Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have this data for the UK?
The Guardian has pulled together a collection of datasets drawn from the US:
- US public debt from 2001, US Treasury
- State population by race
- CO2 emissions by state
- Illegal migrants by state
- World CO2 emissions
- US2008 election results by county
- US population by state
- Iraq deaths by state
- US casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan
- Household income by state
- Unemployment by state
- Poverty rate by state
- GDP raw data
Simon Rogers gathered this information and shared the raw data via Google Spreadsheets for anyone to use. This means that people can grab the data in whatever format is most desirable including text, .csv, .xls, and .pdf.
Since access is open on each spreadsheet, it also means that developers can write client applications that interact directly with the data. Developers can access the same source data as either XML or JSON.
Fantastic stuff. Now, wouldn’t it be marvellous if we could find the same datasets for the UK and know that we could all share it for people to build on?
If you do know of any copyright- or charge-free (or both) sources for these for the UK, then please leave us a note in the comments.
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January 18th, 2009 at 11:17 pm
There is a whole load of information available from the ONS in downloadable form. The neighbourhood statistics is very useful (http://neighbourhood.statistics.gov.uk) and allows you to compile and download your own dataset taking in a number of different variables.
January 19th, 2009 at 9:38 am
A lot of the Welsh stats including deprivation are also published by the Local Government Data Unit – Wales
(http://www.dataunitwales.gov.uk/Home.asp?lang=en) in English
(http://www.dataunitwales.gov.uk/Home.asp?lang=cy) in Welsh
January 19th, 2009 at 10:46 am
ONS census data is free to download and you just need a Click-Use license (free) for internal business use. But you can’t publish the geographical information (OS derived data) on a map without paying ££££ for OS licences. The boundary data is also not fully up-to-date: a source of current political boundaries that can be published would be extremely useful for many things!
January 19th, 2009 at 11:59 am
If you want to get large amounts of data from ONS on labour market statistics you are much better off to use NOMIS https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/Default.asp than NeSS.
January 19th, 2009 at 9:09 pm
You used to be able to get the whole 2001 Census on about 20 CDs from ONS for a nominal charge (£50 I think)
Not sure if this is still available but worth checking
January 22nd, 2009 at 9:37 am
‘CO2 emissions by state’
UK Version
‘Local and Regional CO2 Emissions Estimates for 2005-2006′
http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/statistics/globatmos/galocalghg.htm
Can be easily mapped but would require a Licence from Ordnance Survey Boundary Line Data)
http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/products/boundaryline/
Get rid of the OS Licence (as public data, 47% paid by tax) and we can publish and create interactive maps with this data, so the public and then
use them as they should.
Government to sell the Ordnance Survey? (the sooner the better)
quote:
“A STRING of state-owned household names including the Met Office, mapmaker Ordnance Survey and the Forestry Commission, are being prepared for sale by the government in the next two years to raise cash for the stretched public purse. ”
James Ashton – The Times (November 23, 2008)
Or a more valid and likely solution is to donate (funds or time) in Open Street Map…
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/About
Mapperz
http://mapperz.blogspot.com/