Blog

Open data starts with a good question

A practical introduction to data sources, licences and quality.

Open Data

The question comes before the dataset

What do you want to understand? Where is playground information missing, or which facilities are nearby? A specific question helps you find suitable data.

Check three things

Record the source, licence and freshness. A publicly available download is not automatically free to reuse. Check whether fields are explained and which values are missing.

Start small

Inspect a few records and compare them with a place you know. Document uncertainty. A reproducible data check can be a valuable first contribution.