Shared Services: Procurement

http://www.gov.im/treasury/procurement.xml

Feedback:

• include live and archive items
• include email alerts option, RSS feed option, etc.

TT Homestay

Feedback:

• The TT Homestay service would be more useful with a map based search – particularly to foreign visitors not familiar with the Isle of Man.
• The “search again” link resets rather than retains the parameters.

Isle of Man Parking Map

Google Maps (beta service):

Search

A lot of people prefer the Google search engine to the Microsoft Bing search engine and it is now available with the search.iomgov.com website address:

GOOGLE SEARCH

For example, I wanted to read a DED press release on a “tourism review” but the Isle of Man Government website search option (Microsoft Bing) did not include the page in the search results:

http://gov.im/Search.gov?search=tourism+review&dept=0

http://www.google.co.uk/cse?cx=015560506688128662105%3Ad5drwnuxyzw&ie=UTF-8&q=tourism+review&siteurl=www.google.co.uk%2Fcse%2Fhome%3Fcx%3D015560506688128662105%253Ad5drwnuxyzw

 

Street Map Data

The official street map system (ArcGIS) includes some limited data on:

• public rights of way
• GP catchment areas
• polling districts
• public land open to ramblage

http://www.gov.im/manngis/StreetMap/Welcome.xml

Feedback:

• It would be useful to have other data such as parking spaces though….

Ship Arrivals and Departures

Fishing Licences

Discussed the fishing licences with Zakir Hoosen from the software developer fuzzylogicsolutions.com:

• fishing licence process
• fishing clubs
• the official online service
• non-resident issues at weekends and public holidays
• agent commission but credit card fees and variable terms and conditions with retailers

 

ODPS

The ODPS website has 2 datasets as at 28th January 2011 in PDF format:

http://www.gov.im/odps/datacontrollersregister.xml

Although the datasets include some personal names, the data refers to a a corporate context and the lists are statutory public registers.

Converted the PDF data into CSV open data.  The Isle of Man Government website does not have any references to data downloads in CSV format – Google search on “site:gov.im csv”.

Should the data include all actively trading corporate entities?

I think asset holding entities (lots) are exempted, etc.

Fairly typical legals:
“Material on the Data Protection Supervisor’s site is independent of that hosted by the Isle of Man Government and is protected by copyright. The copyright owner is the Isle of Man Data Protection Supervisor. You may not make alterations or additions to the material on this site, or sell it or misappropriate it. Material may be downloaded or copied for personal use. However, appropriate acknowledgement of the copyright owner is required if material is re-published in any format.”

A dictionary definition of “misappropriate” is “to put to a wrong use”.

Are there any relevant documented legal issues?

Chris Taggart at opencorporates.com noted recent discussions with the UK Information Commissioner to release a similar dataset with millions of entries.

DATA

 

Companies Registry

Discussed webscraping with Julian Todd from the scraperwiki.com website and Chris Taggart from the opencorporates.com website.

Reviewed the data on the DED Companies Registry name search option.

 

Isle of Man Mobile Apps: Airport Flight Status

Andrew Gleave at Isle of Man based software developer Red Robot Studios developed a mobile app to check flights were on-time or estimated delays and any cancellations.

At a BCS Isle of Man event on mobile apps on 31st January 2011, he noted that by late 2010, the mobile app had been installed on more than 7000 Apple iPhones.

http://itunes.apple.com/in/app/ronaldsway/id374473927?mt=8