Making Data Play Nice
When we started working on Namara a few years ago the idea propelling it forward was clear:
In order to live up to its potential, all the open data in the world needs to be made available on a single platform.
It was a pretty easy problem to diagnose, all things considered. Governments of every size were starting to release open data, but they were doing it all over the place. Not only did you need to know where to look for the data, once you found it you had to know how to start working with one of the dozens of different formats it came in. Open data was supposed to be the fuel for innovative thinking, but in reality it was like a hundred different people in a hundred different rooms, trying to solve a problem together with no means of communicating.
Namara was our solution.
It would sit on top of every data portal, standardized to a common format, update and monitor changes, and in doing so create a standard space for all open data to exist. Ultimately, we thought it would be everything open data needed in order to finally live up to its potential. Two years later, we launched the platform and waited for the world to change.
When it didn’t, we looked a little harder.
To be fair, we’d solved one problem very effectively. We’d tracked down hundreds of data sources and brought their data (over a hundred thousand data sets) onto a single platform. We’d done what we set out to do. We’d put all the problem-solvers in the same room.
Turns out none of them spoke the same language.
Not only is the data that’s offered on these portals wildly different from source to source (I’ve written about this problem here), when you do find similar data sets there’s never an easy way to tie them together. We’d aggregated all the data and standardized it to a common format, but now we were confronted by a different problem:
The data sets were as idiosyncratic as the data sources.
To solve this new problem, we realized we had to build a tool that was capable of merging, refining, and enriching open data to create data sets more valuable than the sum of its parts.
The feature that came out of this realization is called Unity, and we’ve been amazed at the kinds of insight it’s provided. We’ve made Unity available to our enterprise clients, and if you want access, too, contact us. If you want more information, check out some of our case studies from work we’ve done in the past with Unity:
Namara is the data management platform that governments, banks, and some of the world’s largest companies rely on. We designed Namara to be the most secure and collaborative way to access, manage, and integrate the data that powers your business. Sign up free today.
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