Progressing Open Data
The collection and collation of national health and care data is a core function of the Information Services Division and NHS National Services Scotland (NSS) and we are working hard to develop an open data strategy that will contribute to achieving the goals set out in the Scottish Government’s Open Data Strategy for the Public Sector in Scotland to make appropriate data open to bring the benefits of information to as many people as possible.
The Scottish Government strategy adopts the G8 Open Data Principles which state that all public data should be open in some way, released in a timely and frequent manner and useable by all to support the delivery of better public services and that empowers others to make use of the data. We are very supportive of this approach.
The Information Services Division has a number of open data pilot projects, working to release data over the next few months. This will be an opportunity to explore licensing arrangements, see how the content will look on our website, and figure out how we can streamline the production of plain text files that can be downloaded and analysed locally (comma-separated values (csv) format).
What we want is to make the data we release as flexible as possible to meet the needs of our stakeholders. If you have views on this, please do get in touch with Margaret MacLeod.
