Hacking the past: opening analogue government data sets
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The State Records Office of WA is responsible for maintaining and providing access to government records and archives. During GovHack 2014, participants found that some government data sets were difficult to find and use, even when directly provided. For GovHack 2015, the document suggests making government data more accessible and usable.
Hacking the past: opening analogue government data sets
- 1. HACKING THE PAST Opening analogue government data sets
- 2. The State Records Office of WA is responsible for ensuring good recordkeeping across government, and for preserving, maintaining and making accessible State archives (records of continuing value)
- 5. First Lesson – our data is not easy to find or use, even when it is on a platter.
- 6. Second lesson – some platters are better than others
- 7. GovHack 2014
- 10. Beyond GovHack
Editor's Notes
- #4: We hold a range of information types and formats, from files and Executive Council minutes, to maps and plans, photographs, and local government ratebooks.
- #5: We went to GovHack 2013, the first in Perth, simply because we thought that making our data available would be a useful thing for us to do, and to find out what the issues might be. We went armed with a 1TB hard drive on which we had added a range of digitised resources, and some excel spreadsheets
- #6: We ran into format problems immediately – pdfs of spreadsheets, spreadsheets that had been converted from Mac to word and then to excel, even the jpgs of plans weren’t that easy to import in bulk.
- #7: In GovHack 2013, at least three teams used the TROVE api to find their datasets, including the team from Pixtory, who went to TROVE to find WA photos from the SLWA collections.
- #8: This year, the information was sorted into folders, and where indexes existed, they were hyperlinked. Files were available in .csv format or .excel, and images were identified by information content in way that linked back to our main catalogue. The result? Some of our images were used for an app for school history, which was encouraging.
- #9: What did we expect from GovHack – not sure. However, something like geolocation of our maps or files would have been fantastic, or an app or game that used them more interactively. Some modelling or data visualisation, not just of the information on the website, but drawn from our catalogue? Or even a transcription of our fieldbooks. We also need to look at the datasets we manage, and are aware of – government organisations are required to tell us what major data sets they hold.
- #11: What did we expect from GovHack – not sure. However, something like geolocation of our maps or files would have been fantastic, or an app or game that used them more interactively. Some modelling or data visualisation, not just of the information on the website, but drawn from our catalogue? Or even a transcription of our fieldbooks. We also need to look at the datasets we manage, and are aware of – government organisations are required to tell us what major data sets they hold. Clearly, the projects shown here are much bigger than a single weekend, but they demonstrate the sort of work into which government data sets can be integrated. We hope that our new catalogue will also make it easier to extract and use data.