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Data Publishing Principles

Follow prior art

The California Open Data Publisher’s Handbook is the inspiration for much of this process. Its sections include a pre-publishing checklist (including descriptions of ownership roles) and best practices for creating metadata.

Assume the data must stand on its own

Once out in the wild, we don’t really have much control over how data will be used or who may rely on it. The documentation should reflect this; we should include as much information as possible while maintaining backreferences to the data’s source.

Publish the right amount of data

Pick an appropriate subset of the data to publish, based on volume, expected usage, and refresh/update frequency. For example, GTFS Schedule is fairly low volume and slow to change, so updating weekly or monthly is more than sufficient.