Open Data Services Co-operative was established in 2015 to support organisations to publish and use open data. We have a particular focus on incubating early-stage open data standards and supporting the development of effective transparency and collaboration initiatives using well-maintained open data standards.

We act as a technical partner to policy-focused initiatives, working to develop and maintain open data standards and to support standard implementation.

Our interdisciplinary team works across a range of tasks:

• Software development – creating reusable open source code that helps us to do our work and that supports the documentation, implementation and demonstration of open data standards

• Analysis and implementation support – working with policy initiatives, governments, nonprofits and companies to equip them to publish and use open data with one of the standards we support

• Research and development – supporting the development of new open data standards

• Training and consultancy – addressing issues of policy and organisational change

We operate as a non-hierarchical worker-owned business, committed to co-operative principles and values and to using our resources to provide a good place to work, to develop our staff and to contribute to the wider community.

Do you have a focus on a specific type of standard or sector?

We specialise in standards that connect policy and practice. Much of our work is on transparency and accountability standards, or standards to support mass collaboration and social impact.

What standards have you helped to develop or support?

Open Contracting Data Standard (OCDS)

A global standard to support transparency and participation in public contracting.

http://www.open-contracting.org / http://standard.open-contracting.org

360Giving Data Standard

For transparency and coordination in UK grantmaking and supporting more evidence-based, impactful and strategic philanthropy. http://www.threesixtygiving.org / http://docs.threesixtygiving.org/

Beneficial Ownership Data Standard

Uncovering patterns of company ownership. http://openownership.org

Open Referral

Making it easy to share and find information about community resources and human services.

http://openreferral.org / http://docs.openreferral.org/

What type of support can you offer to organisations interested in developing open standards for data?

We offer support at all stages of standards development, from a one-day “standards lab” workshop to explore the potential of new standards, or a rapid research and development sprint to create an initial alpha version, through to the development of stable standards, or creating tools for scale and sustainability.

We can deploy our CoVE (Convert, Validate and Explore) validator platform to support quality assurance of data in CSV, Excel, JSON and XML formats and to support round-trip conversion between flat and structured data.