Post: 19 October 2017
Just in time for Open Data Camp I’ve updated my interactive map of all the open data portals and landing pages maintained by local councils across the UK. The dataset is available for download as well.
This update is based on research and analysis carried out between 14 and 18 October 2017 using my standard methodological approach of Googling for stuff and complaining about it on Twitter. Thanks to SA Mathieson for sharing his collection of links.
Definitions are the same as last year:
In England all local councils are required to publish some open datasets to comply with the Local Government Transparency Code. Landing pages were mentioned in proposals that DCLG set out last year, but are not yet mandatory.
The vast majority of English councils now have either a landing page or portal but a significant number (including seven London boroughs) still publish their transparency data in disparate locations around their websites.
Overall there’s been an increase in the number of portals and landing pages for open data published by local councils since I last collected this data in May 2016.
Nothing dramatic at a statistical level perhaps, but within the national totals there are numerous individual stories of councils launching open data initiatives for the first time or improving the visibility of their existing data.
Open data still seems to be largely unknown in local government in Wales and Northern Ireland. However there’s been noticeable progress in Scotland this year. In additional to the figures below I’m told several more councils are close to launching new portals.