2025:Program/Better quality and consistent data with ODE
Session title: Better quality and consistent data with ODE
- Session type: Panel
- Track: Open Data
- Language: en
🎥 Session recording: https://w.wiki/FQPq 🎥
People spend much more time than they would like cleaning datasets from errors, and don’t have the technical skills to accelerate/automatise that work. How to help non-tech communities work with better data and spend less time doing this tedious job?
Open Data Editor is a lightweight desktop application helping people spot mistakes in their datasets. It works offline and runs smoothly on any kind of hardware, making it ideal for lower resource countries.
We are currently piloting the application with small organisations from around the world, so instead of the usual demo we propose a return on experience and genuine discussion about ODE with the organisations that have actually integrated it in their work.
Description
How much time do you spend reviewing your tables to detect errors versus the actual time you spend using the actual data? Do you struggle because you don’t have a technical team to help you? You are not alone. Journalists, activists, people working in non-profits and small public administrations, they all feel the same. When you don’t have a data specialist to help you, you probably know that you will spend more time than what you would like reviewing tables before they are ready for analysis.
The ODE aims at helping you with this task, accelerating the error detection and facilitating the correction of those errors. Moreover, the ODE is designed to keep your data safe and, because it works locally in your machine, it benefits people struggling with power and connection issues.
In this panel the Open Knowledge team will bring together voices from organizations based in different regions that have tested the ODE to facilitate their work with data.
• Our panelists will describe real case studies and datasets used to test the application. Their experience covers environmental data, municipality data, weapon monitoring datasets, and health data among others. • We will address challenges and opportunities when embedding a tool like the ODE to detect errors in tables. • We will discuss how to use ODE in combination with tools like Open Refine for the benefit of the Wikidata communities.
- How does your session relate to the event theme, Wikimania@20 – Inclusivity. Impact. Sustainability?
Open Data Editor has been developed in the framework of The Tech We Want, an initiative at Open Knowledge Foundation to reimagine the way tech is built today, so that it is more useful, simple, and long-lasting.
Right from the beginning we have been in constant iterative interaction with the communities we want to serve (non-techies working with data) to make sure we were really solving problems that they were having, without making any assumptions. We believe that if we want the app to have a real impact, the end-users need to be included in the way the app is thought and built. This is why we have decided to run pilots with selected communities around the world, to make sure that, along with the tech development, we always had people testing the application and giving us feedback.
Lastly, we have decided to simplify the app architecture, so that is easier to pick it up and maintain, hopefully making the app itself more sustainable on the long run.
We will touch upon all these points during the discussion.
- What is the experience level needed for the audience for your session?
Everyone can participate in this session
Resources
Speakers
- Sara Petti
- Sara leads the Open Knowledge Network, which brings together experts of the open movement globally. The Network's main focus is the intersection of tech and democracy. Sara also supports open source and open data communities, and is passionate about all issues linked to community care and health, like governance. Before joining Open Knowledge Foundation, she was part of a project advocating for public libraries to be on the EU agenda (notably for the review of the Copyright Directive), and was part of the team that grew Khan Academy in French. She has an ongoing research project about pottery masters from her small village in the South of Italy, which she is slowly but surely bringing on Wikipedia too.
- Romina Colman
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- Richard Muraya
- Richard is an accomplished citizen scientist & civic technology enthusiast, specializing in open climate data analytics including air & water quality monitoring. Passionate about direct community engagement & resource rights, his work entails catalyzing personal & collective responsibility & inspiring behavioral change over freshwater/atmospheric resources for long-term environmental action. He is currently the Executive Director at The Demography Project, a tech-non profit that's advancing natural resource responsibility through deploying citizen-generated data, low-cost sensor networks & IoT adoption across Kenyan households.