link your data to Open Kent. Once you have, contact us at innovation@kent.gov.uk so we can set you up in time for the launch in the Spring.
If you want to see how Open Kent works in action, watch our demonstrations here. Please feel free to use these and our presentation if you want to discuss with your colleagues how your organisation could use Open Kent. We welcome feedback.
Getting Started
Since we kicked off the project, we've taken active steps to ensure that Open Kent will be a success. We have ensured good project management by setting up a Project Board, which is chaired by Dave Lindsay (Maidstone BC).
One of the key aims of this project is to ensure that we make Kent's publically available information re-usable and show it in new and exciting ways. To do this we have been contacting both Kent Connects Strategic Board members and other data sharing groups, to find out who is planning or already working on opening their public data. This has also enabled us to find other projects which we can link in with Open Kent. We have also been in contact with the lead individuals from each Kent Connects partner to start linking data into Open Kent.
Doing our Homework
To strengthen the projects we have carried out analysis and research on the emerging open data standards and requirements set by the government as well as speaking to the Kent Information Sharing Governance Board to raise awareness with data owners using Open Kent about locally agreed data protocols.
Getting Technical
We have also made good headway with the technical developments. So far we have secured the licences for Open Kent from IBM and have performed demonstrations to the 16 partners from Kent Connects. We are also exploring other types of visualization techniques that could be integrated into the system. If you know of any that you think would be of benefit, please let us know.
Well that's all for this month. Stay tuned for further updates soon.
