Alpha.data.gov: From Open Data Provider to Open Data Hub by Andrea Di Maio.
From the post:
Those who happen to read my blog know that I am rather cynical about many enthusiastic pronouncements around open data. One of the points I keep banging on is that the most common perspective is that open data is just something that governments ought to publish for businesses and citizens to use it. This perspective misses both the importance of open data created elsewhere – such as by businesses or by people in social networks – and the impact of its use inside government. Also, there is a basic confusion between open and public data: not all open data is public and not all public data may be open (although they should, in the long run).
In this respect the new experimental site alpha.data.gov is a breath of fresh air. Announced in a recent post on the White House blog, it does not contain data, but explains which categories of open data can be used for which sort of purposes.
A step in the right direction.
Simply gathering the relevant data sets for any given project is a project in and of itself.
Followed by documenting the semantics of the relevant data sets.
Data hubs are a precursor to collections of semantic documentation for data found at data hubs.
You know what should follow from collections of semantic documentation. 😉 (Can you say topic maps?)