Open Election Data project: sensible local election data on the way?

It’s good to see the Open Election Data project starting to take off. The issue is very simple: lots of people make use, or would make use, of local election data but it’s usually a real pig to get hold of details.

At the moment, there are annual books – but they’re on paper, expensive and take several months to appear. There are summaries from the likes of the BBC – an excellent public service, but the more local and detailed the data you need the more rapidly you find the limitations. There are also local council websites – but with data in all sorts of different formats, information often buried away and not left up for long period of times.

The solution? Introduce a common data standard for local election data in future. That way the data can be stored, combined, linked-up with other information, analysed and baked in a multitude of different ways. Moreover, the number of people around the country willing to write code and produce websites that take and use public data for the public good means such data is likely to get significant use – without councils having to pay for the IT projects.

Here are some further details from the project’s website:

How does it work?
Local authorities already publish election data online. Instead of publishing using arbitrary and user-unfriendly formats, the free technical ‘fix’ called RDFa offers a format that gives the information structure and meaning, with a licence to allow collection, collation and reuse by anyone at no cost.

Do local authorities have to take part?
No. There is no obligation to take part. Those who do will be contributing to an open database of local-election results which has never been done before. It will also demonstrate commitment to transparency and openness.

Do you need any special software/systems?
No special software is needed, just the ability to mark up HTML (which any competent Content Management System should be able to manage). Details are provided elsewhere on this site. We are also working with suppliers to allow them to provide the service free to their customers and in the process show the flexibility of their systems.

How much will it cost?
If the results are going to be published on the authority’s website anyway, then using this approach should not cost anything extra. For those authorities who would be publishing their results on the web for the first time, as opposed, it should take a competent web manager no more than a day to put the web pages online in this manner.

If you are a councillor – particularly in a group in control – I hope you’ll take a moment to drop an email to the relevant council officer to encourage them to take part in the project and to sign up the council here.