Partnering for Open Data

Xentity Corporation recently reached out to OpenColorado to offer pro-bono technical, development support for data.opencolorado.org. Matt Kane and James Brown, with Xentity, were CityCamp Colorado participants and have been strong open data supporters.

With data.opencolorado.org running on CKAN, OpenColorado was a good fit for Xentity to build its expertise with the open source data platform. Xentity also supports the State of Colorado’s open data platform, data.colorado.gov, by curating, publishing and maintaining data in support of Go Code Colorado.

As a volunteer-run, nonprofit organization, Xentity’s support is invaluable to enhancing OpenColorado’s data catalog.

Some of the recent improvements that Xentity has supported are:

  • Resolving data upload problems;

  • Building a backup and recovery process;

  • Restoring the data catalog test site; and

  • Upgrading a test site to the latest version of CKAN that will be available for data partners to test soon.

With these efforts, Xentity and OpenColorado are building the infrastructure that is needed for upgrade and enhance the data catalog’s tools and capabilities.

This partnership brings OpenColorado a step further in building the data catalog as a community resource. The pro-bono support also allows OpenColorado to keep its costs low and continue making the data catalog free to use.

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October 12th, 2015 | | Blog, Data |  8 Comments
  • Michele Hovet

    Awesome!!

  • Neal McBurnett

    Thanks for the information, but I’m still a bit lost here. What are the missions and goals of opencolorado.org vs data.colorado.gov? Should we expect one to be a subset or superset of the other? How do they differ in API, user interface, etc? Can you update us on this collaboration with Xentity?

  • OpenColorado

    Hi Neal,

    OpenColorado is the name of the organization that runs data.opencolorado.org-it is all one organization.
    Xentity is continuing to provide support for managing the CKAN data catalog (data.opencolorado.org). We are also encouraging jurisdictions (Denver, Boulder, etc.) who share data through data.opencolorado.org to join in supporting the data catalog services.

  • Neal McBurnett

    Thanks. But can you be a bit more explicit on the relationship of each of those players to data.colorado.gov, and how the data and APIs at those different urls relate?

  • OpenColorado

    I’m sorry, I read your original post too quickly. OpenColorado (and data.opencolorado.org) is completely separate from data.colorado.gov.
    OpenColorado is an independent nonprofit organization that works with cities, counties, and other organizations to publish data.
    The state of Colorado runs data.colorado.gov for publishing state agency data.

  • Neal McBurnett

    But the article notes that “Xentity also supports the State of Colorado’s open data platform, data.colorado.gov”. So is there any data overlap, or API overlap?

  • OpenColorado

    As a private company, Xentity supports several open data platforms. There is no data or API overlap between data.opencolorado.org and data.colorado.gov.
    OpenColorado focuses on local datasets, while the state is focused on data from state agencies. Also, data.opencolorado.org runs on the CKAN platform, and the state data catalog runs on Socrata.

  • Neal McBurnett

    Aha - that’s what I was trying to understand! Thanks. I see a helpful comparison of Socrata and CKAN/DKAN at http://opendata.stackexchange.com/questions/1517/ckan-vs-socrata