The Open Leeds project

Way back in Feb­ru­ary 2009, a few of us inspired by the archive avail­able through Leeds City Coun­cil at Leodis set about to find a way to improve what was already there.

The project that rolled out was ini­tially referred to as Leodis Next but more recently took on the work­ing title of Open Leeds.

At the heart those on the project had a desire to see if you could use an open-source pro­gram­ming and crowd-sourced data input to achieve a bet­ter data set than already existed.

It’s my dream that we can take that first step and use it to high­light the ben­e­fits of citizen-power to enhance, develop and embrace data held by (and national) local gov­ern­ment and cor­po­ra­tions — and how that can deliver com­mer­cial and civic benefits.

I don’t know where this project will lead us — or even how long it will last — but I hope it will cre­ate some legacy in the fol­low­ing spheres:

• Show­ing the ben­e­fits of open­ing up data com­bined with crowdsourcing
• Find­ing new ways of get­ting peo­ple inter­ested in their local com­mu­nity and shar­ing his­tor­i­cal information
• Devis­ing improved meth­ods of record­ing and shar­ing social his­tory data and anec­dote that would oth­er­wise be lost.

We’re now over six months into the project and already are on the verge of a work­ing demo… where will be another 6 months down the line?