1. Review the Pre-Publishing Checklist
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It takes a team to deliver high quality open data. There are 3 roles that will help you ensure publishing moves forward. They are pictured below and described in the checklist following. In some cases a single person may fulfill multiple roles, but you shouldn't be on your own entirely.
The Data Steward is the person most knowledgeable about the data including the sources, collection methods, and limitations.
The Data Coordinator acts as a liaison between internal Information Technology staff, organizational programs and leadership, and portal managers.
The Data Custodian is the person most knowledgeable about how the data is stored and protected and have technical knowledge on how to query and extract data.
They prepare data for publishing on the portal and work with Data Custodians for any system access needs and work with the Data Coordinator for publishing approval.
They are best positioned to convey to the appropriate parties any specific needs of the open data portal and program. They are trusted partners in open data within their organization.
They advise and help with data access and navigate technical options for automation.
Start identifying the fields you want to publish. This will help you and others clarify what you are planning to publish. Keep your documentation template (linked below) somewhere safe as you'll return to it again as you move toward publishing data.
Hold on to your data documentation template, you'll need it later
If your dataset needs to be published on a regular schedule, it's good to start thinking of what to do about that now. Even if you don't need automation, thinking about how to help others publish the data early will save you headaches later.
When data is published more frequently than quarterly, we highly recommend automation. Each organization will vary in its approach, but you can work with your IT department to investigate whether automation is possible.
If you're updating your dataset quarterly or more frequently:
Pro tip
Consider alternate publishing strategies like initially publishing manually and then following up with automation when resources are ready.
If automation is not possible, or this is a dataset that gets updated infrequently (like once a year), you may update data manually. You'll still want to make sure the approach to publishing is well documented so you can easily cross-train others on updates. Start with the following:
Data Steward
Data Coordinator
Data Custodian
By the time you publish, you should create meaningful definitions, which is covered in step . You'll use this same template in that section. You will eventually copy certain elements over when you upload your dataset on the portal in section .
Discuss with your data custodian and other IT contacts what's possible. .
As you prepare your data, document your steps for producing the dataset. Going through a process to prepare can help clarify the business rules and logic that your team will need to automate. has more on this.
As you prepare your data, document your steps for producing the dataset. Create a data update procedure document that is easy for you and others to understand. has more on this.
