Hello All,
Hope you all are having a nice time, We from Open Knowledge Nepal are working on our new project name PublicBodies Nepal, although the concept is almost same like Public Bodies project, but we are trying to add bunch of different features in our local project.
We are hosting Datathon in International Open Data Day 2016 for its data collection and targeting same date for its launch. Different sector of Nepal Government are also engaged with us and helping us for the project.
Now I would like to be in contact with the team or the lead who developed the ideas of Public Bodies Project. so, that I can discuss some topic and ideas of our local project and can get feedback from them.
Can somebody help me!!
Regards,
Nikesh Balami
www.neekes.com.np
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@herrmann is leading here with some backup from others including @todrobbins and @danfowler
@nikeshbalami one thing that would be nice is whether you could contribute your data into the main database even if you build a separate site. You are also very welcome to use the main site - and we’d love more maintainers and contributors.
I also wonder about starting to have subsites e.g. np.publicbodies.org which is maintained by you but which retains some connection with the main site - what do you think?
More generally:
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Thank you @rufuspollock, I would love to contribute the data of Nepal in the main site.
At first, my plan was to only collect and contribute data in the main site, but after working and researching since month I found that the Nepal Government working hierarchy don’t match with the others country and the reason behind this are many. I also think that the global publicbodies site lacks those datasets filtering techniques.
What really I am planning for our local project:
- Visitors will be able to filter the datasets using 4 different ways: a) District wise, b) Ministry wise c) Alphabetically d) Tags wise
- District Wise filtration technique will be embedded in maps (So that visitors can use it visually) and for Ministry wise filtration, we will be using blocks (Almost same blocks which can be found at main publicbodies site) and for others two, we will be using normal filtration technique.
- Plan is to add contribution page in the site, so that interested contributors can contribute data easily.
- Discussion with Open Street Map and Nepal Wikipedia community is ongoing, if everything went right, maps and wiki page of an publicbodies will also be added.
We had almost completed the coding and designing of the site and had followed the guidelines of Open Knowledge International while designing it. and now waiting Open Data Day 2016, where we will be running Datathon for its data collection. A separate team will be working for its development and data sourcing in the beginning, and will be using crowd source technique for its data collection.
Reps of Nepal Government will be working and helping us throughout the process and we plan to make some ministry as an collaborator, so that we can make project sustainable and impactful.
I will be starting the new issue in the github soon and the plan of sub-domain (np.publicbodies.org) sounds really amazing. I will discuss about it, with my teams and will finalized about it.
Sorry for only seeing this post after the Open Data Day. Actually, I learned about the Nepalese Datathon for public bodies when I saw your tweet after the event.
Anyway, I think at least some of these filtering features you describe could be useful for the main site. For example, perhaps the ministry wise filtering could be implemented the same way as the hierarchy browser feature. The district wise could be a map visualization using Leaflet (need a new issue for that). Tags are already in the data model, so it would be just a matter of writing some navigation and filtering features for those.
Do you think this would be viable? Is the Nepalese public bodies site already a fork of the main publicbodies.org site or something done completely from scratch? Also I can’t seem to find a link for it - is it up yet?
Edit: fixed link for hierarchy browser issue.
Hi @herrmann, The whole concept of the PublicBodies Nepal project is almost same as global, All we are doing is designing a local site which can be easily update by normal users of Nepal. Because we are planning to handover this project to some bodies of Nepal Government after some certain years, so that we can make it sustainable for a long time.
We are designing a local site (still offline) by using Wordpress CMS and had already completed developing wordpress module which will help us to filtered all datasets and will visualized it directly from google docs. But now we are again converting those modules into the wordpress plugins (is in the almost done stage), to make the process much easier. Leaflet is such an good idea but I was really so much interested in static maps so, decided to use Raphaël. We had almost completed designing the basic concept of an local site of public bodies, which include lots of ideas taken from global site.
You can also see the google form which we used and will be using for further data collection. Since, till know I haven’t written any kinds of concept note type documents for this project, you can see the presentation slide which I used to orientate participants of an ODD16 events. Soon I will be making one document writing all the ideas I want and trying to integrate in the project and will be sharing it with you guys and will also start new issue for the further discussion.
Meanwhile, as I already told in the previous mail also. We want to host the project into the sub-domain of global publicbodies (np.publicbodies.org). Can you please help me on that part too, what are the steps that I need to follow so that we can make the local site up ASAP and can take help form you guys for the further development of the site.
Regards,
Nikesh
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sorry to be so late to the conversation. have you considered Councilmatic for local public officials/data? i’ve been pondering implementing instances of it for local govs near me, seems pretty solid though.
i’m not very familiar with public bodies, so i’m interested to hear thoughts regarding comparing the two. perhaps i should be thinking about using public bodies instead?
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Hi, @nikeshbalami.
If you think the main publicbodies.org site could benefit from some of these features, please submit the ideas as issues on the public bodies issue tracker if you can.
I also think using the np.publicbodies.org subdomain would be good, as suggested by @rufuspollock. For that we need the IP address where to point it to.
@jalbertbowden, publicbodies.org does not handle public officials data at the moment. It is just about basic data on the official organizations (e.g. agencies, departments) themselves. So it serves a different purpose than Councilmatic. Perhaps both could be used in tandem - publicbodies.org with information on local government organizations and Councilmatic for the local parliament data, such as bills, sessions and elected officials.
