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Adventures in government, politics and open source. Mostly WordPress-related.

Simon Dickson, principal consultant at Puffbox, has been blogging about e-government, online politics, and WordPress since 2005. Some important people read it.

Will COI publish its raw! data! now!?

15 June 2009 , ,

I've seen a few ripples of excitement at the news that ABCe is to act 'as a sole third party to independently validate the figures generated by an audit of government websites, in the largest project of its kind to date', with 'COI [to] publish comprehensive figures on the cost quality and use of government websites by June 2010'. Not exactly a surprise though, as this was in the COI document on Improving Government Online, published in March.

The exciting part, I suppose, is the fact that the figures are to be published. I wonder how. If Sir Tim really is to lead a push to make government publish its raw data, wouldn't this make an excellent 'best practice example'?

What a good idea. I was always rather pleased that the DIUS corporate website, even in its basic incarnation, used to proactively publish web stats - nothing to do with me, I hasten to add.

Anyone know of an easy way to publish Google Analytics data easily?

Hmm, well the GAPI PHP class for the Google Analytics API looks like a lot of fun...

Now, we could just Piwik with its built-in public dashboard, but since our data (like lots of others') is in GA, this might be an easier option.

I've written before about adopting Piwik as an instant across-the-board standard for traffic measurement; I must admit, I hadn't initially spotted how comprehensive its API was. And I still think there's something to be said for running an analytics server of our own, away from Google (not that I have anything against them, not at all).

Then you go and do this with the BIS data, Steph. Jeez you're good, man.

Depressing to see IE6 is still the top browser, though. :(

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