Upcoming updates to opendata.fi

Opendata.fi turned 5 years on September 15, 2019 and to celebrate that, we published a new  front page! However, the development and improvements of opendata.fi do not end there. During the autumn, we will make adding and maintaining data on opendata.fi easier with new administrative views and an improved user guide. We will start using a dashboard feature from our CKAN-platform, which will allow you to view all relevant information about your datasets in one place. The guide will take into account all different users of the service, and will provide assistance starting from opening data to using open data in software development.

While adding and maintaining data will become easier, so will finding data. We have just published an advanced search feature and will continue to improve it during the autumn. In the future, you will be able to search data for instance based on the geographical area it covers. Soon you will also be able to search data based on the mandatory and optional fields of the DCAT-AP-profile. Additionally, we will implement the option to use SPARQL-search and improve the usability of our API when it comes to searching for and maintaining data.

While improving the practical side of adding, maintaining and finding data, it is also logical to increase the amount of data found on opendata.fi. During the autumn, we will contact different Finnish cities and aim to add their open data to our service. We will begin to harvest multiple sources and offer assistance in opening data.

In addition to improvements related to datasets, we will focus on demonstrating the practical uses of open data by expanding our showcase gallery and making them more visible on our service. If you have developed an application, website or visualisation using open data, and would like to reach a wide audience, contact us and we will add your showcase to our gallery. Additionally, we will add more statistics to the service and improve the overall look of the website.

To ensure the user-centered development of opendata.fi, we will be opening our development backlog to our users. Anyone can comment on both the priority of different improvements as well as any single UI-improvement. You are also always welcome to send your feedback and comments to us using the contact form. If you want to stay on top of the improvements made to opendata.fi, follow us on Twitter @avoindatafi. We update our followers after each sprint. We tweet in both Finnish and English!