At the government data project at the University of Bergen, we see the Norwegian language version of CKAN, launched this week, as a significant step on the way to opening up data sources for reuse in Norway. With CKAN, we have one more piece of crucial infrastructure in place:
Thanks to help from the fast and efficient CKAN community, the translation could be implemented in a short time. In addition, data packages that we had already registered as part of our project could be imported from a Google spreadsheet. With 136 packages already online at no.ckan.net, we feel we have had a good start.
We of course hope that the Norwegian open data community – both inside and outside government agencies – now will seize the opportunity and engage in registering data sources at no.ckan.net. In addition, we believe that the existence of the website will alert more people to the need for a proper “store” of government data. In fact, the Norwegian minister responsible for IT policy recently stated that work on a Norwegian “data.gov” had begun.
In the context of the international open data community, we certainly aim to share experiences made with no.ckan.net as we move forward.
(First published on the Open Knowledge Foundation blog.)