The UK

Parliaments data
drive in 2016
Friday lunchtime lecture @ ODI
22nd January 2016
Zeid Hadi

So who is Zeid ?

Zeid Hadi
- Development manager / delivery
manager / Scrum Master

Working with Parliament since June 2013 and

data.parliament since November 2013

Responsible for Hansard re-development as well as

other applications

Reed Elsevier data Subscription Services, CTO of my own

software House, and now going back to my roots in data
publishing

The Team

Cross functional multi-disciplined team

C# developers Wojciech, James, Faisal

Testers Thulasi and Rodrick

Business Analyst Alan & Alex

Project Managers (Sayed / Aidan)

What is data.parliament

A collection of services enabling Parliament to share its

data both within and outside of Parliament.

Was created in response to a growing demand for open

data

Most of the data is already public, but the platform is

about ensuring that it is exposing this data usefully.

In time, we hope that all published Parliamentary

information will be available on data.parliament

Why is it important ?

We hope that this will encourage public understanding

of the work of Parliament and enable citizens to find
out more easily about the work Members of both Houses
of Parliament have been doing on their behalf.

Why is it important ?

Allows the public to search and download data from

Parliament.

Gives the ability to analyse, link, query the data

Is used by

Journalists

Educators

Developers

Social Businesses

Lobbyists

Us. Parliament itself re-using the data to power

parliament.uk.

data.parliament services

Data Directory data.parliament.uk

CKAN same technology as data.gov

Contains a listing of our datasets and links to resources

Search explore.data.parliament.uk

Directly query data in data.parliament

Download data

API lda.data.parliament.uk

build highly functional data-driven applications

Analyse and interpret the data

Link data to other open data sources such as DBpedia.

Open Data

All data is available as uniquely identifiably URIs

data.parliament

DEMO
http://data.parliament.uk
http://explore.data.parliament.uk

How we built data.parliament

App

App

App

App

App

No SQL Repository
(xml, json, images, text, pdf, html)
Transformation Engine > RDF

Graph DB Triplestore

ELDA API

http://data.Parliament.uk
http://explore.data.parliament.uk
http://lda.data.parliament.uk

App

Process

Over 50 business centric applications produce data.

Pull, publish or upload data into data.parliament

Transform the data into RDF and link that data to other
datasets.

Load the data into the triplestore.

Expose the data from the triplestore using Linked Data

API.

Lets see some demonstrators

Demo of Busy Bees and Petitions

What about real world

applications?

A growing number of applications use data.parliament.

Written Questions & Answers Application

Research Briefings

Papers Application (Statutory Instruments)

Lords Amendments System

Data.parliament is the integration platform for

parliamentary data.

Challenges

Spreading the message of open data throughout

Parliament

Continuous training

Put in place several basic principles e.g. all projects will

use or publish open data by default.

Challenges

What does this data mean?

Meaning is locked in the application

Identifying data owners and processes

Correcting data

Putting in place a model by which data can be reviewed,

maintained and governed.

Challenges

Creating our Semantic Ontology

Where do you start ?

Borrow from other Parliaments

Big Bang Upfront / as you load in new data

Challenges

Technology

Relatively niche technologies

SPARQL - eh?

Performance of our triplestore

Hardware

Challenges

Delivery

We managed to load / convert and transform over 50

datasets over 2 years

But have only delivered under half of these into a live

production environment

Live Datasets
Commons Oral Questions and
Question Times

Q&A Daily Report (Commons)

Thesaurus

Answering Bodies

Papers Laid

Commons Divisions
Commons Members

Early Day Motions

Lords Members

Sessions Data

Commons Written Statements

Lords Written Questions

Lords Written Statements

Commons Written Questions

Constituencies

Briefing Papers

Elections

Lords Divisions

Bills (Metadata)
Lords Registered Interests

Q&A Daily Report (Lords)

Datasets waiting to go live

Commons Select Committees

Terms Enhancement

Committee Written Evidence

Av Live Logging

Committee Oral Evidence

e-petitions

Deposited Papers

Hansard Lords Debates

Lords Attendance

Hansard Commons Debates

Lords Items of Business

Hansard Commons Written

Ministerial Statements

Lords Oral Questions

Hansard Lords Written Ministerial

Statements

Members Name DBPedia Enhancement

Hansard Commons General

Committees

Private Bills Witnesses

Hansard Lords Grand Committees

Public Petitions

Hansard Commons Westminster

Hall

European Scrutiny
MPs Registered Interests

Hansard Commons Petitions

Hansard Commons Corrections
MPs Registered Interests

Strategy going forward

Open by default from the very start

Continue to work with our colleagues to educate on

open data

Continue to work with the public to understand what

and how to deliver data

Eat our own dog food with the redesign of our own
website using data from data.parliament.

Strategy going forward

Continue to work on delivering the data in useful

formats for non-technical audiences.

Bridging the gap between search and data

Expose the value of our data that is currently hidden in

the publication of reports

Complete the release of all our remaining datasets.

Questions?

Useful links

http://data.parliament.uk

http://blog.data.parliament.uk

http://explore.data.parliament.uk

http://lda.data.parliament.uk