Open data is a well-defined concept but in the public sector, there is some difficult work ahead for its digital curation. Although the support and production of open data from governments around the world varies (with many not yet supporting it at all) there are clear movements to encourage and grow open government data initiatives.

Many efforts at building data infrastructures for the “average researcher” have been funded, designed and in some cases even built. Most of them have limited success. Part of the problem has always been building systems that solve problems that the “average researcher” doesn’t know that they have.

Just a quick note from the IDCC given I was introduced as “one of those people who are probably blogging the conference”. I spoke this morning giving a talk on Radical Sharing – Transforming Science? A version of the slides is available at slideshare. It seemed to go reasonably well and I got some positive comments.