 Right, okay. Hello everybody. Thank you for giving us this opportunity to come here and share with you the story of What we do in Parliament with our data and we thought we're going to be slightly cheeky and use this Gathering as an opportunity to gather some intelligence. So we've seen some amazing stories from people telling you what they're doing with their data and their data and Sort of showing the value that that data has and we would like to ask you a question And that question I'll come to the question. Who are we? So we were going to have our head of strategy on stage with us Tracy Green But we were told we can only be two. So it's myself Margaret Hardy and Zade Hardy Data and Parliament we have a lot of data in Parliament But the question that we have is is it of any use? Does it have any value? Can it do anything for you me any one of us and the democracy? Many people out there have a lot of views about Parliament Government data in Parliament and what that data can do But before you answer Let's ask some men in wigs. They should know they they always know So you'll ask what do men in wigs have to do with parliamentary data? Well, something happened in 1771 does anyone know this man Brass Crosby basically and There is a sort of saying that goes bold as brass and where it comes from is that this man Brass Crosby basically Was a man who first understood really the value of parliamentary debates and Sort of making them public. So there was a printer A man who run the printing sort of press called Miller and he was brought before bross Crosby who was a Mayor of the city of London to be punished for publishing Parliamentary debates and Crosby did something very interesting instead of punishing him. He actually Supported him for which he was summoned In front of the House of Commons and basically put into the tower because at the time in the 19th century Parliamentary debates were not opened But Crosby was supported by the people there was a there was a popular movement which basically meant that he was released and parliamentary debates Were published and they were called Hansard. Why were they called Hansard? Well, there was this man Thomas Curson Hansard who was also a printer interestingly and In the 19th century he basically Started publishing parliamentary debates on a on a regular basis and hence we've got Hansard as the name of the official parliamentary record, but I would very much like to root for the little man Miller Let's not forget the printer because to me. He is the real folk hero of You know of this story. So what does that story tell us? It tells us that long before us people knew the value of parliamentary data But do we do we know that value in Parliament? So myself and my colleagues do we as a society know that value? I don't know we would like to find out what that value is to To the society and this is the question that we would like to put to you to this gathering and To the to the people out there to help us to help us ascertain the value of parliamentary data to help us release that data For which we sort of have the data strategy. So parliamentary data strategy. What is it? If it were only that simple well, we thought about it long and hard in 2012 and The big the sort of open data was a big theme of our thinking We thought it was very important that we understand The the what data we have actually in Parliament because we have loads of it Not not all of it is is relevant to to the society some of it is just relevant to running that big yellow building and All the activity around it What is the value of that data how we can create that data as? products as data sets that can be used by By the public and how we can create platforms that will allow us to serve that data to everybody who needs it And how we can manage that data well how we can manage in a in a way that has purpose Sort of integrity and right governance around it. So we created Parliamentary open data platform data dot parliament which we are here basically to tell you about and and Get your views on if possible. So please talk to myself and and and that and some of the colleagues because some of the guys Who actually worked on on the project are here and they're wearing data dot parliament t-shirts So do do check them out do do do do do speak to them So we had an idea and it's a rather complicated diagram, which is basically the original architecture put forward by Nicholas gold who is no longer with us but very talented architect and We were very keen that our data platform It's not just a data dump because you know data dumps are places where data goes to die We want our data to live we want our data to be relevant to to the society. So from that original idea Came the realization which is Parliamentary data platform now in its second third fourth iteration beta basically and Yes, how was it done? Well? It took some doing we did it with our superhero developments team We did it with agile development methodology We did it with sprints and daily stand-ups We did it with trying to be innovative and and sort of not follow the established routes But also making sure that we select the right tools for the job the tools that open data community uses like a secan catalog and and elder open open open data Endpoints we were very dedicated in how we sort of you know coded and Basically, we couldn't have done it without support from our management so We had a lot of people who wished us well in Parliament and who Basically, you know made sure that that journey was a success And we had also a lot of friends out there from development hackathon communities Who gave us lots of? Good pointers and good feedback some of it was quite critical and that's fine You know we we felt a little bit bruised at the beginning But it was very very useful and we hope that it made our platform much better and much stronger. So We have the open data platform now What next what do we do with it and and that's why we here That's where we engaging with the open data community. We need help from people who care about open data We need help from experts to help us Find its true value make it better more relevant to the society and to all of us And I would like to now hand over to Zed to Basically show us how we can all be data scientists and find value and Make parliamentary data part of our everyday life Okay, thank you Okay, so if you're expecting Keanu Reeves, I'm really sorry So this is data.parliament gave this presentation to our internal users within House Commons and The House of Lords and this is how we described them lots of data going into a machine And it brings it out into a single format for Reuse basically people can take that data and then reuse it in various applications and then open to the public as well through API's just a quick recap okay, so Technically this is what we do. We're basically taking all this data from a myriad of applications We've got about I know 25 to 50 application. We haven't counted actually applications that are out there that are used by business units within Parliament itself and A lot of these are legacy applications and some are quite new some have Open API's already some some are very closed systems and it was very difficult to get that data But we go through each database through each application and we extract the data from it We push it into our into our database We then take that stuff and then put it into our own triple store link it all up together and generate and generate some API endpoints and some generic admin fees if you go to date.parliament today. This is what you'll see Just quickly here. I'll just show you what we do. This is data parliament. We've got basically data sets We use a secan catalog Which many of you use on gov.uk the same kind of technologies open source We have lots of data sets We then have various ways to get into data sets Either through search through API's Here we have basically API's pertaining to questions and answers that are put forward in the house of commons MPs have the right to actually question government departments and From this data we we created API's This is basically for developers that can actually log on today.parliament and get API's for data so we created a documentation and Instruction on how to get this data in an open way But then we've done all this we've got the data out there, but then what do people do with it? So I'm going to give you two examples of what we've done The first example is petitions So if you go to petitions.parliament.uk today You as an individual can create a petition to petition parliament on an issue that you're strongly interested in you want some action on This data is actually open And you'll see here we took that data into data parliament and then created an application for The petitions committee to be able to see data Mapped by constituency by their MP and where these petitions are actually of interest so people in those constituencies are actually signing up For issues that interest them a member of parliament and the petitions committee can actually go to hit to this thing and view Their their actual Issues of interest in their own constituencies. We also then took this one step further and We created trends so over time what issues in various constituencies are becoming important to Those people are signing up And we also then per constituency created also a map of Of of of subjects by interest by constituency again all this stuff is open And available for developers and the public to actually get and download and actually Play with themselves Another one is this application peer Oracle Now you always wondered what what earth do Lords do? Well, this actually tells you we we The Parliamentary library has got a team of experts that actually apply taxonomy a subject matter Indexing on all content that comes out of the Lord and of the Commons and they asked us can we tell them what have the Lord's been Speaking about voting on taking part in debates What kind of things they've been doing and then we created this visualization from data within data parliaments So again, this is all open data all available as APIs or downloadable through through CSVs And what we found out that during the last five years crime civil law justice and rights was the most Talked about topic in the House of Lords We then basically said okay, so but if that's everything how about if we kind of drill down to it So we use D3 we use nice little We we we visualize the the stuff and we came to the fact that you know, we can go down to the actual Subjects within each Topic so what I'm showing here is EU law and treaties. So that's part of that big topic And then we can actually drill down to the actual Lord who took part in or voted on about a topic as well So again, this data is available there And what you're saying here is data from data parliament itself and it's Lord. I'm talking about EU treaties So you can see how we've we've managed to take our open data and create a tool That is that that Lord's connect. I'm sorry that the Library members of parliament Peers can actually use and the public can actually use to see what what's happening in parliament That's so these are just two very very quick examples of of Applications that we created internally From our own API's to an aid the House of Commons and the House of Lords But obviously as Margaret said We want to engage the wider community. So they develop their own Applications their own interpretation of this data. I met a gentleman just earlier say is journalism required with open data And I say yes There's a lot of context here That is missing, you know, so I think that's where a challenge exists in that space Does anybody want to? Thank you Zade and Margaret. So if you'd like to give them a round of applause And we probably have time for one really quick question. So have any questions Okay Can we have a question? Yeah, if you want to ask your own question, okay So so coming back to the beginning of the presentation our question basically is about the value of parliamentary data So if nobody has any questions to us Does anybody feel like? Answering a question that we have put to you as anybody got any view about what should we be doing? What should we be focusing on as a sort of parliamentary data team? What sort of data? Should we be putting out there as open data? And how should we go about it to make it more relevant and more useful for you guys to do good stuff with Maybe something you could have a think about and perhaps Discuss. Oh, no, we do have we do have a question. Sorry. Do you have a microphone? If not, I've gone Hi, I'm it's Paul from BBC. I'm just thinking about are you doing any work around? User needs and kind of audience research and you've got loads of really great data But to me it feels like the way to focus on How would be useful is to really look at, you know, what are the questions people want to know from Parliament? and also Kind of combining this with the audience facing public facing website So it's not just a kind of technical thing which sits on the side, but it becomes that core mass audience Proposition as well So, yeah, I'm interested to know if there's any kind of work around Similar to I guess GDS has been doing user needs audience research that kind of thing Thank you very much. That's that's an excellent question and and actually with the creation of parliamentary digital service and The whole drive in Parliament to towards digital strategy and becoming more digital It's very important for us actually to engage with the public and understand What the public and our other sort of user communities like members even even internal Users actually want from from the data. So it's an excellent question and an excellent suggestion as well We need to do more of that work. We have done some through various blogs and through parliamentary events inviting colleagues from Development communities and from user communities, but we definitely need to do more of this we need to Sort of get more user Research people we need to create more Public-facing engagement opportunities. We need to come to more events like that to speak to people like yourselves to find out Exactly what it is that we should be doing and please engage with us So we have the blog we have channels for engagement Please let us know what it is that we that we need to do because that's where the value is in that continuing Conversation, thank you very much. Thank you Margaret. Thanks You