The Problem

In the digital economy data is the new oil. It is not just us who say that. Open Data is a source that is only just now being tapped by tech. And while progress with Open Data has been made, it has continued to be unstructured, or structured in non-standardised ways.
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The Solution

Marion solves this problem. Marion is a web application for curating and contextualising Open Data sets produced by Federal, State, and Local Government.
It provides:

• a simple user interface for acquiring, updating, and categorising datasets
• a tool for constructing field mapping definitions for transforming published data into more usable formats

Once the Open Data has been curated, Marion then catalogues, unifies, and indexes it in a structured format. The structured Open Data is then stored in a database and access is allowed through web interfaces and APIs. 

​So far Marion has consumed close to one hundred data-sets and has been practically applied and used in commercial solutions, such as being used to help cross-reference the accuracy of data in the Community Information Exchange.
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​Open Data needs a platform such as Marion to help structure the data in ways that:

• developers can access it
• help thinkers and brain-stormers understand what they can access conceptually with workshops and hackathons
• can create surrounding governance, support, and guidance in accessing the data