2017 Annual Report

View fromthe FoundersAs a global community the Open Data Institute connects, equips and inspires people around the world to innovate with data.We reflect with pride on this our third year, as a year of strong and successful collaboration, and also as a year of significant expansion of our open data community and of our impact beyond Queensland and into other parts of Australia and New Zealand.

During 2017 our Open Data partnership with the Queensland Government delivered important open data milestones for the Queensland Government. The Open Data Partnership establishes a framework by which the ODI Australian network can support and assist the Queensland Government to achieve its open data aspirations.

There were three key achievements during 2017: 1. Open Data, Open Conversations came to fruition with Queensland

announcing its first Open Data Policy in September. Open Data, Open Conversations harnessed the priorities and needs of hundreds of Queenslanders to help shape an Open Data Policy that delivers benefits for all sectors of our economy.

2. Data to Drive Innovation and Advance Business involved broad engagement with industry, the not-for-profit and research communities to identify high value Queensland Government data, and develop a framework for prioritising its release as open data.

3. Data Curator is a simple desktop CSV editor designed to make it easier to describe, validate and share usable open data. It is a global collaboration involving QCIF, Open Knowledge International, the ODI headquarters in London, together with many other developers and contributors all over the world.

We have made solid progress with expanding our national presence as the ODI Australian Network. Multiple ODI training events and activities were hosted beyond Queensland for the first time in Sydney, Canberra, Wellington and Auckland.

Neil Makepeace CEO of GWI

Foundation Sponsor & Deputy Chair of ODI Australian Network Board

Linda O’Brien Pro-Vice Chancellor and Head of the Logan Campus, Griffith University

Foundation Sponsor & Chair of ODI Australian Network Board

The ODI Australian Network became a signatory to the International Open Data Charter.

We welcomed new Foundation Sponsor Tatts Group and appointed its CIO Mandy Ross to our board of directors. Mandy is well known to many in the open data community and is already making a valuable contribution to our strategic planning.

The ODI Australian Network’s foundation sponsors and Board of Directors are enormously proud of the accomplishments and positive impacts catalysed by the organisation throughout its third year. It is our pleasure to submit this Third Annual Report.

View fromthe Founding CEOThe ODI Australian Network is having a tangible impact across Australia and into New Zealand.The open data community continues to grow and strengthen, reinforcing the importance of the complex and unique role the ODI fulfills. Early this year we relocated to The Precinct in Fortitude Valley where our days are spent alongside some of Queensland’s brightest minds, entrepreneurs, researchers, robotics engineers, coders, as well as the many regionally based visitors and businesses. There is always something wonderful happening at The Precinct. It is the ideal space for a vibrant, collaborative and inclusive organisation like the ODI.

Like every year we began 2017 with a forum to refine what was important for the members of the open data community to achieve. You told us you wanted to grow your data skills, and you told us you wanted good quality usable data to work with. This informed the topics we covered in our lunchtime lecture series, our classroom learning, the Data to Drive Innovation and Advance Business project, and prompted the creation of Data Curator. It was also important to our interstate community that we expanded the ODI’s presence beyond Queensland, which we’ve been able to do thanks to the great work of our hard working associates Ellen Broad and Ibrahim Elbadawi.

This year has been particularly action-intense. In addition to delivering a series of important open data milestoneswith Queensland Government, our team has also been all overAustralia and in New Zealand promoting open innovation,engaging with more audiences and evangelising the benefits ofunlocking value in data and open data.

The real impact of these efforts hit home for me late this year at a “smarter infrastructure summit” in Brisbane. The audience of over 200 people from various sectors was live polled at the summit opening. The question asked of the audience was “what is a key critical success factor for smarter infrastructure?”. I sat back amazed as word after word sent scrolling over the screens in response was “open data”. Just three years ago when the ODI began in Queensland that never would have happened.

Maree AdsheadFounding CEO of ODI Australian Network

As they say in the movies, “I believe my work here is done”.

I’m really proud of what has been achieved and look forward to handing over the running of this uniquely valuable organisation to the next CEO.

Our accomplishments are largely due to the generosity of some truly inspirational individuals who give so freely of their time and expertise. We have once again dedicated the last page of this report to acknowledging thanking our invaluable volunteers and contributors.

Our Third Year –the highlights

9 State Government departments 8 in Queensland and 1 in New South Wales utilised the Open Data Maturity Model to benchmark their maturity and embark on a pathway for improvement.

230+ ODI alumni in Australia and New Zealand have enhanced their data literacy at 13 ODI classroom training courses.

1500+ Australians are now subscribed to our website, to our regular newsletter and our social media channels.

Coached and mentored numerous Open Data “hackathon” events.

Spoken at, presented at and been panelists at 17 national, international and local conferences.

Launched an open, online community discussion forum with over 300 contributors.

Connected, equipped and inspired 1500+ people across the country to innovate with data.

Challenged our thinking and forged valuable relationships with over 150 members, supporters and sponsors through our ODI Connect series in Brisbane and in Sydney.

Expanded Australia’s foundation membership and impact of the global Open & Agile Smart Cities initiative in coordination with QUT’s Design Lab.

Rebranded as the ODI Australian Network and launched a new website to make it even easier for the open data community to engage and learn.

We’ve built a community, a physicalspace where people feel welcome,included and engaged.

We have...

We helped the Australian Geomechanics Society to create the Queensland Geotechnical Database,an open collection of 450+ borehole logs.

We have continued our steady progress in conjunction with the local and international ODI community towards localising and automating the award of Open Data certificates for Australian Open Data publishers.

We have maintained a rewarding relationship with state and local governments through participation and contribution to advisory groups such as the Queensland Government’s Senior Officers’ Workgroup on Open Data; the Queensland Department of Transport & Main Road’s Open Data Governance group; the Queensland Smarter Infrastructure Taskforce, Brisbane City Council’s inclusive Brisbane Board and open data steering committee.

We have introduced open data to over 200 newcomers through the open data series of the 2017 SLQ ‘Digital Futures’ program.

About “Data to driveinnovation and advancebusiness”: Identifying high value Queensland Government open data for Queensland’s key industriesThis was a particularly important and beneficial project milestone of our Open Data Partnership with the Queensland Government. The fundamental objective was to identify a minimum of ten new Queensland data sets considered by industry, research, not-for-profits and the community as ‘high value’ for priority release as open data.

We conducted a variety of industry engagement activities, distilled the feedback into an initial ‘wish list’ containing thirty-six highly desirable datasets or data themes. We then enlisted the help of GWI to develop an assessment framework for evaluating and prioritising a minimum of ten new datasets of highest value as open data.

Why was this important?

For the past three years the conversation has typically gone like this…

Governments:

“It takes a lot of resources to publish our data as open data. We want to ensure the data we publish is going to be useful. What data does the community want?”

Data to Drive Innovation and Advance Business wasimportant because it shifted the conversation.

We reframed the questions, engaged directly with the community, with industry, with research and not-for-profits, and facilitated a highly productive conversation with Government to enable a practical process of identifying which data will genuinely have greatest impact and generate most benefits.

We wish to acknowledge and thank the following:

- Andrew Spina, Assistant Director-General, Digital Productivity and Services, Department of Science, Information Technology and Innovation

- Teresa Harding, Open Data Policy Director, Queensland Government

- Articulous Communications in particular Amanda Newberry and Emma Andrews

- GWI in particular Gavin Deeprose and Michelle Teis

- Loa Branding in particular Gary Schmidt and Kimberley Schieren

- The members of Queensland Government’s Senior Officers Working Group on open data

- Each and every participant who contributed their precious time and their creative ideas via the various engagement activities

Community:

“What data does Government have?”

or

“We just want good quality, usable data”

About“Data Curator”It is important to prioritise high value data for release as open data. Equally important is quality, usability, consistency of standards and well described metadata. Both the ODI and the Queensland Government were committed to addressing the whole open data lifecycle. “Data curator” was created to help make it easy for contributors of open data be better publishers.

The unique connecting role of the ODI was again demonstrated as people all over the world from different organisations and communities set about collaborating, developing and testing the ‘data curator’ tool. It was an extraordinary achievement. International collaborators include Open Knowledge, the ODI team in London, our local partner QCIF, and representatives of Queensland Government.

Why was this important?Comma Separated Value (or CSV) files are the most common form of open data but they can be difficult to publish well.

Data curator achieves a range of benefits: - Overcome common CSV errors ensuring data is machine-readable

- Provide a simple user interface to describe the data structure and validation rules

- Validate the data against the validation rules for greater confidence that the data being shared is of good quality

- Validate relationships between CSV files

- Provide provenance information about the data

- Package related CSV files and metadata together into a Data Package.

Data Curator Share usable open data

We wish to acknowledge and thank the following:

- The ODI global network including ODI Labs, Stephen Fortune, Jeni Tennison, Olivier Thereaux, local Associates Ellen Broad and Stephen Gates

- Open Knowledge International

- Queensland Cyber Infrastructure Foundation (QCIF) in particular Gavin Kennedy, Matthew Mulholland and Andrew White

- Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads including Amanda Breeze, Cadman Kelly, Jason Steel, Glenn Sweeney, Abhirav Bansal

- Queensland Department of Science, Information Technology and Innovation including Paul Cavallero and Chris Mesiku.

What’s next for the ODI Australian Network2018 will be focused ondemonstrating value.

We will work to evaluate the impact and measure the value that open data has already unlocked in Australia.

#LifeAtTheODIOur community is enriched by sharing ideas, knowledge and friendships. There are many ways to participate and enjoy #LifeAtTheODI locally:- Become a Foundation Sponsor

- Sign up to our supporter program

- Become a member

- Sign up for training

- Join a lunchtime lecture

- Contribute ideas on ask.theodi.org.au

(our online community discussion forum)

- Engage with our tools and guides

- Volunteer on a project group

- Participate in our growing Open Data community

Our target outcomes for 2018We aspire in 2018 to further grow the open data communities in New South Wales, the Australian Capital Territory and in Victoria and we hope to develop fruitful relationships with each of the state governments in those locations. We aspire to further develop our relationship and role within the Australian Government.

We will continue to drive national consistency in open data standards and descriptions. We will continue our efforts to extend the Open Data Pathway to enhance the benchmarking capability, and localising open data certificates to promote good publishing practice and the usability of open data.

We will leverage the strong and comprehensive open data community to instigate effective collaboration across business, academia, research, public sector and citizens. We will mentor start-up businesses using open data and will promote use cases of open data.

We will continue to cultivate thought leadership through our participation in national workgroups, summits and conferences.

We will continue to deliver beneficial outcomes for Queensland through our Open Data Partnership with the Queensland Government giving particular support to the aspirations set forth in the Open Data Policy.

The Supporters

The Foundation Sponsors

We acknowledge and thank those individuals whose efforts have made our second year stronger and more successful than ever:

2017 Board ofDirectorsBoard Chair: Linda O’Brien, Pro-Vice Chancellor (Head of Logan Campus and University Librarian) Griffith University

Board Deputy Chair: Neil Makepeace, CEO of GWI

Jon O’Brien, Telstra (Queensland Government Services)

Ryan Macnamee, Global CIO of Laing O’Rourke (concluded in May 2017)

Brett Lightfoot, Queensland state director of Microsoft (concluded in November 2017)

Tim Wark, Director of Products, Programs & Marketing, Data61, CSIRO

Jean Burgess, Director of QUT Digital Media Research Centre

Mandy Ross, Chief Information Officer, Tatts Group (commenced August 2017)

2017 GuestInstructors &TrainersBelinda Weaver of the Queensland Cyber Infrastructure Foundation (QCIF)

Peta Mitchell of the Queensland University of Technology (QUT)

Dr Axel Bruns of the Queensland University of Technology (QUT)

Ellen Broad (ODI Certified Trainer)

Ibrahim Elbadawi (ODI Certified Trainer)

LunchtimeLecturepresenters:James Peet: “A case study in Identifying High Value Datasets”

Marcus Lawford-Miles: “From GovHack Submission to Fully Implemented Commercial Product”

Graham Robinson: “Gaining Insights from Big Data”

Renato Iannella: “Semantic Architectures for Linked Open Data”

Dr Jason Haga: “Information Technology for Natural Disaster Management”

Other guestpresentersSteve Jacoby (ODI Connect, Brisbane, June)

Kate Carruthers (ODI Connect, Sydney, August)

Tory Grice (ODI Connect, Brisbane, December)

Gene Tunny (ODI Connect, Brisbane, December)

Volunteers and project co-ordinators:Stephen Gates (Everything)

Josh Symonds (Qld Geotechnical Database)

Timothy Thompson (Qld Geotechnical Database)

Baden Appleyard (Qld Geotechnical Database)

Gavin Kennedy (Data Curator)

Matthew Mulholland (Data Curator)

Frederique Dennison (and all of the Newsagency Data Project team)

Rachel Cobcroft (ODI Connect, Brisbane, December)

Megan Duane (for contributing overall to the 2017 journey)

Amelia Kalifa (SLQ Digital Futures Series)

Marco Fahmi (QCIF Training Courses)

ODI AustralianNetworkAssociates:Ellen Broad, Canberra

Ibrahim Elbadawi, Sydney

Stephen Gates, Brisbane

The Precinct, Level 2, TCB, 315 Brunswick Street, Fortitude Valley Queensland 4006 Australia

@ODIAUNetworkConnect@theodi.org.au

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The ODI Australian Network Annual Report, 2017, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Licence.