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Decentralised Open Data for World Citizens

Christophe Guéret, Victor de Boer, Anna Bon & many more

Using Open Data policy modelling, citizen empowerment, data journalism

19 - 20 June 2012

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The common facets of Open Data

http://www.flickr.com/photos/swamibu/2928083712

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Open Data portals

Single entry point to all data and applications

English + country official language(s)

Text oriented

Serve static data

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Open Data users

They have a smartphone or at least a Web browser

They are young and geeky

They can read and type

Some of them will code applications for the others

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Open Data producer hardware

Data centers that can host terabytes of data

99.9% uptime

High speed reliable Internet connectionhttp://www.flickr.com/photos/argonne/3323018571

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Who are we talking about exactly?

Data consumers that:

(Computer) literate

Early adopters of new technologies

Data producers that:

Have access to publication platforms

Have a significant amount of data to publish

Are trusted as data providers

A tiny fraction of the 7 billion World Citizen

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Data sharing need and issues

Example needs

Market prices

Innovative agricultural techniques

Information about stock of crops

Issues

Distances between rural communities in Sahel

Limited infrastructure: no electricity, no computer, no Internet (but radio and mobile phones)

Lack of relevant content, literacy and education, different languages

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A simple question...

How can everyone benefit from Open Data ?

Part of the solution:

Voice interfaces

DownScaled infrastructures

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Voice interfaces

What ?

Replace textual interfaces by speech

Why ?

Everyone can speak and listen

Good mobile penetration in sub-Saharan Africa

How ?

Use and develop TTS and ASR technologies

Deal with several local languages

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DownScaling infrastructures

What ?Use a swarm of micro-servers instead of a central one

Why ?Micro-servers are less costly

Redundancy in the swarm improves robustness

Decentralise => get closer to data consumers/producers

How ?Use low-end hardware

Adapt data technologies (in particular, Linked Data)

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Our target hardware, portal and users‘Allo, Linked Data?

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Some of the ongoing projects

Photo (c) Bruno van Moerkerken

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RadioMarché: sharing market prices

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RadioMarché : voice interface

Farmers call to indicate their prices

Messages are generated in different languages

Buyers call and listen to the messages

Rely on community radio

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Foroba Blon: timely data sharing

It rained a lot today!

I wonder when it will rain...

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Foroba Blon: citizen journalists

Users call the service and leave their message

Community radios collect and curate the citizen-reported content

Messages are diffused on the radio and are accessible via mobile phones and on the Web

Less latency between producers and consumers

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SemanticXO: sharing data at 6 to 12

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SemanticXO: data sharing stack for the XO

Every XO is a data publisher and consumer

Does not rely on any central host

Uses lightweight data relays when needed

External applications

Sugar activities

HTTP ServerStructured

data store API

Triple store +

files

Web of Data

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Take home message

Widening the access to Open Data implies

Developing voice-based interfaces

DownScaling infrastructures

For more information:

http://worldwidesemanticweb.wordpress.com/

http://semweb4u.wordpress.com/

http://w4ra.few.vu.nl/

http://mvoices.eu/