Duncan Cragg has a four point plan for Government as a Platform – that is, for realizing the goal of open data from the public sector. His first two principles are striking and simple: use URLs to point to data, and embed URLs inside data. Instead of inventing new APIs or new means of linking data, just use the ubiquitous standard that's scaled so well in the web.
Cragg's third principle makes a good rallying cry for standards: “Data Looks The Same If It Is The Same.” He says: “It's another obvious principle that still needs to be stated: Don't create arbitrary differences in your published data! If you publish data with contact details, don't be arbitrarily different from the contacts published by your colleagues in another Department. Doing so adds friction to the whole Platform ecosystem, requiring literally pointless extra code to be written to cope... Make all data look the same if it is the same. You may use the standards published on the Standards Hub, such as vCard and iCalendar, or those on schema.org, for example.”
He's right on the money here. Neglecting to use standards is a conscious decision to add friction. It's not good citizenship. Government
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