Learn Open Data / Resources

The following are useful open data resources:

• Policies, Initiatives, and Guides
• Data Formats
• Software - Portals
• Software - Tools
• Software - Linux Command Line Shell

---

Policies, Initiatives, and Guides

• Open Data Handbook - guide, stories, resources
• Open Government Data (The Book)
• Sunlight Foundation Open Data Policy Guidelines - the source for policy guidance
• U.S. Data Federation - federal government open data initiatives, including Project Open Data

Data Formats

The following data formats are commonly used for open datasets:

• Tabular
  • Comma-separated-value (or other delimiter) - see OWF Learn CSV
• Spatial
  • Esri Shapefile
  • GeoJSON - see OWF Learn GeoJSON

Software - Portals

Open data portals provide searchable catalogs and provide access to datasets in various formats. The following are popular open data portals software platforms:

• CKAN (open source)
  • CKAN Website
  • CKAN API
• Socrata (commercial)
  • Socrata Website
  • Socrata API

Software - Tools

The following software tools are helpful to process datasets:

• curl (Windows) - useful to automate data downloads (also available in Cygwin, Linux, MinGW)
• TSTool (Windows and Linux) - useful to automate time series and tabular dataset processing

Software - Linux Command Line Shell

A Linux shell provides command-line access to powerful data processing tools. Such a shell is more powerful than Windows command prompt and is portable across operating systems. The following are options for enabling a Linux shell, and software may already be available, depending on what has already been installed on the computer.

• Cygwin - a Linux environment on Windows (see OWF Learn Cygwin)
• Git Bash - installed with Git
  • see Git for Windows - this will start a download
  • git is available on Linux environments through normal install tools
• Windows Subsystem for Linux
  • Windows 10 now offers a Linux shell - see documentation to enable
• Linux
  • pick a version such as Ubuntu
  • can install on Windows using a virtual machine such as Virtual Box