Geospatial data sources tops citizens' data wishes

Artikkelikuva: Geospatial data sources tops citizens' data wishes

At the end of 2013, a survey was conducted asking the respondents to assess the categories in which making data accessible was most important. The initiative for the survey came from Helsinki Region Infoshare and it was conducted in cooperation with Open Knowledge Finland ry simultaneously in six different city regions.

According to the answers, the most desired material to be made accessible was geographic information, such as maps and data sets on traffic, environment and construction. Income and consumption, energy and water management as well as culture the respondents found less interesting.

“The results of the survey confirm our understanding about which data sources are found to be most useful. We will focus on making these accessible also in the future”, says HRI Project Manager Tanja Lahti.

The data survey had 190 respondents; 131 of them said they were interested in Helsinki region’s data material. A total of 14 percent of the respondents classified themselves as those who make data accessible, the rest as those who utilize data. For example application developers, civil servants and journalists were among those who utilize data.

Find out more about the survey results!

Find out more about the survey results in a summary (slide show in Finnish) and in the survey’s published data material (spreadsheet presentation in Finnish).

This categorization will be used in the future in the HRI data catalogue and in the data requests directed to the cities. Making data accessible will continue systematically and the HRI promises to continue listening to the users’ wishes. After the project has concluded in the beginning of the year, the HRI service will continue as part of the operation of the metropolitan area cities. In the future, the goal is to improve the compatibility of the data sets. Datademo financing model, in which the developers are offered support in utilizing the data, is also beeing piloted.

The results of the survey are comparable with a survey conducted in the United States. An interesting difference is evident in the results – in the United States; the most interesting data was felt to ‘safety’ which sparked hardly any interest in Finland

“In prioritizing the data to be made accessible it is good to have some kind of order, although naturally there are extremely interesting and desired data sets to make accessible within each category”, says Antti Poikola of Open Knowledge Finland ry, who conducted the survey.

Further information:

– http://www.hri.fi/en/
– http://datademo.fi/english/
http://fi.okfn.org/
 

 

 

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