WordPress is a proven open source content management system, and will support day-to-day online publishing tasks.

• Creating, editing, and publishing web pages
• Publishing blog posts and articles, including text, images, and other rich media
• Managing taxonomies used in tagging conent, faceted search, and navigation
• Registration and user management, including roles and privileges

CKAN will provide the administrative backend for managing dataset and related assets – graphics, maps, and interactive data visualizations built using the D3 JavaScript library. We selected this open source platform because it offers impressive built-in functionality.

• Capability to easily upload and manage datasets by organization
• Web interface for searching and browsing datasets
• Capability for administrators to create and manage organizations, datasets, and users
• Email notifications for new or updated datasets based on administrator-specified triggers
• Capability to generate charts and graphs for an uploaded dataset
• Data automatically grouped by contributing organization and subject matter
• Capability to upload and publish pre-made data visualizations
• Role-based access to resources for users and administrators

Moreover, CKAN is extensible and can be customized for a fit-to-purpose system.

• Custom functionality is supported by plugins built by the CKAN community
• Custom forms support specialized workflow for data administration
• Backend is extensible to support calculations such as Sector’s Growth Factor (SGF)
• Custom visualizations can be easily published to provide interactive maps and charts to encourage user engagement
• Customized reports can be auto-generated for administrators
• CKAN is comprised of widely used technologies including Python, JavaScript, JQuery, PostgreSQL, and others

A future post will feature the Quoin Tech Talk and a more detailed look at CKAN as a platform for development.