the week beginning 6th January ’14 (Week 2)

This was the week back after a lovely break with the family. I tend to find it a harder week getting my mind in the right place for all the things going on after time off.

I am very lucky to be able to work quite flexibly and so with such a wet week decided that travelling quite as much as usual was not such a good idea. So I spent the full week for the first time in a very long time in the same office and that being out of NRW.

So this week has been quite a mixture of things, picking up threads from last year and starting some new things…

There has been a number of discussions around INSPIRE in particular with the LGA around the new burdens. Hopefully, this is coming to a conclusion soon. We had on Thursday the first INSPIRE Architecture and Interoperability Board (AIB) meeting of the year where data.gov.uk highlighted the changes they would like to make to the map search focusing on a better user experience and learning the lessons from feedback and other examples such as data.gov.

I have spent some time discussing and looking to input to a number of IT propositions from across the Defra network that have a data focus.

I spent a little time preparing a presentation to the Knowledge Council for next week on INSPIRE and Linked Data.

I have been discussing with a number of colleagues who are National Contact Points or Focal points for other EU directives or similar that have a location or environmental data focus. This with the aim to build a knowledge sharing group and for us all to better be able to articulate others areas in discussions we have outside.

I’m currently drafting an article on open data for the Civil Service Quarterly. This has not progressed as much as I had hoped. A rapidly approaching deadline always seems to help focus the mind though.

I have had some good debate around mentoring both having been kindly asked to be one by several people and in needing to find something right for me.

We have had Open Data discussions on the implementation phase of our Defra Open data Strategy and specifics around the evidence to support specifics such as the interest in Flood data amongst others.

The Registry project has seen lots of progress with a new CSV upload tool being tested with the project team.