Comments on: The Open Data Institute is Integral to the Open Government Partnership http://irl.okfn.org/2013/10/23/open-data-institute-is-integral-to-open-government-partnership/ Wed, 23 Oct 2013 11:15:06 +0000 hourly 1 By: Mark Wainwright http://irl.okfn.org/2013/10/23/open-data-institute-is-integral-to-open-government-partnership/#comment-78 Wed, 23 Oct 2013 11:15:06 +0000 http://irl.okfn.org/?p=37#comment-78 I think one can separate the issue of ‘independence’ from that of hosting model. A portal may be hosted by a private contractor like Socrata, but if the client stops paying, or asks them to take it down, the portal will disappear. Of course, several providers (including us – the Open Knowledge Foundation) offer hosted CKAN portals too, but the US government choose to host their own, which is easy since the software is open source. Socrata as a closed platform doesn’t offer that option. Does that make it independent?

Of course, you’re right that it wasn’t acceptable to lose data.gov, but one could say the same about the rest of the shutdown too. Alas, fixing that will take more than a slight change of data portal technology or hosting model 🙂

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