Innovation Hub

Hello and welcome to Open Kent's first newsletter, created to keep you up to speed with what we are doing for the project and how far the project has come along.

Open Kent is a Kent Connects project, designed to enable local public sector partners across Kent to manage, share and visualize their public data.

Getting Started

Since we kicked off the project, we've taken active steps to ensure that this project will be a success. We have ensured good project management by setting up a Kent Connects Open Kent Project Board, which meets regularly to discuss the projects' progress. The board's members include representatives from the other Kent Connects partner organisations and relevant group members, who have each been assigned specific roles so that the project continues to runs smoothly and meets its deadlines.

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 opening dialogue with the Kent Information Sharing Governance Board to make sure Open Kent adheres to data protocols locally agreed.

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 created three step by step guides found on the project blog at http://openkent.blogspot.com, which show organisations exactly how they can create their own private spaces and upload their data onto Open Kent, and so users to know how to download and visualise the data they want. Your can also find on the website the newly added 'Terms and Conditions' guideline users can read before using Open Kent.

Getting Technical

Regarding the technical developments we have also made good headway. So far we have secured the licences for Open Kent from IBM and have also performed demonstrations to the twelve district partners, so they are all aware of Open Kent and what it is able to do. We are also working with IBM R&D Lab to explore other types of visualization techniques that could be integrated into the system.

Well that's all for this month, though stay tuned for further updates soon.

For more information on the project, please contact our Project Lead, Noel Hatch by e-mail at wwwnoel.hatch2@kent.gov.uk

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