A library with the books in the basement
Public data catalogues (systems like CKAN), research datasets and a worldwide "linked open data" cloud hold real answers—about health, environment, transport, prices and services. But reaching them means specialist tooling and expertise, so in practice the benefits flow to whoever can afford specialists. Open on paper, closed in practice.
A shared dictionary makes it usable
The fix is not a bigger search engine; it is a shared dictionary—an ontology—so that a computer in the town office and a dataset in a national archive mean the same thing by the same word. When everyone uses the shared dictionary, an ordinary local tool can pull an answer together from many public sources with no specialist in the middle. The food & health evidence map is a worked example of exactly this.
Continue exploringHonest helpers
↗