Fact Sheet

Version May 2010

The Five Stars of Open Data

What is this fact sheet about?

Through the eyes of re-users there is a spectrum of re-use circumstances that qualifies the re-usability of PSI from very poor to perfect. Last year, Sir Tim Berners-Lee introduced a 5-star system, nicely equipped with an intuitive set of re-usable badges that may become the standard for public sector bodies. History On 26 May 2010 at the Gov 2.0 Expo 2010, Sir Tim Berners-Lee (Director of the World Wide Web Consortium and evangelist for Linked Open Data), gave a keynote speech on open data. On the fly, he introduced a 5-star rating system for open data. Have a look at his speech here. What is this rating system about? In essence, this 5-star system is a re-users Maslow pyramid wherein the first star reflects its basic needs and the fifth star its finest hour. Although not specifically targeted at PSI (but rather at open data), the star system will likely help public sector bodies (PSBs) to achieve their re-use facilitation ambitions where the system allows them to assess their re-use propitiousness and to create a guiding star for structured improvement . How does it work? No star means the data is not available under an open licence, even if it is available on-line. One star means a good start: the data is accessible on the Web. It is readable by the human eye, but not by a software agent, because it is in a closed document format, and therefore cannot be easily re-used. Two stars mean that the data is accessible on the Web in a structured, machine-readable format. Thus, the re-user can process, export and publish the data easily, still depending however on proprietary software like Word or Excel. Three stars mean that re-users will no longer need to rely on proprietary software (like CSV instead of Excel). Accordingly, re-users can manipulate the data in any way, without being confined to a particular software producer. Four stars mean that the data is now in the Web as opposed to on the Web through the use of a URI, a Uniform Resource Identifier. As a URI is completely unique, it gives a fine-granular control over the data, allowing for things like bookmarking and linking. Five stars mean that the data is not only in the Web but is also linked to other data, fully exploiting its network effects. Through this interlinking, data gets interconnected whereby the value increases exponentially, since it becomes discoverable from other sources and is given a context (e.g., through links to Wikipedia). An example As a cherry on the cake, the scheme below (courtesy of Dr. Michael Hausenblas) nicely illustrates the subsequent gaining of stars, using the clickable examples of 'the temperature forecast for Galway, Ireland, for the next 3 days' A pdf file An excel file A CSV file A RDFa file, containing 3 URIs A RDFa file containing URIs and semantic properties (allowing for linked data re-use)

ePSI Platform Fact Sheets provide short introductions to key concepts and developments, allowing new comers to the PSI re-use arena to get up to speed swiftly. Find ePSI Platform Fact Sheets at epsiplatform.eu.