Open and linked data

Open data is all about 'opening up' non-personal data held by the government and making it freely available to you.

A list of bus stops, details of train timetables or information about healthcare providers in your area are all considered examples of open data.

When the data is structured in a certain way, enabling it to be combined with other data to create something new, it becomes known as linked data. For example, combining a list of bus stops with postcode data to create a map of bus stops near your home.

The aim of open and linked data is to allow you to view information, and re-use it in useful ways which can help increase access to public services for everyone.

In Northern Ireland, the OpenDataNI website contains details of some government data.

Developed by the Department of Finance and Personnel for Northern Ireland, it contains information about:

dentists, opticians, GPs, residential care centres and hospitals
out-of-hours rotas for pharmacies
bus and train timetables.

Most of the data is available in XML, text, CSV or XLS formats.

data.gov.uk also contains data supplied by the Northern Ireland Executive for a wide range of topics, including:

employment surveys
hospital waiting lists
births, deaths and marriages statistics.

Alternatively, www.ninis.nisra.gov.uk also contains a wide range of datasets, covering topics such as:

crime and justice
population and migration
labour market.

Please note that Belfast City Council is not responsible for the content of external websites.

For more information about open data and what it means for you, visit www.data.gov.uk