Finding Open Data

Open data is published by lots of different organisations, and there is no single location where all open data can be found. This guide provides pointers to good sources of open data, on a sector-by-sector basis.

Note: This guide has a focus on open data that is available about the UK.

General Approach

Open data can generally be found in the same way as any other information on the web: by searching for it. However, it is quite common for the data that is associated with a particular topic to be held separately from the content that is targeted at people.

If a direct search for the data you are looking for doesn't work, we recommend:

1. identify the organisation(s) responsible for the data
2. go to the home page of their website
3. look for their data catalog, which may be listed on their website under:
   • data
   • research
   • reports
   • publications
   • transparency

Local authorities in particular tend to publish their open data, or link to their open data, as part of their "publication schedules".

General Purpose

• data.gov.uk is a register of open data from the UK government
• GOV.UK lists publications from those public bodies who have moved across to the single domain; these include statistics and transparency data
• the Administrative Data Liaison Service holds information about administrative datasets that are useful particularly to researchers
• Eurostat provides sets of data about European countries, regions and cities
• Data Hub is a general register of worldwide open data
• Data Catalogs is a list of worldwide data catalogs
• Openly Local has a list of UK local authority data sections
• the LG Inform Plus API gives access to open data for a few thousand UK (mainly English) metrics - see list - and associated metadata

Geography

• OpenStreetMap has a download site from which you can get snapshots of OpenStreetMap data; Harry's workshop materials are a really useful guide for working with that data; see also the wiki of ideas re flooding & OSM
• Flood alert and warning areas are available for reference
• Ordnance Survey provides a range of open data products around UK geography, including raster maps, boundary lines and gazeteers
• Office of National Statistics provides a number of products either as downloads or on DVD that are focused on areas used within the census and other national statistics
• Environment Agency Data includes a number of geographic datasets, mostly for water courses
• Geolytix provides some products as open data, in particular a release of postal sector (4-digit) boundaries
• MapIt is a service that maps UK postcodes and geographical points to administrative areas. It also provides a service for looking up the shapes of all those boundaries.
• UK Postcodes provides a similar service to MapIt, but with data in XML, CSV and RDF, as well as JSON. It also provides a latlng to postcode lookup and a 'nearest postcodes' feature.
• Land Use Statistics provides information about land use, down to output area level
• The INSPIRE programme lists other sources of geospatial data but note that the majority of these are not openly licensed
• Natural neighbourhoods gives official and user defined open areas with machine readable data, including boundaries and sameAs relationships to official sources

Demography

• Nomis provides for searches and downloading, down to Output Areas, of census and other demographic data
• Office of National Statistics provides a huge range of demographic datasets, including summaries of the most recent census
• Open Data Communities provides data sourced from local government including housing, wellbeing and deprivation

Business & Economy

• OpenCorporates has open data about companies
• Office of National Statistics provides statistics about trade and retail
• Department for Business, Innovation & Skills has both statistical publications and transparency data available on GOV.UK
• the Charity Commision will make its data available on request under the Open Government Licence if you're good, but you might have to pay for it unless you're really good; OpenCharities is built on this data
• Price Paid Data provides information about the prices paid for homes in the UK
• National Register of Social Housing holds information about the location of social housing

Transport

• Department for Transport Indicators includes a pointer to NAPTAN, which lists all transport nodes within the UK
• Traffic flow data is available on a separate subsite
• Travel time statistics to key locations like places of work, schools and supermarkets, are available to a lower super output area granularity
• Transport for London provides a range of feeds around transport within and around London
• Placr's Transport API provides aggregated access to bus, train and London Underground data

Education

• School Performance Tables can be downloaded including pupil numbers, performance and spend information
• Department for Education Datasets include a range of official statistics about schools and pupil attainment
• Ofsted makes available some official statistics from its inspections

Health

• Locations of health services from NHS Choices
• Public Health Outcome Framework statistics provide life expectancy statistics to the local authority level
• NHS Information Centre collects a large range of datasets across the NHS, including Hospital Episode Statistics
• Department of Health has both statistical publications and transparency data available on GOV.UK

Crime

• police.uk provides data about crimes and outcomes at the street level
• Home Office has both statistical publications and transparency data available on GOV.UK

Government

• Local DirectGov Data includes information about which web pages on local government websites are about which services that they offer
• Open Spending tracks government spending across the world, including in the UK
• Openly Local pulls together data from across UK local government, including spending data

Environment

• Datapoint from the Met Office provides open data about forecasts and observations
• Department for Energy & Climate Change has both statistical publications and transparency data available on GOV.UK
• Environment Agency Data includes bathing water quality data
• Flood peak data; see the user guide and details of the flood risk management programme are available

Other Resources

• ODUG Data Request Form enables you to request public sector datasets that you want to get hold of; these requests are used to prioritise UK government's open data releases
• Get the Data is a forum where you can pose questions about particular data that you are interested in
• Scraperwiki is a service through which you can find people to extract accessible information from websites
• import.io is a similar service, which you can use to build APIs onto websites