Why I keep an allotment
Why I keep an allotment
In National Allotments Week, Dom Burton shares his passion for growing his own and the work-life balance benefits, along with some tips to help you to have a wildlife-friendly plot.
Exploring 'Rivers of Data'
This week saw the beta release of the Environment Agency's flood data APIs and 4 new open data products from Ordnance Survey including the detailed OS Open Map - Local and the new OS Open Rivers network data. Alex Coley's …
Near Real Time 'Flood Data' API
Open 'Flood' Data Last year the Environment Agency increased its publication of Open Data. In the first instance, and in response to the extreme flooding episodes of the 2013/14 winter, this included access to flood warnings, flood alerts and river …
Rivers of data
This week sees some exciting steps forward in opening up useful data that support our understanding of rivers and providing data that local groups interested in topics such as flood management and pollution control can access. OpenMap Water This week we …
Open Data & Transparency... How do you make it happen?
Releasing public sector data as Open Data is a top government priority, as is being transparent about the work we do and the data we collect. But how do we make these things happen? What do we need to consider? …
George Orwell and keeping active
When we're writing for GOV.UK, we use the active voice, but a lot of the source content we're rewriting uses the passive voice. This is one of the most significant differences in style between Smarter Guidance content on GOV.UK and …
INSPIRE’d?
Defra is the UK lead department for the INSPIRE Directive, the UK is leading the way in INSPIRE implementation. In this post we provide an introduction to INSPIRE for those who are new to it and an update on progress …
How we organise online guidance
Defra's guidance helps people comply with the law, but people use it because they have a task to complete. Whether it's labelling food products or applying for a grant, a user's task is always broader than just knowing what the legislation …
Are you a mature open data publisher?
Here at Defra we are working towards being open data exemplars, through our Open Data Strategy we are committed to publishing as much of our corporate, operational & research data as possible as open data under the Open Government Licence …
Defra and the content design community
A few of us Defra content designers recently went to the government content design community's first conference, at Impact Hub Westminster. There were 150 of us. We swapped ideas and shared our gripes. We drank tea and ate biscuits (really …
Making GOV.UK – the single government website – a reality
You may be familiar with GOV.UK, the single government website. It’s now had over 1.2 billion visits. But it actually hasn’t been around very long, and it has only just now completed its initial development. At the end of December …
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