Open Data Engagement Fund 2017/2018 – and the winners are………

13 November 2017

Blog by Emer Coleman

Due to the success of last year’s pilot Open Data Engagement Fund, we were delighted to be in a positon to run the Fund again this year and are pleased to report that the 24 applications received have now been assessed by the Selection Committee.

Details of the successful applications are set out below and I want to wish them every success with their projects. We have asked them to report back to the Board on the progress of their projects and I look forward to hearing about the outcomes in 2018. 

10 applications were received under category A – outreach, advocacy or engagement activities to promote the release and/or use of open data, 10 under category B – promoting the innovative use of data published on the Open Data portal such as the building of apps, creation of use cases, development of interactive visualisations and 4 under category C – special category project using data on the portal to arrive with positive outcomes to assist in government decision making or creating public service efficiencies. .

A Selection Committee comprising, Dennis Jennings, Daithí Mac Síthigh and Ashling Cunningham (members of the Open Data Governance Board) and Fiona Morley Clarke (Open Data Unit) assessed each application individually and made a recommendation based on the merits of each application.  The 13 applications that were approved for funding/part funding are as set out below.

 

Name

Brief description

 

Funding applied for 

Funding  granted

Category A – outreach, advocacy or engagement activities to promote the release and/or use of open data

 

 

 

Aoife Lawton,

HSE Library, Dublin 8

 

To develop a workshop series to introduce Open Data in the context of Irish health and social care services.   The workshop will provide an overview of concepts, skills and methods of manipulating datasets. The final part of the workshop aims to develop sustainable and transferable skills in Open Data, and to embed these skills within the health services.  Workshops will take place in early 2018 aimed at Librarians and Information specialists, health and social care researchers.       

 

€3,000

€1,600

Barry Doyle,

Roscommon County Council

Funding will enable the applicant to take part in a 5 day intensive Open Data Leaders Network course/event whereby participation is allocated on a competitive basis.  Participation in the course would further enable the applicant as a successful advocate and coordinator for Open Data within the local authority sector with the objective of developing and agreeing sustainable data publication standards and methodologies across the 31 local authority areas and increasing local authority data available on the portal.

  

€800 - €1,000

€1,000

Mary Flynn,

Public Building Information Modelling (managed from Dublin City Council)

4 Seminars – ultimately the resultant 3D data rich models will be linked to data.gov.ie as open data for use by all.  This is a collaboration of 17 public bodies in the digitalisation of their assets/business through the use of Building Information Modelling (BIM).

€1,000

€1,000

Mary Flynn

Dublin City Council

Conference to showcase the outcomes of the collaborative working from the BIM Group. 

 

€3,000

€3,000

Category B – promoting the innovative use of data published on the Open Data portal such as the building of apps, creation of use cases, development of interactive visualisations

 

 

Brendan Cunningham,

Pin Point Alerts Ltd

Burrell Hall, St. Kieran's College, College Road

Co. Kilkenny R95 TP64

 

The project is to develop an extension to the MapAlerter communication service that alerts members of the public about dangers (floods, live cables, fallen trees).  The extension will use the TII weather data to improve the service by alerting members of the public of freezing road conditions. 

€2,875

€2,875

Beatrice Kelly,

Heritage Council, Kilkenny 

 

Funding is in respect of a competition encouraging secondary students to use datasets on data.gov.ie while entering a weekly puzzle with prize draws.

€5,000

€2,868

Clyde Hutchinson c/o Sportstech Ireland & Journey Partners

Proposal is to organize a ‘Get Ireland Moving’ competition that will use open datasets to improve national health by encouraging physical activity without the need for creating additional infrastructure.

 

€3,870

€2,500

Lois Kapila,

Dublin Inquirer,

Dublin 8

“Hack for a Democratic Dublin” will bring together a community of technologists, data experts and journalists to use and visualise Dublin TDs voting data.

 

€1,300

€1,300

David Kane & Terry O’Brien,

WIT LIBRARY SERVICES
C/O  Waterford Institute of Technology, (WIT) Cork Road Waterford

 

Proposal is for a ‘Unifying data visualisations hackathon’ to develop visualisations of any combination of the machine-readable datasets published by the Government. 

 

€3,000

€2,600

Dr Kris McGlinn

ADAPT Centre

O’Reilly Building, TCD, Dublin 2

This project explores a use case to support a usable web based app to demonstrate novel querying techniques for OSi building data alongside data.gov.ie; with a geospatial component.  The web app will make use of 3D visualization libraries on the web. 

 

€4,914.80

€2,457

James Loughran

Dwellist, Dublin 8

Dwellist (in the context of renting or buying property) will initially launch as a web app, built using ReactJS.   It aggregates detailed statistics on property sales and rent prices, accommodation types, tenancy, crime, etc. on one intuitive interactive map.   The app will offer a free trial period, and will charge a low yearly fee for access to the service and possibly an ad-supported free tier.

 

€3,000

€3,000

C – Special category project using data on the portal to arrive with positive outcomes to assist in government decision making or creating public service efficiencies. 

 

 

Dr Richard Hayes,

Waterford Institute of Technology, (WIT) Cork Road Waterford

 

Project ‘Developing Interventions in Support of Retention in Schools and Colleges’.  The project will use datasets relating to secondary school attendance and is directed at developing greater clarity and understanding of the transition between secondary and higher education

€5,000

€4,500

Cathal Leahy,

ARUP, Dublin 4

This project proposes to use a number of the CSO datasets on data.gov.ie to identify key commuting patterns to allow policy makers to better understand the trends in different commuter types and regions.

€1,300

€1,300

TOTAL FUNDING APPROVED

 

 

€30,000