We want to make it much easier for governments to create and host open data repositories. To that end we’re proposing this “CKAN Multisite” project to make it easy to centralize dozens or hundreds of CKAN sites on a single server, driving the cost of an individual repository towards free. We hired the Open Knowledge Foundation—the creators of the CKAN data repository software—to consider our half-baked concept and turn it into a series of actionable proposals. Their draft proposal is available here as Markdown and as a PDF.
We’re soliciting feedback about this from December 8–12, before we break up these tasks into components, issue RFPs, and award contracts to begin the work. We’d like to hear from CKAN experts about which components of this should be bid out collectively versus broken up, and about which of these enhancements best advance other goals, even if those goals are unrelated to our project. We’d like to hear from operators of open data repositories about how we can improve on this proposal to better serve their needs. We’d like to hear from people in government about whether this would help make it easier for them to publish data. And, of course, from anybody who has ideas about how to improve on this.
Feedback is best provided as a GitHub issue. Or, if you prefer privacy, they can be sent to Waldo Jaquith via e-mail.
Further information is available on the U.S. Open Data blog.