Building the Open Elements of an Open Data Competition

The European Union is increasingly committed to pushing forward open approaches as indicated by the G8 Open Data Charter, the Opening Up Education initiative, the launch of the Open Education Europa Portal for OER resources and other similar initiatives. The EU-funded LinkedUp Project (Linking Web data for education) aims to gather successful exemplars of the use of open web data in education, with the objective of pushing forward the exploitation of the increasing amounts of public, open data available online. It aspires to do this by facilitating developer competitions and deploying an evaluation framework, which identifies innovative uses of robust, web-scale information management applications. This article will look at how LinkedUp has moved beyond advocacy of linked open data and has begun encompassing open approaches in all areas of work. One key focus has been in bringing together the open elements of an open data competition and sharing them as widely and openly as possible. It is anticipated that these elements can then be progressed and built upon by others organising similar competitions in both academia and industry.