the week beginning 13th January ’14 (Week 3)

I ended this week with my Birthday, always leaving me with that slightly shocked feeling about what happened to the last year (was it really a year ago… etc).
On Monday I was across in Bristol partly to meet up with my Environment Agency DMMI (Data, Mapping, Modelling and Information) Managers to discuss the current EA change programme and proposals around certain aspects. Also we had some meetings around the Data Sharing topic and in particular the activities that the EA has around this area.

On Tuesday I had some long meetings over the phone and so based myself nearer to home in Cardiff. In the morning we had the INSPIRE MIG (Maintenance and Implementation Group) call. This group has representatives from across Europe discussing the technical issues of INSPIRE and the work underway to fill gaps and make maintenance changes to specific aspects. It was good to hear (and see) progress in a number of areas. There is a significant amount of work still to do.

On Wednesday and Thursday I was based in Defra HQ in London, catching up with my team and presenting on Open Data, INSPIRE and Linked Data to the Knowledge Council (this time in the MOD’s place in Westminster).

In the evening I met up with Mike a good friend and colleague (as we were both staying in the same hotel) to help feed in to some of his project work.

I met with colleagues to discuss how we might move the internal work within Defra for INSPIRE to become a BAU activity. I also met with the Data.gov.uk colleagues to take forward a number of pieces of work including building a help desk to support INSPIRE and a help desk to help us implement commitments under the Defra Open Data Strategy. I also discussed UKGovLD and UK INSPIRE guides and resources. I hope to be able to describe and demonstrate soon the new pages that will support these areas in a way that uses github.com as a key part.

Finally on Friday I was back in the NRW offices in Cardiff. Catching up on a number of threads of work and in particular with Steve Peters from DCLG on how we can work together on a number of data areas where DCLG and Defra have shared needs.

I also saw that Ordnance Survey released their article on the new river layer based upon and replacing the Environment Agency DRN that was so much of a past life of mine.